LAST UPDATE | 14 Mar

AS I LEFT work and walked down busy Grafton Street on Wednesday, it was one of those optimistic, sunny evenings where you truly feel that there is no better country on earth than Ireland.

The daffodils are out on the canal, people are having coffees and pints on Drury Street, a busker is doing an excellent cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and the treat of the long weekend is on the horizon.

“We are so back”, you think.

In the sunshine, the homeless crisis is very visible. Spending more time in the city and enjoying brighter evenings makes you stop and take stock of the environment around you in a way that you don’t tend to do in winter. I see the many tents lining the parks and streets, some with clothes hanging on them, the homeless people outside shops with cardboard signs and cups, and the smashed windows of derelict buildings, juxtaposed with those surveying the cosmetics section of Brown Thomas — the thrum of dutiful consumers. It is one thing to acknowledge that you are privileged to live in Ireland; there is an indescribable charm to this country, but it takes a different type of patriotism to acknowledge there are urgent, systemic crises in Ireland, especially at a time when there really IS a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

No laughing matter

With Micheál Martin’s visit to the Oval Office on Wednesday going relatively smoothly, all things considered, a lot of Irish people (especially those working in multinational corporations, MNCs) may be relieved. But amid the socks and the shamrocks, there was also the moment (which has been well documented by now), of Micheál Martin appearing to laugh at our housing crisis.

Renters are used to the government outright dismissing our concerns. “One person’s rent is another person’s income” and “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side” come to mind. Renters know that we are being screwed, and many of us feel that we have no hope of owning a home in the next five or ten years, if ever. Among people my age group, as well as both older and younger, it’s depressingly common to make jokes about the uncertainty of our futures and the severity of the housing crisis, perhaps in an effort to adopt the mantra of “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”.

I can’t help but see striking similarities between An Taoiseach’s visit to the Oval Office and what it’s like attending a house viewing as a renter in Ireland. It is a litmus test for how much abuse you are willing to take in order to achieve security — however temporary it may be. You are in a tense situation with someone who has far more power than you, is exponentially wealthier than you, and the knowledge that if you question anything or stand up for yourself, you will be punished.

Renters like me know all too well about power imbalances and how our lives can be upended by the whims of a landlord we are unwillingly reliant on. All proverbial balls are in the landlords’ courts when it comes to the business of finding a place to rent. €950 for a room in a share house? It’s half my salary, but I really am desperate. Black mould in every room? I’ll buy mould spray and get rid of it myself. You want to see my bank balance before I can even view the place? Seems like an invasion of privacy, but I guess I’ll have to suck it up. Landlord wants to raise the rent by more than 2% even though you’re in an Rent Pressure Zone? I’d better comply because I have no other choice.

So, it’s not a surprise to me how an Taoiseach reacted in that meeting when the housing crisis was asked about this week, even though it fills me with rage to see a room of very wealthy and influential people laughing like drains about it. After all, it’s not like the government has ever seemed galvanised to fix the housing crisis — why start before the long weekend? 

We can do better

The very reason St Patrick’s Day is celebrated so widely is because of our long history of emigration all over the world; people forced into leaving the old sod for a better life than Ireland could give them.

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But for those of us (like me) here in Ireland who don’t want to leave, or maybe can’t for financial or personal reasons, it didn’t exactly fill me with a sense of bród when our leader, whether out of nervousness beside Trump or not on the big day, laughed off our country’s most pervasive crisis in front of the world’s media. In a room full of people who will never experience homelessness or housing insecurity. Just like a lucky renter who has plámásed their way into a 12-month lease, Martin can rest easy for now.

This St Patrick’s Day, I’ll be seeing Instagram posts from all of my friends and peers abroad, some gone temporarily and some forever, sitting on St. Kilda beach in Australia wearing green wigs, or belting out the lyrics of “Dirty Old Town” in a Vancouver karaoke bar.

If you truly love a country, you don’t deny its faults, you do everything you can to fix them. Every day, I feel proud to be Irish, and I understand that we are living in a changed world and the global political challenges have shifted overnight. But watching the clips of Micheál Martin cosying up to a dangerous president and laughing at the crisis which inflicts misery and stress on so many didn’t make me feel proud at all.

Sylvia Power is a 29-year-old editor who lives and works in Dublin.