The pressures of growing financial woes and rising unemployment has led to a 40-percent rise in Irish Catholic couples seeking counselling, the church's marriage care service said Saturday."The recession is quickly and deeply affecting marriage and family," said John Farrelly, director of counselling with the ACCORD service.
"One only has to consider how in the first quarter of 2007, only four percent of males attending our service were unemployed but this has nearly tripled to 11.5 percent for the first quarter of 2009."
In a grim report last week, Ireland's top economic think-tank, the Economic and Social Research Institute, said the economy had not been in worse shape since the 1930s Great Depression.
It forecast Ireland's gross domestic product (GDP) would contract by 11.6 percent in 2008-2010 -- worse than any other developed country.
ACCORD said that in 1997, 20 percent of couples identified finances as a problem for their marriage, but that last year that had risen to 25 percent. For the first quarter of 2009, it increased to 28 percent.
"Crucially, the context of financial stress has changed," Farrelly said. "Previously couples worried and argued about keeping up with the demands of the so-called Celtic Tiger economy.
"Issues such as who was in charge of finances in a two-income family were to the fore. However in 2008, and particularly in the first quarter of 2009, among the challenges now facing couples is how the family's childcare and mortgage costs are to be met.
"Increasing stress brought about by reduced income through wage cuts, higher taxation and the possibility of unemployment are also a cause for concern as this raises the spectre of the repossession of the family home."
This year, the government provided an extra eight million euros (10.6 million dollars) to 29 marriage and relationship counselling services to help stressed-out families deal with money woes.
Known as the Celtic Tiger for its booming economy from the 1990s, Ireland entered recession last year and has been battered by the international financial crisis.
Last Wednesday official figures showed its unemployment rate surged to 11.4 percent in April, the highest level since August 1996.
The ACCORD findings are based on data from 15,000 clients using the service since 2007.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Source (AFP)
SV (Ed)