Journalist Evelyn O’Rourke spoke to a family of four who were made homeless after their landlord’s home was repossessed by a bank, for the Today With Seán O’Rourke show on RTÉ Radio One this morning.
The family is now living in a B&B in Dublin city centre which is housing 40 homeless families in total. The 40 families share one kitchen which has one cooker – four rings – and two microwaves. The families are provided with breakfast.
Sandra, who is pregnant, Brendan and their children, aged seven and three, live in one en suite bedroom in the B&B.
During the report Ms O’Rourke spoke to Sandra and Brendan’s seven-year-old daughter.
“I don’t like it here. I mean, I’m not looking forward to Christmas. I don’t know how Santa is going to get in. And I don’t know where we’re gonna go for Halloween. Maybe we could trick or treat around our nanny’s. I don’t know.
[In the morning] I am sad and worried and I feel, cause when you’re just going down for breakfast, you’re just sitting there, with your Da, eating your breakfast with no friends or anything.”
“No, I don’t tell them {schoolmates]. People just say to me, ‘what’s it like over in your new house? and all that stuff. They say that. I just keep saying ‘it’s ok’ and all.”
Listen back in full here
Pic: Focus Ireland
Its mad all the people screaming to let in 1000’s of refugees simply don’t give a damn about the homeless people already here…… I guess you don’t get many facebook likes posting about a family of four who were made homeless after their landlord’s home was repossessed by a bank……..
You’re a complete and total idiot.
That aside – I’ll pander to you. There isn’t a budget marked “Homeless/Refugees” that’s finite – there’s barely a budget at all. What we do have is impending cuts to inheritance tax, capital gains tax write-offs, large corporates evading even the 12.5% headline corpo tax rate, money thrown at consultants with wanton abandon, write-downs on loans we took over from the banks, and NAMA selling our assets at massive losses.
You’re an idiot, but you’re a useful idiot to the people who want to keep it refugee -v- homeless and not how it should be, people in need -v- people with greed.
Yea dude its like all the Illuminati and evil corporations and the west and greed maaaaan ….
Are you drunk or on meds or something?
You’re dealing with a blueshirt troll.
“Are you drunk or on meds or something?”
…love that line, especially when I was asked it by a Garda one day after reporting my stolen bike to them… ’twas myself seen taking the bike you see….
Ahhh, them days….
Human? Barely. As ahjayzis has correctly pointed out, you’re an idiot.
And none of what you say explains why is it that there is money made available to house (or soon to be housed) migrants when there is virtually f-all for people homeless. See how only €10M was allocated to the 2015 budget for Homelessness in Ireland while Millions get taken off the Budget to house the migrants.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/budget-2015-does-nothing-to-stop-of-the-flow-of-people-into-homelessness-1.1964762
http://www.thejournal.ie/cabinet-meeting-refugee-migrants-2322044-Sep2015/
What ever way you look at it there is a huge problem with homelessness in Ireland that keeps getting bigger everyday and gets mainly ignored by the establishment in contrast with Burton (the one that smiles when she opens food bank) proudly tells us money will be made avail for Migrants who will no doubt stay in detention centres for years to come…
Joan’s on it. She’s tackling it head on. Oh, here she is now….
Me: ‘Joan, how are you getting on finding homes for the poor?’
Joan: ‘Feck that shower with their fancy modtherin phooooones, I’ve soup kitchens to open!’
And there ya have it.
[ Disclaimer: All quotes are real, unless asked for verification, then they are not ]
“An increase of €10 million has been allocated directly to provide accommodation and services to homeless people.”
Firstly you link to an article from over a year ago and then purposely misquote it to make it seem worse than it is.
Why are you saying, of all items of expenditure we should divert to homelessness, that it’s war refugees that have to take the hit? Is there literally nowhere else? Why victimise one traumatised and vulnerable group to benefit another while all the issues I posted are still outstanding? Forget expenditure, our tax receipts are WAY up this year. We have the money to do both, we have a duty to do both. We do NOT have a duty to enrich further the wealthy with the measures I outlined above.
We have a duty as a civilised society to house the homeless.
We have a duty as a civilised society to shelter refugees from war.
These aren’t mutually exclusive or in competition.
@ahjayzis You have some really odd warped fringe beliefs dude…. why are you forcing then on everybody else?
You’re really bad at this.
Get your tin foil hat on mate and ride your high horse off into the sunset….
…you mean like a date? ^_^
+ 1 ahjayzis
You’d swear the refugees themselves caused the housing issue, the greed and the tax avoidance etc etc
Inheritance tax threshold is far too low.
Clicked on this link via Facebook because I was intrigued by the glamorous but homeless mum of four on my Facebook page.
More fool me eh! It seems the woman dolled up to the nines in the pic which accompanied this heartbreaking tale might have been ‘Journalist Evelyn O’Rourke…’.
An awful story, not that you would know it given the cheesy grin on the pink lady’s face
What? No sadface pic?
The decided to have another child despite not being able to pay for their own housing.
…aren’t you pro-life too?
No, we just recently considered an abortion for foetal abnormality.
Judging by the inanity of your comments you’re about 30 years too late with that abortion.
+1 Never understand that. “How am I going to pay for all the kids I knew I could never support?”
+1
Idiot woman. She should not be opening her legs given her current homeless situation.
How this woman justifies putting her family through even more hardship by having another child baffles me. Is she schewpit?
going a bit hard on the technicolour there mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuNsiSZ9RI
In fairness, she may have been pregnant before their rental home was repossessed…
The rental home that the state was paying for.
This woman should have been aborted.
Wow. That got real dark, real quickly.
Time o’ the year alright
well that escalated quickly
Grim.
I see the arseholes of society are alive and well this Monday afternoon…
Holy Christ lads, way to be judgmental!
Rent was being paid to landlord, either landlord didn’t pay it to bank or rent a was insufficient for the mortgage.
Could the bank not have sold the house as a rental going concern to a new owner and kept her in the house?
Many people are stuck in private accommodation and they are getting on with their lives. That includes having kids.
I suppose all the people complaining about giving refugees supposed benefits over “genuine” Irish homeless people were out campaigning like mad for Irish homeless in the meantime, yeah?
Heeemmmm
‘Surprised the Bank ( if one of the mains) put them out if they were paying rent
I’d check out who the Receiver was
Drawing the parallels between domestic homelessness and our acceptance of refugees/economic migration is the rather tired and obvious way of looking at this debate, a simplistic correlation. Why don’t we say, “let’s not spend money on housing migrants because the R762 into Kilcoole is in dire need of investment, or that we don’t have the money for migrants because our national debt is €201bn? Why does it always fuc*ing come back to this homeless argument? Are any of the EU countries who are accepting migrants in a position of having a fully housed population? Come back to me with your whining after you’ve Googled that…