Policy challenges - We still have to make hard decisions

It may have taken six years to reach the point where our desire to have a decent, supportive, and caring society runs into the kind of life-defining, fundamental, brick-wall issues that can change a life or, in extreme cases, become a life-or-death issue, the kind of issues that define rather than just sustain a society.

Though there have been many skirmishes, and more than a few casualties over the last number of years, very few issues have cut to the bone like the growing housing crisis and the review of medical card entitlements.

The very idea of being homeless and cold on the side of the road surrounded by tired, frightened, and probably hungry children and not having a place to sleep in safety or comfort is so far removed from the experience of the great majority of Irish people that most of us may not have considered what being homeless actually means. Maybe the idea is so frightening, so disturbing that we turn away, quietly giving thanks that we are not in that awful, profoundly stressful position.