Former president Mary McAleese has told a UN conference that “it is hard to credit” that homelessness in Ireland grew by 150 per cent in the four year period that followed a 2013 pledge by the then government to resolve the problem. Mrs McAleese said she took heart from the fact that during the election campaign “successive opinion polls showed that the public sees the provision of affordable and adequate housing along with the ending of homelessness as top priorities for government action”. “A safe, affordable and adequate home should be the right and the experience of each human being. That memory and the visible evidence around us of a housing problem means we are not a Pollyanna people. EvictedHer husband Martin and his family “had also been violently evicted from their Belfast home shortly before us”.

Source: The Irish Times February 11, 2020 13:01 UTC