The threat of going to the workhouse was a most terrifying prospect for families earlier this century. The workhouses were the dumping grounds for the poor and the marginalised. Today we are living in more enlightened times - or are we? For thousands of families, the limbo of B&B living has become the 21st century equivalent of the workhouse. For no greater crime than being homeless, families with up to six children are subsisting in one bedroom in B&Bs.
Like refugees in their own country, Irish mothers with young children are forced to leave B&Bs at 10 a.m. and wander the streets all day, looking for warmth where they can find it, because many B&Bs will not allow families to remain in the building during daylight hours. They have no place to cook, to heat bottles, to play or do homework. They survive on takeaways. And families live this way not just for a night or two, but for 119 nights on average and sometimes for as long as 18 months before they are housed. And these B&B families are fortunate compared to those living in hostels. Christine reared her four children in a hostel for three years. She had to pick up needles from the yard so that her children would not play with them. Her children witnessed drug-taking and anti-social behaviour by disturbed residents.
Because two-parent families are not allowed to remain together in single-sex hostels, Christine's husband was not allowed even to enter the door of the hostel where his wife and children were living. Christine used to feed him by leaving him plates of hot food on the window sill. Christine will never forget seeing her children receive their Christmas presents from their father on the cold footpath outside their hostel door on Christmas Day - with no Christmas tree and no festive meal. Christine and her husband were forced to live in hostels for three years. This Christmas, once again, families will be living in hostels. In addition, 300 families will be living in B&Bs, Focus Ireland estimates. By the time New Year's Eve 1999 comes around, the year will have seen 979 children living this way.
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy of Focus Ireland, known as "Sister Stan", says: "Can you imagine what it is like to be born into this life and to grow up in it? The one thing all of us remember as small children is going home and being safe. These children don't have that.
"The situation is all the more shocking in 1999 because we have the knowledge of psychology and the money to do something to help these families, and yet we are still expecting them to survive in conditions which anyone else would find horrific. I remember thinking in the 1970s that the Poor Law and the workhouses were appalling. Little did I think that I would find this happening in the 1990s," Sister Stan continues. "In my opinion, it is a crime against humanity," believes one secondary school principal who has had several students living in B&Bs, but who cannot be named, to protect the confidentiality of her pupils. She knows, for example, of a mother and five children - ranging in age from four to 15 - who are currently living in one room with no cooking facilities. Such children often come to school hungry, so the principal tries to discreetly feed them at school during the day. Even worse is the lost potential. The brightest pupil cannot be expected to succeed academically when he or she doesn't even have a quiet place to do homework. "These children are allowed to have no future," says the principal. Any child reared in these circumstances is going to be severely disadvantaged. As Sister Stan says: "These are beautiful children but they come from an environment that is not conducive to healthy development."
She stresses that these homeless families are the victims of social disintegration caused by lack of foresight and planning by successive governments who were warned of an impending housing crisis but did nothing about it. Focus has recently provided 13 family homes as part of a £3.6 million scheme in Finglas, Dublin and has built an additional 57 homes for 100 people at a cost of £2.4 million. But with 2,225 households living in B&Bs and hostels in 1999 - double the number in 1998 - the new Focus facilities are a drop in the ocean. Such housing needs to involve long-term community support, because as well as housing, families need counselling, support and creche facilities if they are to rebuild their lives following the complex and psychologically devastating experience of homelessness.
Speaking of all marginalised families, Owen Keenan of Barnardo's says the Government's philosophy, as evidenced by the Budget, "is very much about leaving people to their own devices. Those who can succeed, we will reward, but we are not going to be compassionate or understanding of those who do need support. The State is not addressing the extent of poverty and the stresses on the family as a result of poverty."
At least 25 per cent of children are living in consistent poverty, according to the Combat Poverty Agency, which is not just about inadequate housing and income. "It is also about the absence of choice, a lack of opportunities, especially for children who are faced with obstacles to realising their full potential," says Keenan. "Being poor does not mean you are going to be a bad parent, but living in poverty makes parenting more difficult," he believes.
"When we talk about children and family policies, we need to be thinking about addressing the problems of a generation of families, not just the economy over the next three to five years," says Keenan. The families who have been damaged by chronic poverty over generations are not going to pick themselves up overnight and get jobs merely because the Republic is experiencing an economic boom.
"These are people with low self-esteem and low skills, people who did not have a good experience of being parented, and whose parents did not have a good experience of being parented. We need to recognise these realities rather than coming up with simplistic views that reinforce prejudices against a substantial segment of our society."
Despite all its bragging about the family being the fundamental unit of society, Irish society has abandoned families who cannot play the economic game and succeed. "There are major questions to be asked about the extent of our compassion, caring and vision for the future. Is it a case where we support the `haves' and don't care about the `have-nots', because we think it's all their fault?" asks Keenan. This is the question which anyone interested in nurturing the Irish family of the future will have to answer.
