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Updated 3.19pm
THE GOVERNMENT HAS been accused of ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ over the homeless crisis, but Minister Alan Kelly has been given a ringing endorsement by a prominent campaigner.
Fr. Peter McVerry said this afternoon that Kelly is the “only minister who understands the homeless problem”, but that Ministers Michael Noonan and Joan Burton are among those blocking progress.
“It’s not an Alan Kelly’s responsibility. Let me be clear, I actually support Alan Kelly in what he’s doing, he can’t make the other ministers to agree to what he would like to do and what I believe would make a significant difference,” McVerry told RTÉ’s News at One .
The question of rent control, the Minister for Finance is against it. We have a situation here while families are flooding into homelessness, government ministers are bickering around, arguing with one another, disagreeing with one another. You know, Nero fiddles while Rome burns, that’s the only image I have. It’s an absolute disgrace.
The focus on housing comes as the Dublin homeless executive this morning announced almost 200 additional emergency beds as well as accommodation for couples and families in response to homelessness in the city.
The new beds are part of the ‘Cold Weather Initiative’. Today the executive said the aim is to “prevent fatalities and/or serious harm and provide an emergency humanitarian response to the needs of persons who may be sleeping rough during cold weather”.
Included this year are 100 single beds for male and female adults at a temporary night shelter in a building in Dublin’s Digital Hub on Thomas Street. A 75 further beds will be made available across existing homeless services.
The additional beds announced today are surplus to the 251 new emergency beds implemented after the homeless summit last December. These filled up rapidly, with figures for June this year showing 1,975 of the available 1,977 beds were occupied.
A bed for anyone who wants it
Labour Senator Aideen Hayden told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that “there will be a bed for anybody who wants it over the winter period”.
She said rough sleeper figures for April indicated there were 105 people on the streets so the 175 new beds should be sufficient.
Almost 2,500 adults without children are now homeless across the State, along with 1,571 children, and 980 parents. As part of the initiative, 37 family units are also being opened up and 18 long-term supported accommodation places will be made available later this month for couples.
The Capuchin Centre has extended its early opening hours to 7am for the winter period.
The emergency bed announcement comes, however, within hours of a Labour spokesperson confirming that Kelly’s plans for rent certainty are “unlikely to materialise” in the coming measures aimed at tacking the problem.
Kelly told RTÉ this afternoon that “discussions are ongoing in relation to this”.
“They will come to fruition. I believe there is a necessity for a package of proposals that will ensure people can stay in their homes and we will stem the tide of people coming into homelessness,” he said.
“One is escalating rents and the other is the supply of housing,” he added. “The long-term solution to this is supply but but in the short-term we need to make sure people aren’t falling out of the rental sector.”
Fr. McVerry described the announcement that rent controls won’t be happening as “a disaster”.
“Every single charity working with homeless people has emphasised the need for rent controls of one form for another and for an increase in the rent supplement, and those calls have been going on for 18 months and have fallen on deaf ears,” he said
Unprecedented
CEO of homeless charity Depaul, Kerry Anthony, has also called for an increase in the rent supplement saying that said rates of homelessness have risen at unprecedented levels in the last 12 months.
Though she commended the success in sourcing extra emergency beds, she urged the government to re-double its efforts to put long-term solutions in place.
We call for the immediate raising of rent supplement rates and improvement of tenure security in order to stem the flow of new households into homelessness. Furthermore, we call upon the Government to enact a two-pronged approach to both incentivise landlords currently in the market to continue to rent and to implement an effective “vacant site” tax to encourage landowners to develop housing.
She also said the government needs to progress the supply of traditional and modular housing as a priority.
- With reporting by Rónán Duffy
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I haven’t even got the kettle out for the car windscreen yet. I’m very confused.
@Hank_Scorpio: get your coffee & weetabix then you’ll be sorted!
@Hank_Scorpio: have to agree hank it seems to be colder by day than night … something is just not right ..
@John Hayes: You’re not suggesting white walkers? And me without any Dragon Glasd!
@Hank_Scorpio: apparently the air is dry which is why no frost. Read that somewhere last week.
@Lukevic101: anybody spot the small truck in the first clip doing flying past doing at leat 60
I love how the author mocks the ‘innovatively monikered’ Big Snow of ’82.
At least people waited for the Big Snow to have fallen before it got named.
I’ve just about recovered from the two branches that fell off my tree during storm Ophelia and now this? It’s just not fair
@Brian O’Loughlin: well lucky you. 3 people died because of Ophelia so it may not have much of an impact on your area but it did in other areas.
So many articles about a bit of snow. I’m currently in Hungary, it’s -10 snowing and people are store shelves are full. There’s no need to panic Ireland.
@Roy Dowling: we’re all just worried about ‘being in
@Roy Dowling: People are store shelves? Strange place Hungary.
It’s likely to be another met.ie non event.
We need new meteorologists in this country.
The yr.no boys are suggesting several millimetres overnight. Millimetres, not centimetres or inches….
@Me_a_monkey: or not…..this time!
@Me_a_monkey: and if they said nothing and a major event occurred you’d be the first on whinging about it.
@Me_a_monkey: where do they say the volume of snow
Ah 82, the joys of being a culchie, sliding down a hill on a plastic bag. Great craic altogether.
It will not compare to 1963 or 1947.
@Adam Reid: 67 or 81 were worse.
Huh, more white on a powdered donut.
Panic buying, wrapping the kids in bubble wrap, crisis averted.
More fake news and people swallow it . Its lovely out
@The flute smoker: where you are¡¡¡?!
@The flute smoker: Yawn.
@The flute smoker: for now…..
For some real science check out space weather com. If this low level of solar activity continues for the next 7 months winter 2018/9 will be brutal.
Sunspot number: 11
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 27 Feb 2018
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2018 total: 27 days (47%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Updated 27 Feb 2018
@Joe Caulfield: This looks like nothing other than the standard 11-year solar activity cycle, I’m not sure what your point is?
@Joe Caulfield: why do you keep repeating this post, are you trying to plug them?
It’s going to be cold. Just wrap up when outside. In 82 people did nothing expecting someone else to take care of the snow in their front garden.
@prop joe: What’s a front gargen¿
@prop joe: Imagine how bad it will be now we have millenials
@prop joe: Trust the ponces from Delgany to have a fancy home video camera in 1982
@Mark Johnson: Jealousy is worse than envy¡
Ah that week in the winter of ’82, I remember it…so badly. I don’t remember how much snow fell, how long it lasted for or anything like that. I do remember we had fun thought…
So now that there isn’t a loaf of bread or a pint of milk left in the country, there’s only one thing to do – get a thick plastic sack, find a steep hill and enjoy life :-)
@Tom Purcell: I remember it so well. Living in a student house in Ranelagh with 10 others. I shared a room in what would now be deemed the attic. Freezing was an understatement. We also had a resident rat in the kitchen, literally. Millenials, indeed. The fear of litigation rules the world and how we perceive the world. What will happen when a real disaster raises its head?
2 feet in Kells….
@Bruce Miller: pics or GTFO
@Me_a_monkey: ¿¿¿
@Bruce Miller: proof of 2 feet of snow in kells! Radar suggests nothing!
@Me_a_monkey: Get a new freakin radar m8¡
@Bruce Miller: 2 feet..lucky man. Last night I got legless
@Bruce Miller: You must be in East Kells,I’m in West Kells and it’s yet to hit us
@Bruce Miller: How many arms in Kells?
@DeFonz: south kells here. Polar bears causing traffic mayhem on Slane road. If my boss is on this I don’t think I’ll make it in today…..
@Bruce Miller: Ah! I got up this morning, got dressed and then my other half told me I have my shoes on the wrong feet – the two in Kells might be mine…(yeah I know bad!)
Drama queens….
There will be some snow tomorrow and possibly Thursday but I think RTE and indeed Met Eireann have caused unnecessary panic as usual – morons
Actually when you look at what Met are saying and the warning system in place it actually makes sense. It’s the media and rags like this that are obsessed with freaking people out. As for RTE anything that could disrupt their warm cup of cocoa land in D4 is horrifying for them. It’s best to stick to the science and probabilities.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: Warning systems make sense, that’s clearly evident, the point I am making is the inaccuracies from Met Eireann and the sensationalism from the Irish media, in particular rte – take a look http://www.thejournal.ie/met-eireann-complaints-2908095-Aug2016/
The Beast from the East is 1982 x 100 that’s right it’s 198,200
Drama queens all over country!!!!!!
@William Gorry: You really need to relax and not take yourself to seriously.
Can’t wait
The real year of ‘The Big Snow’ was 1947. There was bad snow in 1982 and heavy snow in 1962/63.
I remember ’82. Wasn’t as much as a snowflake fell on Cork City
@Terry Bradshaw: yup rest of the country destroyed even cobh! but not a bloody flake in the city!
The Big Snow of 1982 was one helluva thing. Trains, buses, taxis all stopped, vegetables couldn’t be delivered from the Markets to shops, impossible to drive cars on slippy ice-laden roads. No way to get to work. That continued for almost 3 weeks.
No heat at home because of no electricity to fire up the CH boiler. Ran out of coal, logs, turf and briquettes after 4 days for the live fire in our home. Neighbours with Gas gracefully boiled our tea water and cooked our meals.
The great thing was that the local pub had a live, warming fire going all day, the pub lit up by romance-like candles at night. So we all spent our days in the pub (it was so cold there was no need for pubs to cool the drinks) and we went to bed early under our body-heated blankets, hugged each other together to keep warm and made babies (inadvertently, like ya know).
These babies are the adults, the so-called “Millenials” of today that caused an unprecedented demand for houses about 2005-2006, leading to the Big Crash of 2007-2008.
Place your bets now that infant schools will face another “unprecedented” demand for school places in 4/5 yrs time and that in 25 yrs time we will have another”unprecedented” demand for houses for the coming “Beast of the East”-conceived babies, in 25 yrs time. We can call them in due time, the “Beast Children of the Millenials”.
I bet the ESRI and the present Govt hasn’t built that happening into its 2040 Plan – they won’t cop that – like it wasn’t copped back in 1982 – that it needs to be planned for.
Place your long-term bets now Folks… You’ll be on to a winner and – for once – fleece the bookies.
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