Celtic Tiger by-passed the homeless
Wages raced skywards as companies fought to retain staff. The boom magnetised the country, attracting the workers who years before had fled the endless dole queues, EU intervention beef and butter vouchers.
Our economic vital statistics were certainly the pin-up figures of every finance minister in the world, but in our rush to fumble in the greasy till we trampled on the most vulnerable members of our society. Compare Ireland in 1995 to Ireland in 2002.
In 1995 the total amount earned in the economy per head of population was just under 13,000. By 2002, this had more than doubled to 26,600.
Unemployment in 1995 was a staggering 12% of the workforce, which meant 177,000 people were struggling to make ends meet on meagre social welfare payments. By 2002, this figure had been slashed to just 4.5% of the workforce or 84,000 people.
New jobs, better jobs, better lifestyles saw a greater demand for places to live to show off this new-found wealth. It drove house prices beyond the reach of ordinary workers. Local authority housing, previously used by many as a way to save for a mortgage, was now clogged with people who would never be able to even dream of getting their own home. Rents too began to snowball. Evictions soared. Hostels straining under a tidal wave of unprecedented demands started to turn people away. The homeless population exploded.
So while the country never had it so good, the number of people forced to sleep rough on our streets doubled.
Focus Ireland now believes their are 6,000 homeless people in Dublin alone. This figure does not include the people forced to live with relatives or friends because they have nowhere else to go.
According to Alice Leahy, director and co-founder of Trust, a homeless organisation dedicated to trying to restore human dignity to the homeless, homelessness is not just being houseless, it is about not feeling wanted or belonging: “Society has an awful opinion of
homeless people as drunks or down-and-outs, whereas they are only human beings like the rest of us who just couldn’t keep up in the rat race.”
Ms Leahy, who has been working with the homeless since 1975, said the word homelessness sounds self-explanatory, but in relation to people who either sleep rough or use hostels and night shelters, homelessness is merely a symptom of a more deep-seated set of problems. “If these problems have any common factor it has to do with a failure to become, or to remain, a part of the wider community. It is not surprising that many have been in prison or mental hospitals or both. In an intolerant society, imprisonment or admission to a mental hospital is the usual response. In the view of most people, these ‘unfortunates’ are failures; failures who are largely to blame for their own misfortunes; failures whose very existence is an embarrassment and shame.”
She said the human beings she meets on a daily basis are:
ravaged by disease and violence;
suffering from pressure sores from sleeping out in all weathers, sometimes sleeping in urine-soaked clothes for weeks;
suffering from infected and untreated minor skin conditions and major skin problems like leg ulcers;
infected with head lice;
infected with scabies;
suffering from malnutrition;
unable to read or write;
taken over by addiction to drugs, alcohol and gambling;
pushed from service to service.
