In recent weeks Stormont announced a summer holiday food grant of £13.50 for families with children entitled to free school meals.
Holiday hunger is not a new phenomenon, and it isn’t restricted to families entitled to free school meals, and only further demonstrates Stormont’s inability to provide people with basic necessities to live. Many parents, like many other people, are having to rely on state handouts and food banks.
As a result of soaring costs, many people are feeling financially squeezed in what is being termed a cost of living crisis. Over the last number of years there has been a three-fold increase in foodbank usage.
No charity can replace the dignity of having enough money to feed yourself and your family and we need to fight for a world where handouts, food banks or charity are no longer needed.
The fact that working families are unable to afford food for their children in the absence of school meals is shameful, and a stain on the respective governments of each failed state in Ireland.
With 1 in 4 children living in poverty in the Six Counties, ‘holiday hunger’ can be added to the long list of things that people have to worry about in order to survive.
Food, fuel,energy, housing, wages and rising waiting lists are all symptoms of crisis capitalism that our class is paying for while the rich, the politicians and the big bosses live in comfort. It doesn’t need to be this way. The cost of living crisis is just a buzzword to hide the real issue; capitalism.
Lasair Dhearg is building a movement to expose the ‘cost of living crisis’ for what it really is, to rebuild confidence in our communities and provide viable alternatives to the failed systems and economics of both failed states in Ireland.
Cost of living? It’s the cost of surviving!
