Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On Friday night I had the privilege of being invited by the Lions Club to its annual dinner for the homeless which, quite rightly in view of what people died for there, was held in the GPO. I was there with Alice Leahy of Trust. I want to repeat something I said here three and a half to four years ago. When I left the GPO at approximately 9.30 p.m. and walked through O'Connell Street, it was a threatening and filthy dump full of marauding individuals. I walked up Grafton Street, which I thought was bound to be a little better but which was worse. This was not as a result of the behaviour of what we would call the "down and outs", the homeless or people who suffer from drug addiction; rather, it was due to the actions of members of the marauding middle classes who, with bottles of vodka in their hands, were kicking everything that was not tied down. There was not one policeman in sight. There was no place to have a cup of coffee. One could not go into one's city and make it part of one's life. One could not sit down and enjoy the atmosphere. Of all the places I walked, I felt most threatened on Grafton Street. There was nowhere to go on O'Connell Street other than late-night burger joints. This is a very serious issue. I recall standing here three and a half years ago and saying we needed a metropolitan police service in Dublin because the place had become lawless. The city has been taken away from the people who live in the suburbs and would like to go into town to the movies, for coffee, for a meal or to walk up and down looking at the shop windows while enjoying the new pavements on which we have spent millions for the third or fourth time. What I witnessed was people engaging in a marauding and threatening violence. That is what is going on in the city at 9.30 p.m. on a Friday.

I concur with the point made by my colleague Senator Hayden. The BBC made a documentary in 2009 or 2010 which asked who owed what to whom, who was left bereft and who took the money and ran. I refer here to the Bank of Scotland, which was the worst offender in the Lloyds banking investigation and which left this country owing €9.2 billion. The word that emanated from the screen after all these questions had been asked was "greed". That is what did it - greed and commission. If one considers what is happening to a great many landlords, it is down to banking greed. I am talking about landlords who are incapable of paying for their homes or properties and who are obliged to give them back to the banks. The result is that ordinary families are being put out onto the street. I question that. The cause is greed. I note for the benefit of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin that we would be better off not slinging arrows and eating each other for what happened. Rather, we should be seeking to do something about it, and that is what the Government, of which the Labour Party is a member, is doing.