Living on disability in Cork

If the government's four-year plan goes ahead it will reduce the social welfare budget by €2.8 million by 2014; around €850 million of this will be "frontloaded" in Budget 2011. Politico is running a series of interviews with people in Ireland living on the verge of poverty who will be plunged deeper into poverty if their allowances are cut significantly. This second interview in the series focuses on a single mother living on disability allowance. [Interview conducted by the European Anti-Poverty Network, edited by Alison Spillane of Politico]

Fiona is currently doing a community development course and gaining work experience in that area. An early school leaver, she first did a FAS course in fashion design and then worked a variety of jobs before returning to education. She lives in Cork with her daughter.

"I got pregnant when I was 21 and even though we were getting married and we had our own house we broke up and I became a single parent," Fiona says. "I also suffer from cystic fibrosis so I was very sick and left with a young baby and I didn't have much family support at all. My parents were both alcoholics, they're both dead now due to alcoholism. I have one sister and she works up in the North. I didn't have much family support. As a result my illness was progressing and I was getting sicker and sicker and my education then was just put on the back-burner. It was just about survival at that stage."

"I was living on disability allowance. Basically that's how I got by. It got to the point then where I needed a double lung transplant to stay alive and they gave me a two year life expectancy without one."

While on the waiting list for a transplant, Fiona worked in a Community Employment (CE) scheme but had to give it up due as her health deteriorated. "I was actually waiting three years and in that time I got so sick that I was only given two months to live. I was so sick, even though there were supports in place through the CE scheme. They gave me childcare, they provided the course at a lower cost so I was still able to socialise and mix with other people but physically I wasn't able to."

Following a successful transplant, Fiona decided to return to education and applied to UCC. "I knew I wanted to do youth and community work because I'd got the taste for it [in the CE scheme]. Plus I had started the diploma course at night while my daughter was young; she was only two at the time. I was able to work and go to college at night but then... I got sick so college went first and then eventually my job went."

Since she hadn't finished the diploma course, Fiona had to restart her studies from scratch. She is now at the end of her first year and is able to do her work placement close to her daughter's school.

Fiona says experiences in her own life attracted her to community development work. "Being part of a very working class neighbourhood, a very rundown neighbourhood, witnessing so much abuse whether drugs or alcohol or physical. I've seen it all. I suppose I know better and I know people can do better."

"People have been left in such terrible situations and almost encouraged to stay as they were, nobody offers a way out, you know? I never felt comfortable there. I always felt that if someone had reached out to me at fifteen and told me what I was capable of achieving in life then I might have made a difference."

Speaking about the problems in her area Fiona says there are "very high levels of drug and alcohol abuse, very high levels of lone parents, young teenagers with no education".

"Any time of the day you'd see a gang of young fellas hanging around at every corner, drinking and doing whatever. The community is set up around the pub and it's done very cleverly actually because the pub is in the centre and then around that you have the betting shop, you have a chipper, you have a supermarket and a post office. Everything that you need so they get their money in the post office, go in to the betting shop and then cross the road to the pub and then they cross to the chipper at night. That's their life and I see that every day all day."

In terms of overcoming social problems Fiona says that education has a huge role to play. "I think education is a big, big part of it I really do. I think [people] need to be educated. I don't know how you do it but what I do know is that all these problems, they're all generational. They're passed on."

She says there are stigmas within these communities towards authority figures. "First of all the government needs to get its finances in order without cutting from where it's mostly needed. Sometimes there's a resistance built up in communities like this against authorities. They see the authorities as interfering; taking their children away. A lot of them don't know that the way they're living isn't right. They think its fine. It's not until you see that it can be different that you understand. Until that happens you could be pumping money until you're blue in the face and it won't make a difference. People need to see themselves the way that they're living."

However, there is also a tendancy on the part of outsiders to stereotype people from poorer communities. "I was just having a discussion with a friend this morning; she applied for a loan from her credit union. She meets all of their criteria for the loan; not owing more than what she has saved but she was still refused the loan and she was provided with no explanation why she didn't get the loan. I can guarantee you if that were on the other side of the city there wouldn't have been a problem. She had enough to pay it; her circumstances haven't changed in the last few years. Yet they refused her loan. She's stuck in a poverty trap."

Describing poverty in Ireland Fiona says. "Poverty is a single parent living in a disadvantaged area on €200 a week with three or four kids to look after. They're living off chipper food, skipping school, problems with drink and drugs, living in a house that's ready to fall in around them. That's poverty. There is no authority that will fix their house; they're left there as if they're supposed to accept what they have. The sad thing is that most of the time they do accept it. If you're constantly told that's all you're worth then that's what you believe you're worth."

"I wouldn't judge anybody. First of all I'm not living in a perfect world myself. What works for me might not be good for someone else and what's good for someone else might not work for me. I know the way I want to live my life but that's not for everybody and I don't judge."

"The only reason my daughter goes to clubs on the other side of the city is because what I want her to join isn't available here so I have to take her to other places. Because I go to college I'm actually looked on as a snob. My daughter is looked on as a bit posh because she doesn't speak so; I suppose the word is commonly. She doesn't use that language. It's because I don't like to hear it. It's not because I'm a snob. I like manners, normal self-respect and decent behaviour. Because she's quiet like that in comparison to the other children on the terrace she often finds herself alone and doesn't have many friends to play with."

Explaining how she copes financially Fiona says, "I've found it difficult. The grant that you get helps a lot, I live on disability allowance – a little over €220 a week. It's hard; you don't have money for the extras. I have enough to pay my bills, and to put food in the fridge. For anything extra that we need I'll try to keep back the children's allowance and when the grant comes then I use that to pay for my daughter's clubs and whatever she's involved in. I'm like everybody else, I live off welfare I depend on welfare for my survival. I buy all my food in the cheap shops, I buy my clothes in the cheap shops, there's nothing expensive about me. I'm still there, in that working class category."

"You notice the cuts when you're on such a small amount of money. The grant was cut as well, I noticed that big time. That was a couple of hundred euro so I noticed that straight away. I had to ask my daughter which clubs she loved the most and the ones she loved the most were the most expensive ones. In saying that, the ones she loves the most are the ones she's happiest at. I made the choice to keep her in the those ones, even though it costs €130 per term, and I took her out of the other ones. She knows that she can't be in all the clubs that she used to be in so she's in two now. The other groups that she's in have a subsidy because she's classed as disadvantaged."

Fiona says her work with the Community Development Programme is very varied. "We deal with loads of things. A few weeks ago a guy came in who was in his forties and he wanted to email his CV off for a job. He'd never used a computer so I took him upstairs, set up an email address for him and while I was doing that I realised that his literacy levels were very low. You're dealing with issues like that. So I let him know, in a roundabout way that I'm here any day of the week if he wants to pop in."

"While doing that then I introduced him to other opportunities like the men's group. There was a men's health morning here the other day and he participated in that. So that's raising his awareness as well. We also have people coming in for jobs advice and welfare information, there are kids coming in for after school clubs, there are computer classes here for anyone who wants to learn computer skills. There's a whole range of different things that the centre is used for, it's the hub of the community."

She says she is optimistic about the future. "Even when I was sick I always tried to be positive, think 'when is my operation?' and focus on that. I do get depressed some times and it does get very hard. Being a single mother is extremely hard, but then I suppose I go back to my books and I'm doing what I'm doing in college and I focus on the end of the three years, and I think about all the prospects then."

"I'd prefer to work in a disadvantaged community because I feel that's where you'd get more work done. I just feel people like myself who have lived there and understand would know exactly how to work with people and tackle the problems."