Homelessness - Poverty put on the back-burner

HARD questions posed

Many share his failure to understand why the Government is pouring money into things like the spike in Dublin’s O’Connell Street when more than 5,000 people are homeless around the country.

They also share his sense of amazement at so much public money being spent on such projects when there is a desperate need for investment in housing, health and education. Conor Hickey’s sense of outrage is fully justified when on any given night 300 down-and-outs are sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin. In Cork, 13 homeless people died last year.

This appalling scenario illustrates the compelling case for putting the State’s homeless strategy on a statutory footing. Under a blueprint outlined by the Simon Community, health boards should become responsible for underwriting the cost of caring for the homeless and local authorities for housing them.

The bottom line is that unless the Government is prepared to take on the task of caring for homeless people on a more realistic basis, the State will continue paying lip service in this regard.

It is time to end the hypocrisy of a Government which shamelessly squandered the Celtic Tiger’s largesse while passing responsibility for caring for the homeless onto voluntary organisations forced to rely largely on the generosity of the public as they combat this crisis.