COMMENT: Homelessness must not fall off the radar

WITH all the recent focus on crime in Dublin, it would be a shame if the plight of our homeless people fell off the radar in the run up to Friday’s general election.

Like crime, homelessness has always been with us. Both of these societal problems are often put down to a lack of resources, although the reality is that there is a myriad of complex reasons behind them. 

Since the last election, the causes of homelessness have changed. Granted, the old reliables are still there – drug addiction, alcohol abuse, dysfunctional relationships. But from the embers of what was once the Celtic Tiger, a new class of homeless community has emerged. Many are victims of the boom and bust politics that came to define everything that was vulgar about modern Ireland; where bankers lent with reckless abandon and then viciously turned on borrowers when the going got tough.

In fairness, many had overstretched themselves, buying multiple properties and unfinished holiday homes abroad. Some lost their shirts on their investments; others lost the roofs over their heads.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of people living in their cars and young families crammed into single hotel rooms with no cooking facilities, away from their communities and children’s schools. Measures to tackle the flaws in the rental sector have been too little, too late. Rents in Dublin are beyond the reach of many.

Last week, this newspaper exclusively revealed how one Dublin couple have been living in a makeshift tent near the Phoenix Park in conditions that would make Strumpet City look like Downton Abbey. In a damning indictment of our failed housing policies, they have languished there for over a year. After losing their rented accommodation, they initially ended up in hostels where they felt threatened by drug addicts. A tent by the side of a busy road proved to be the lesser of two evils.

Many election candidates will admit that not everyone is feeling the benefit of the economic upturn. Damn right they’re not.

Is there anything more shameful than people living in tents in 2016? Ask your candidates this question in the dying days of this election campaign.

As we approach the centenary of the Easter Rising, we should use the opportunity to take stock of how far we have come as a society in the intervening 100 years. If our progress is to be assessed on how we treat the most marginalised, then clearly we have a long way to go before we have an Irish Republic as envisaged by the 1916 leaders.