Government seem powerless to tackle acknowledged housing crisis

TWENTY thousand people marched through Dublin on Saturday. A small number of them were people in crisis housing situations, but the vast majority were people marching in solidarity. That’s six people marching for each homeless child in Ireland, writes Fergus Finlay. 

As we marched, I’m guessing the thing we were hoping for most was that someone was listening. The Taoiseach, maybe, or his Minister for Housing. They have accepted, again and again, that this is a crisis. But they seem powerless to do anything about it.

There’s a fodder crisis in Ireland at the moment. It’s a serious but probably a short-term thing. That didn’t stop the Minister for Agriculture from appearing on virtually every media outlet possible. It didn’t stop him from introducing new subsidies, updating the existing ones, meeting with every conceivable stakeholder.