Fr Peter McVerry of the Peter McVerry Trust

Fr Peter McVerry spoke to Jonathan Healy on Newstalk Lunchtime in the last hour, following on the death of the homeless man on Molesworth Street in Dublin – just metres from Leinster House.

Peter McVerry: “Unfortunately cattle and sheep are more important to our economy than homeless people. We have a homeless crisis that is not being addressed. There is absolutely no sense of urgency on the part of the Government to address this problem and it’s going to get worse. I mean now, I have a situation, the first time ever in my industry where you have whole families sleeping on the street. I’m aware of one family, they’ve put their children into care and the parents are sleeping on the streets. They didn’t want their children sleeping on the street but there was no accommodation available, they had to put their children into care. I think this winter we will see people, homeless people, dying. I think, to be honest, the majority of homeless people dying this winter are going to die from suicide because I have people coming in to me who are suicidal, extremely depressed, saying, ‘I can’t take this anymore and I don’t see anyway out’. I’m told, three nights out of four, I’m told, ‘there’s no beds available, you’ll have to sleep on the street’ and I don’t see any way out of this. So they’re absolutely at the end of their, they’ve given up hope.”

Jonathan Healy: “Peter you’ve worked in the area for a number of years. We know, I mean, I’ve been out with you, we’ve spoken in the past, that, during the boom, if you were homeless, there would be other issues at play, such as alcohol, drugs, very common amongst the homeless community, if we’re to call it that. What’s different about this particular type of crisis. I want to move away from the immediate case we’re talking about; is it a different type of challenge that we’re facing now? And if so, why?”

McVerry: “It is. The majority of people who are becoming homeless today are becoming homeless because they’re being thrown out of private rented accommodation because the rents have gone through the roof. Focus Ireland tells us there 45 families last month, they usually deal with 8 families a month, this year they’ve dealt with an average of 40 families per month, and last month it was 45. And out of those 45 families, I understand 41 of them have been evicted from their rented accommodation. Not for anti-social behaviour, not because they were drinking, not because they didn’t pay the rent but because they couldn’t pay the rent. So the people who are becoming homeless today have never been homeless before, they never for one moment in their lives ever thought that they would be homeless and they just find the situation absolutely intolerable. It’s a whole…they’ve never been in this situation before and they’re absolutely horrified to find themselves in this situation, particularly if they have children.”

Listen back here.