Greg DalyToo many people in Ireland are homeless or at risk of homelessness for politicians to be engaged in political point-scoring on the issue, homeless charities have said.
Responding to Environment Minister Alan Kelly’s criticisms of local authorities, who he said needed “to step up to the mark” in order to help tackle Ireland’s homelessness crisis, Francis Doherty, Communications and Advocacy Manager at the Peter McVerry Trust, told The Irish Catholic that part of the problem seems to lie in how local authorities in Dublin are controlled by non-government parties.
“Politics is playing a role where there’s no space for politics,” he said, explaining that just looking from outside “we’d like to see an end to any political point scoring and closer cooperation between local authorities and the Department of the Environment, and between the different Government departments”.
So far, Mr Doherty says, “we don’t see that cooperation happening – we need someone to show a bit of leadership”.
Cooperation will require transparency and trust, Mike Allen, Director of Advocacy at Focus Ireland, told The Irish Catholic.
Explaining that exact figures are in short supply on the number of properties that have been and will be made available to help people who have fallen into homelessness, he said that without clearly established figures any discussion on this issue too easily “turns into a row”.
“We need to get the figures clear,” he said, not for the purposes of political point scoring but “so we can be honest about what we’re facing, and that’s extremely important and requires trust.”
“If we’re to work together it has to be in the context of not taking a dig at the other side when it suits or being seen to do so,” he urged. “We need to make sure that we work in a way that’s genuinely collaborative.”