Lack of social housing shows that Ireland is run by an ‘aristocracy’

Homelessness is increasing at a frightening rate in every town and city. We are all aware of instances where extended families are living in one house. This is gross overcrowding.

People are sleeping in kitchens and bathrooms and outhouses, as they cannot get social housing.

People are living in mobile homes in which condensation runs down the walls or drips from ceilings onto the beds where couples sleep with three to four children.

At the same time, we talk about equality and health care. The conditions I have described are the consequences of the housing shortages.

Tenants in the private rented sector are labouring under spiralling rents, lack of regulations and fear of eviction.

If you are working full-time and earning over €300 a week, you are deemed ineligible for rent supplement. I have many such cases calling to me on a daily basis.

The needs of those on local authority housing will never be catered for and the waiting lists grow and grow.

About 90,000 people are on a housing list countrywide. Young couples see their dreams of owning a home vanish as prices rocket out of control. If a young couple is lucky enough to get a site on the family holding to build a house, the local authority, if planning permission is granted, will cripple them, financially, in levying, before the building commences, with exorbitant development charges, approved by the elected members. This issue I have fought, and will continue so, until justice prevails for the working-class people of this country.

I am totally opposed to high-rise flat development.

In my employment as a social worker in London and Dublin, I witnessed the suffering and misery of many young families who lived in this type of accommodation. There was no play area for the children except the corridor on each floor.

The lifts were more times out of order than working, resulting in tenants having to mount five to seven flights of stairs with prams, children, and groceries.

I appeal to all community leaders to highlight the injustices of the housing system. Ireland can no longer claim to be a republic — it is an aristocracy with a shabby veneer of democracy.

I appeal also to our new Minister for Local Government, Alan Kelly, T.D., to set in motion an immediate social-house building programme — thus helping to eliminate the pain and suffering of many families waiting from five to eight years for a roof over their heads.

Cllr. Noel Collins,

“St. Jude’s”,

Midleton,

Co. Cork