Confronting poverty - Justice, not geography, is the issue

THOUGH poverty affects lives in every town and city, the awful impact it has on people’s lives is seen at its starkest, and sometimes its most brutal, in Limerick.

The city’s crime rates are not by any means exceptional, as yesterday morning’s triple shooting in Dublin’s western suburb of Blanchardstown shows, but the city’s great, almost unbridgeable divisions are a huge challenge to the idea of a caring and equitable society.

The city is one of the most polarised in the Republic. Your address, and the fate that made it your address, have a disproportionate influence on your life, your education, your prospects and your fundamental happiness and security. It is one of the places where our society’s failings are at their starkest and most uncompromising.