Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will take a few minutes today to express my observations from my engagement and consideration of the homelessness issue last Thursday night and Friday morning. On Camden Street, Harcourt Street, South Great George's Street, Smock Alley and Temple Bar, there were no bells from the church, no urban foxes and no first snowflakes, just the sound of music in the distance and rats skittering across the sodden blankets and beds of needles. On the journey I travelled, there were people laughing and enjoying themselves, making the most of their night out under Christmas lights strung high on the streets over strung-out people in some cases. On Grafton Street, the Gucci sign beamed out over the remnants of humanity, only "remnants" is the wrong word. That night, I discovered the richness of humanity with the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Burke, and his team. I found it both in the team which did this night after night on a voluntary basis and, signally, in the men and women wrapped in their blue sleeping bags and to whom food is brought, along with comfort and a degree of company. Above all, the message was that we recognise these people's personal dignity. With this team, these people have an ear and a voice; they are not alone.

I pay particular tribute to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Burke, and his team on behalf of everybody. People administer to these men and women, often very young, who have no home. It is an example to the city and the country in what are powerful works of mercy. I say "having no home" deliberately as the terms "homeless" and "homelessness" have become a kind of anaesthetic or political or social general absolution, as if the homeless and homelessness were sorts of conditions within our society. Of course, they are not.

In the early hours of Friday morning in the cold and rain I met alcoholics, drug addicts and returned emigrants. Some of them shook my hand and a young man thanked me for looking after his sleeping bag while he went to find and use facilities nearby. There were men and women with addiction, heroin addicts, people on methadone and so on. They were still able to find a kind word. They said: "I have to rob, I have to beg; I need this to keep me going. Do you understand me?" I do, to an extent. On Thursday night and Friday morning, I experienced a sobering reflection on what is happening to some people on some streets in this city. It is a replica of what happens in other places.

I have listened to some of the debate involving Members of the House and the causes of homelessness are myriad and complex. Both the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Paudie Coffey, will do all they can with new major co-operation across the Departments of Social Protection, Health, Children and Youth Affairs, Finance, Justice and Equality, Education and Skills, and the Environment, Community and Local Government. We are now spending more than €50 million in tackling homelessness, and we all have a responsibility to ensure the resources and work are co-ordinated in the best possible way. That is why part of the Government's 20-point plan, adopted on the recommendation of the Minister, Deputy Kelly, yesterday is to review the homeless sector, service delivery and co-ordination arrangements early next year.

Crucially, there is to be €2 billion in investment for social housing, and although results will not be achieved overnight - I accept there are processes to be followed through - there is a willingness by some who will use their expertise in property management and accommodation provision to help alleviate current bed and housing difficulties. The Minister and Minister of State will work with those people. I have listened to parents who are without a home and, to a woman and a man, they tell me that they need immediate shelter but it is not sufficient in the long term. Their children and the family need a home so they can have a life. The unprecedented capacity and potential of more than €2 billion in investment means we will now have the opportunity to provide for that.

I will say a word or two about how soul-destroying it is for people in emergency accommodation. They grieve not alone for what they had but, more crucially, for what they used to be when they had the privacy and dignity of a family life. I spoke a few weeks ago at a conference on mental health and suicide and I was heartened that the views expressed drew a serious and passionate response from practitioners in the area. Many men and women sleeping rough on our streets do so because of the disintegration of their interior life. That can be caused and medicated by an addiction to drugs, gambling, alcohol and so on. They sleep in the wet and cold because of the breakdown of their lives, caused by the break-up of a marriage or family. There are blue dots on the streets because of depression or more serious disturbances in mental well-being which can be so finely balanced and which so many can take for granted. These people huddle in doorways, under arches and in the open under the eye of closed circuit television. They are just out of prison or out of the State's care, too often with nowhere to go. Maybe they are just emotionally or psychologically fragile, with the glue to reality or normality removed by the death of a sibling or parent, for example, or a family row. Perhaps they are paralysed by disappointment as because of what they did or was done to them, life did not turn out as they dreamed or imagined it should be.

12 o’clock

The shift we see in many countries and across Europe has at its heart something far bigger and deeper than just politics itself. In the rush to abandon the architecture we have had and have taken for granted, sometimes people tend to run away from something but the question is, what are they running towards? In the years ahead, issues of identity, dignity and belonging will come very much more to fore as the ground shifts beneath us and as we write a new blueprint for public life and for a kinder and more equal and a better society. In all, it is clear that our shared humanity as people and our shared values of what constitutes a good life are what is important. That is a bond that has to be developed to a far greater extent between the Irish people and their Government. It is a restoring of the old form of the concept of dúthracht, the care and the active and responsible connection between people and all of those who attend around us.

When one meets these people in these circumstances and they look at one through yellowed eyes or have shivering hands, it is not the bond yields, the debt equity or the economic sovereignty in which they are interested but another opportunity for five more minutes of oblivion. As many people have pointed out, these are very complex and individual cases.

We need a strong and sensible economic policy, which I hope Ministers will implement, together with all the agencies. We also need a new human and social chemistry, in particular in that interface between public and private lives. Even when the Celtic tiger was deafening, men and women died on the streets of our country. In a way, the homeless crisis is a kind of autopsy of our national life and of our priorities.

Mr. Jonathan Corrie died on the Dáil's and the nation's doorstep just a few days ago. His death and the manner of it does not make Mr. Corrie or his story public property and in the outpouring of sadness for him and the way he lived and died, we have to be careful to protect his boundaries. He was clearly a man of intelligence, depth and insight. He was also a man of great dignity and I believe the best way we can honour his life is by acting, once and for all, on this issue of homelessness, right now in the emergency shelter, in the long-term housing plan, in addressing the causes of pain and alienation in our society.

I thank the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Christy Burke, and the men and women I met last Friday morning for the opportunity they gave me and the generosity they showed me. I was privileged to be able to walk with them as they attended to those less fortunate in our society. For my part, I have assured every one of them that the efforts of the Minister, Deputy Kelly, the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, and all of the agencies will deal with this effectively and in the most human and best way we can. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for this opportunity to speak.

See this speech in context