Politicians remain “far removed” from the realities of homelessness, according to the homeless campaigner Alice Leahy.
She says there is “a complete disconnect” between homeless people she deals with on a regular basis and those who are “making decisions”.
Leahy is the director of services of the Alice Leahy Trust, which provides services to homeless people out of its location in the basement of the Iveagh Trust hostel in Dublin city centre. The charity celebrates its 50th anniversary on Tuesday.
The organisation caters for about 15 to 20 people every morning, mostly male, with washing facilities and fresh clothes, along with hot drinks and some food.
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From its foundation in 1975, the trust’s work has focused on “the individual and on their personal right to the kind of dignity afforded to the rest of society”.
Leahy (83), originally from Co Tipperary, started out as a nurse and midwife before going on to work with the Simon Community and later, with others, founding the trust. Financial help came from a benefactor, Ann Rush. The trust has six staff members and opens for about four hours Monday to Friday.
[ Homelessness figures reach another record high as total passes 16,500Opens in new window ]
Earlier this month, the Government announced its long-awaited new housing strategy, with a promise to tackle long-term homelessness.
Leahy says there are “good politicians” across the political spectrum, some of whom have “great views” but would prefer to see them unite to compose a plan that focuses on preventing homelessness.
“Why can they not sit around the table and just say, for the sake of our country, instead of squabbling like children in the Dáil and one-upmanship, that they try and come together to tackle homelessness,” she says.
“But they need to look beyond housing and money. Mental health is a serious issue, looking at why people are falling into homelessness and prevention. I think that can only be addressed if you look at the quality of services that are out there in the community. Drug addiction has also been huge and that hasn’t been looked at adequately either.
“Homelessness isn’t really about housing. The journalist Maeve Brennan wrote that ‘home is a place in the mind’. There will always be people who don’t fit in, and I think we’re in great danger of forgetting those people, because now it’s all about more money, more housing, and thinking that will solve the problem.”
The Peter McVerry Trust housing charity recently published its overdue financial accounts for 2023, showing a write-down of €23 million in the value of its property portfolio.
Serious governance and financial reporting issues were blamed, with the McVerry trust’s chairman, Tony O’Brien, saying incompetence was at the heart of the failures.
The annual report also showed a deficit of more than €11 million in 2023, the same year the Government approved a €15 million bailout for the charity.
“I think the State has offloaded its responsibility hugely to organisations and organisations that have been happy to do the job,” says Leahy.
“The State has nicely offloaded its responsibility to agencies to provide housing, to provide medical care, everything.”
Leahy insists that the trust will be “staying small” and says it is an example of the kind of service the State should be offering.
“We always felt we would be out of business in a year, that we would have solved homelessness,” she says. “Agencies get bigger because ... they start getting funding and have to employ more staff. We don’t get any money from the State, we don’t ask for any money or send out begging letters. People have been so good to us because they see what we do here.
“There is also so much regulation now and so much red tape that people are afraid to even do something at all levels.”
Leahy says there should be more social housing and that rising immigration numbers have also affected the record number of homeless people countrywide, which topped 16,500 last month.
“Everything is now about ticking a box,” she says. “If you’re the person at the end of the phone giving advice, you say, ‘go here to get your medical card’ or ‘there for emergency accommodation’. You tick the box and that’s the problem dealt with and then you have the person who has the problems and they’re left with, ‘well, how do I deal with the next thing’?
“We think ticking a box is the solution. We need common sense and we need compassion.”
The trust has published a book entitled Outsiders, which gives a detailed account of its 50-year history. It includes a poem by Ann Delaney, a homeless woman who was found unresponsive beside Tesco on Aungier Street in Dublin in February 2024. She subsequently died at St James’s Hospital.
In her writing, Delaney thanks Leahy and other staff members for “opening your doors without any judgment or begrudgment”.
Leahy references another occasion when a homeless man thanked one of their staff members for “making them feel human ... I couldn’t get it out of my head,” she says.
“To feel you’re not human and we see it every day. Coming up to Christmas, you see those photographs of someone with a cup in their hand. The reality is that it is a human being, and it could be any one of us, because you never know what happens.”
