Invest a little in deprived children and save a fortune on super-prison

HOMELESSNESS. Poverty. Hunger. Cold. Fear. Isolation. Illness – both physical and mental.

These are features of modern Ireland, whether we like it or not. They are symptoms – the most telling symptoms – of our failure to take advantage of a 15 years of rapid economic growth. We built roads around the communities where poverty is most embedded and that enabled us to turn an unseeing eye to the inter-generational poverty inside. Instead of dealing with poverty, we created drive-by poverty.

And now we’re seeing the re-emergence of the cancerous growth of extortionate money-lending. Families are borrowing from shadowy figures, at totally unsustainable interest rates, to feed their children and keep them warm. Some of these are families that a year or so ago hadn’t a care in the world, but have been devastated by sudden unemployment and mounting debt – usually mortgage and credit card debt.