The Married Couple

Paul Thorne and his pregnant wife Helen are considering emigrating in the coming months if the job market does not improve.

Standing outside the busy social welfare office on North Cumberland Street in Dublin's north inner city, they had just been to collect Paul's unemployment benefit. It is a monthly trip that Paul has been making from the family's small cottage up the road in Ballybough since September, when he lost his job in sales and publishing.

Now the couple survive on Helen's income from her job in Crumlin children's hospital, and the money they receive from the state. They struggle to make ends meet. Paul has had a couple of interviews for jobs in recent months, but is looking on the positive side by making the most of the extra time he has with his three-year-old son. Previously, Paul and Helen had been paying around €10,000 a year on crèche fees alone, money which they can now save.

"It's nice being at home," he says. "But I'm stuck in the position now where for me to realistically take a job, and particularly with a second kid on the way, I will need to be earning quite a large salary. We do want to move to a bigger house, but that is a long way away at the moment."

"We have discussed the option of emigrating – it is definitely on the cards," Helen adds. "I'm 36 and I don't want to stop having my family because of the downturn; my biological clock is ticking."

The man in
his 50s

James Walsh is 56 and finds the boredom of being unemployed the hardest thing to deal with.

A kitchen porter for 11 years in a Dublin city centre club, he does not find the change in his financial circumstances particularly difficult, because the wages he earned were not far off what he now receives in combined unemployment support and other allowances such as rent allowance.

But it is the social side, the opportunity to meet people, which the former soldier says he misses most.

"It's very boring. Every day there is nothing to do," he says. "I call around to a couple of friends in Phibsborough now and again, but apart from that, there's not a lot to do, is there really?"

The Young woman

Former childcare worker Celine O'Neill gets €204 a week in state support.

The 27-year-old pays €70 of this in rent (she lives in the family home in Marino) and has outstanding loans which require her to pay back a further €40 a week.

She finds money extremely tight every week. "I hate it, getting up and having nothing to do. It's soul-destroying. You have no money, and it affects your self-esteem, as you hate claiming the dole," she says.

She is hoping to get a full-time job with a view to saving up the €2,000 she needs to do a beauty-therapy qualification.

"I've been putting CVs around a lot," she says. "But I haven't heard anything back."