Homeless are simply not a priority here

In the summer they swim in the lake in the centre of Geneva. Even at this time of year, the water is crystal clear, reflecting the brick and stone of towering centuries-old buildings along its shores, writes Michael Clifford.

Today, many of the buildings house banks, which churn the money of the global rich, rinsing tax from their booty.

I sat by the lake last week eating a bit of a baguette. Well, technically I wasn’t eating it, I left that to my family. It cost my wife €8 and was nothing special at all. There was no way we were forking out for another one. So I went hungry, and sought relief in the lake-centred beauty of the city.

We were visiting friends who work in the city but live a few minutes away across the border in France. You can get a better deal on a baguette over there.

The border between Switzerland, which is not in the EU, and France makes you wonder about the hard border fears in Ireland post-Brexit.

On our arrival around noon there were no checks at the border post just outside Geneva.

Apparently, it was lunchtime for the immigration and custom officers. The guys take a break. The border takes a break.

Only spotchecks are carried out. There can be a tailback at rush hour, but nothing unknown to motorists in Irish cities. There is also a back road where there is a post under a canopy at the border, but it is rarely manned. If Brexit turns out a solution requiring border controls, it doesn’t have to be a disaster.

The city of Geneva is spotless. You could eat your dinner off the street, if you weren’t diving for it in the lake. Geneva runs smoothly. The traffic flows, rules are obeyed, the people look straight ahead, focused on getting where they’re going.

You can see why the Swiss have a reputation for efficiency. But for anybody possessing the slightest hint of an anarchic streak, Geneva could easily turn out to be a bore.

The city is also the HQ of the world’s leading NGOs, including the UN Human Rights Commission. That’s where my friend John works. Up to half a dozen times a year he spends extended periods out in the field, building shelters for refugees in places like Bangladesh and Uganda.

During these trips he travels from a glowing centre of wealth to teeming camps of the homeless and stateless. People who have fled war and violence live, for the most part, huddled under plastic sheets.

Their most immediate concerns are staying alive and free of disease. Water is regarded in these camps with the precious care given to gold in the vaults of the merchant banks of Geneva. All who exist there cling to a sliver of hope for a real life — if not for them themselves, at least for their children.

The visit and John’s descriptions of how the world’s weakest exist had me thinking about how lucky we are in this country. Ireland is among the wealthiest nations in the world. In a Business Week survey last year this country came in seventh wealthiest in terms of GDP. Switzerland was at Number 11.

Notwithstanding the anomalies in our GDP figures due to the presence of foreign companies here, that still puts Ireland in the neighbourhood of the world’s richest countries.

Yet there persists some matters which would lead you to believe that there wasn’t enough to go around.

Two weeks ago I was idling in traffic at the busy junction at the Metro Hotel in Ballymun, north Dublin. It was just after 8pm. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a fire was breaking out 13 floors up from street level. It devastated two floors of the building and destroyed the homes of around 60 people. Some among them lost all their possessions.

These people were offered emergency accommodation by the hotel owners for two weeks, but when that period was up, many of them were faced with the prospect of living on the streets.

The fire at the Metro Hotel

Last Wednesday, at the last minute, the Homeless Executive managed to secure a week’s stay for them in other hotels. After that, their future is uncertain.

The response to their plight has been typically Irish. Local people in Ballymun have been hugely supportive, donating clothes and food. The local convenience store put on a barbecue over Easter for the displaced residents.

It is notable that many of the residents are not native to this country, but the generous reaction from local people is completely blind to that fact.

At official level, there has been a shrugging of shoulders. What can we do? the state asks. The number of people classified as homeless in February was 9,807.

Among these were 3,755 children.

You’re traumatised by a fire, your life’s possessions swiped from you, all plans binned? Sorry, get in line. That appears to be the state’s reaction.

The only departure from that position occurs when some tragedy or outrage is writ large across the media and prompts displays of high emotion on the floor of the Dáil.

Then the game changes. The imperative is to keep scandal at bay.

Otherwise, the dispossessed are forced to suffer on in quiet desperation.

The February homeless figures were released while I was on the break. John is tuned into life back home through the radio. He can’t understand how there could be so many people without a home in a country like Ireland.

He knows a bit about housing people. In his work out in the field, the imperative is the preservation of human life through supplying the basic requirements of shelter. In Geneva, there is some poverty, but if homelessness became a problem, it would be tackled with a high degree of efficiency, just as everything else is.

To my friend, it’s not as complicated as it’s made out to be. “Surely you calculate how much is required to get people homes and you adjust taxes accordingly,” he said.

I tried to explain that we no longer do things like that in the old country. If adjusting means raising taxes, forget about it. That would run contrary to the received political philosophy. Prioritising homelessness would require the government to relegate other concerns.

And they would not do that on the basis that the electorate would not appreciate a heightened effort to put people in homes if it meant that some of the electorate’s own personal issues went unanswered.

“You see, John,” I said. “You have it all wrong. Back home the main thing is not that over 3,000 children are growing up without the basic security that children crave and need.

"The main thing is there might be an election around the corner and that’s all that appears to matter.”