Room For The Night? Help the Homeless, Help The Country.

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement in Sligo would like to state our concern in light of the current housing situation in the region.

Sligo and indeed the north west in general suffers from a deficit of social housing. Waiting lists are long and the accommodation that is eventually provided is frequently sub standard or unsuitable to the needs of the family or individual that requires it. This is unacceptable in our opinion. Waiting lists should not extend into months let alone years, yet we are expected to accept this state of affairs as the natural state of affairs. We contend that no Person should have to wait for years for assistance when the banks did not have to wait even for days with their begging bowl at the door of Brian Lenihan and his cohorts in the Department of Finance.

The frequent refrain from local authorities is that there simply isn’t the money to fix the problem. Given the innumerable junkets taken by these same people for years at our expense we say that not only do we believe that there is sufficient money but that perhaps the councillors and TDs themselves could take a pay cut to facilitate the relief of their constituents! I wonder how many county councillors are currently on the waiting list for social housing? Homelessness is a blight on the collective conscience of this country’s government. For years they have wasted and wanted for nothing. Now they tell us the money is gone. But not apparently all of it. No, it would seem there are still countless billions to be thrown into the gaping financial hole that is NAMA. Not only does this project defy all known economic logic but it also takes priority over the needs of ordinary Irish people. Despite being bailed out to the tune of 22 Billion euros the Banks still want more. Is it too much then to raise our collective voices and demand that we too want more, that we want more money for our communities, towns and villages?

The 32CSM does not think so. We regard the problem of homelessness to be a problem that is eminently solvable through a combination of social housing and proactive initiatives at a local level. Whilst there is an undersupply of social housing we simultaneously have “ghost estates” covering the North West. Is it too much to ask of the thinking ability of our representatives to put two and two together and to use these empty houses for the logical use? In reality there doesn’t need to be any person in this country waiting for a house when we have 300,000 empty ones, the majority of which are now owned by the people through NAMA anyways.

Many of these estates now lie half completed, likewise the construction industry is in free fall. Why not put some of the thousands of unemployed tradesmen to work establishing facilities and amenities and completing these estates. Social programmes in times of economic crisis are not a radical idea, the reforms introduced by the Roosevelt administration in the great depression helped to alleviate much of the suffering of the people. Why are we content to sit back and watch as perfectly good houses are knocked down whilst people sleep on our streets.

We call on the government, for once in its term to use some common sense. It is not an irrational proposal to address the needs of society’s vulnerable. The issue cannot become a rallying cry when the time for action has passed. It will not be enough in years to come, to reflect on opportunities missed and communities betrayed. The legacy of a era is more often visible in the people left behind by it than those that scaled the heights of the social ladder, trampling others in their wake.

For once think of the people, rather than the paycheque. If it is too much to ask that the people in power to help us then perhaps it is time to reconsider the people we put into power!

Invest in the people, not the powerful