‘Wet house’ residents a threat to students

THE Gateway Project proposes to demolish a derelict building at No 34 Leitrim Street in Cork and to construct a new hostel on the site.

Its purpose is to accommodate street drinkers who opt to sleep rough rather than conform to the ‘dry house’ rules at the Andersons Quay shelter. Residents will be allowed to bring alcoholic drink into the new premises and consume it therein. If it passes the planning stage, the Leitrim Street hostel will be the first ‘wet house’ in Cork.

The most intractable cases of alcoholism will be encouraged to live in the new hostel: people who have been reduced to poverty and homelessness by an all-controlling addiction to drink, and who have failed to respond to any previous interventions.