The anti-poverty groups isn’t my area of work in the community & voluntary sector but you ask them the biggest problem they face and most of them will tell you, without prompting, that it’s the belief poverty in Ireland has been eliminated or solved.

I’ve no idea why you think I was suggesting otherwise. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but the basic point of my post was that people tend to dismiss the Stacys of this world as being victims of their own failings, rather than recognising it for the deep-rooted, structural problem that it is.

Of course they wouldn’t see it as “poverty”, because that implies a chronic condition outside the person’s control.

I’ve been reading a fair bit of Black American History recently, and one of the issues that comes up a lot is the chronic poverty of African- Americans compared to other ethnic groups who seem more able to ‘bootstrap’ themselves out of the ghetto. One of the reasons usually given is the relative weakness of the family unit in black society and the high number of single parent – nearly always the mother – families. The crux is deciding whether this is a) the cause of poverty or b) a consequence thereof. The right obviously prefer the first; black people are poor because of sexual indisciplne etc….

I think part of the reason that problems like this – and alcohol and drug abuse – so often enter the picture when discussing poverty is this; whereas in middle class society, marital break- up, alcoholism, and so on – may have adverse financial repercussions, they won’t be fatal; on the other hand, so many people live a week away from disaster in working class society, that separation, illness or addiction have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, really hopeless poverty often has a complicating factor that both explains the situation and works against its resolution.

What works against understanding is of course this; middle class viewer sees Stacey and thinks; well my sister/ cousin/ friend had a baby when she was young and she was able to cope, not thinking that ’she was able to cope’ only because of access to ’social capital’ (horrible phrase -reducing ties of affection and obligation to ‘capital’ -I digress) unavailable to the Staceys of this city; education, health insurance, and time….. ditto for middle class druggie able to afford John of Gods/ the Priory etc and with familynetwork intact to get him back into society when he ‘gets his act together’ compared with working class version, already cut adrift from family for their own protection, coming out of the ‘Joy with absolutely no future to look forward beyond the eternal same.

What needs to be shown is that poverty – low wages, bad housing, bad education, bad health care – is the problem, not the normal range of human problems that are greatly magnified by poverty .

I think that belief is widespread unfortunately.

According to a CSO press release “Measuring Ireland’s Progress, 2006”
“The proportion of Irish people at risk of poverty, after pensions and social transfer payments were taken into account, was 20% in 2005. This was one of the highest rates in the EU 27. The effect of pensions and social transfers on reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate was low in Ireland compared with other EU 27 countries.”

This is despite the fact that Ireland also has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU 27. I don’t need to bandy facts around here, but my concern was that the drama made the characters seem too much on the periphery and ignored the scale of the problem or how endemic it is.

Also the main characters were the victims of bad relationships, an abusive partner in the first episode and a disinterested absent father in the second. This seems to be standard fare for the representations of the working class or those who suffer from poverty. Again, I believe its good that the depictions were realistic and the dialogue authentic. I just worry that it’s too easy for it to be dismissed. Judging by the plaudits its got so far, I’m probably wrong.

It’s rare that a post on Cedar Lounge actually physically causes my jaw to drop but that’s one. The anti-poverty groups isn’t my area of work in the community & voluntary sector but you ask them the biggest problem they face and most of them will tell you, without prompting, that it’s the belief poverty in Ireland has been eliminated or solved. I’ve spoken to broadsheet journalists who’ve told me there is no poverty in Ireland. Not ‘real’ poverty. Not ’serious’ poverty.

I fully accept that most of our readers here know this for the nonsense that it is, but equally I am positive that there were tens of thousands of people watching Prosperity on the successive Monday nights for whom the issue of poverty was something they thought had been dealt with. Look at the recent election campaign. Where did poverty and anti-poverty measures come into the debate?

To me, the aim of the programme was to let people know that these kinds of people, problems and circumstances still exist despite our ‘prosperity’. Accomplishing that in itself would be a major feat considering the media blackout of poverty issues. A good example of this is the statement from CPA last week that there are 300,000 people living in poverty in Ireland. Judging by the media reaction in next days papers it either wasn’t a story worth commenting on; the numbers were wrong; or simple shock.

“There was an opportunity here to show struggle. To show how some people don’t automatically accept the situation they’ve been born into.”

Yes, there was. And maybe in the two remaining shows we’ll see some of that. But there was also an opportunity to show that things really are that grim. That these people have been completely abandoned and frankly, that they need help and assistance to challenge the powers that be. In hour long episodes I think it was a bit much to try and show the individual stories and then a substantial, believable, secondary character who is involved in ’struggle’.

I’m not saying the show was perfect. I’m simply saying that I thought it was more realistic in its depictions, didn’t shy away from portraying just how bad the situation is, did a good job in the time available to it and was well acted and produced.

I’m a little more concerned about them politically. I presume (and maybe I shouldn’t) their creator had some purpose in mind, other than simply reminding us that people like this exist in modern Ireland. Which, of course, we all know. If the idea was to spur viewers (and by implication the Government) into doing something about it, though, I’m not sure it’s gone about the right way. The show is so bleak that at the end I can see viewers just feeling that there’s no hope for these people, and switching off.

I think Donagh’s response is instructive, too, and probably widely shared by a lot of viewers. The Stacy character in particular would be fairly easy to dismiss as bearing some responsibility for her own predicament: why did she get pregnant at 17? Why does she hang around the mall all day instead of finding something useful that she can do – albeit with baby in tow – with her time? Why doesn’t she dump that scumbag?). Of course in real life these questions all have complicated answers; but the programme doesn’t explore them, and consequently people who can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a teenage girl from a council estate can just think to themselves that she could do all of these things if she really wanted to, and that lets the Government off the hook completely. That’s not to deny Donagh’s argument, btw, but people have a tendency to want to see difficult issues in black and white and I worry that the lack of proper context of these issues in this programme just encourages that.

Writing Stacy a personality might have helped, too.