A chara, - As I write, I am awaiting the sheriff and his bailiffs to eject myself and my two children from our privately rented home, with nowhere to go. I am a deserted wife and because of my current financial situation, alternative private rented accommodation is out of the question.
My plight has already been highlighted by your excellent newspaper in the series Irish Lives by Kitty Holland on December 5th last. I am now writing on behalf of myself and my children and all others in this prosperous country who are facing homelessness, or who have insecure tenure and are on local authority housing lists. These lists are growing in numbers every day. Families all over Ireland are now facing homelessness on an ever increasing scale, because, I believe, people are too frightened to speak out against the antiquated housing system which governs their lives and the lives of their children. The silence is deafening!
On the other side of the coin, people who are waiting for local authority housing are totally dependent on the goodwill of the administrators of these local authorities as to whether they will be housed or left out in the cold - literally on the streets, with their children. Housing administrators, in my personal experience, have total power and control over whom they favour to be housed and whom they do not, regardless of individual circumstances. Hence people's fear of highlighting the appalling lack of humanity and compassion shown to them. I would therefore urge everybody who is currently in this situation to speak out for change, for without voice, there will be no change.
Where are the children taken into consideration in all this? Personally, I have never been asked what impact eviction would have on my children. Is this the result of our economic prosperity? Has the heart gone out of our nation? We were once a poor but proud and generous nation. Has our new-found prosperity with its attendant greed replaced that heart? If so, the future is looking very bleak indeed. - Yours, etc.,
Margaret Weldon, Broadmeadows, Swords, Co Dublin.