A chara, – It concerns me that amid all the talk of billions of euro being wasted and lost, borrowed and invested again, we have succeeeded in losing touch with the reality of what much smaller sums of money can achieve.
To pick an amount that is newsworthy at the moment, a sum of one million euro, spent wisely within a large provincial Irish town would significantly fund the overall annual costs of providing all of the following homelessness services:
1. A night shelter providing seven beds, 365 nights per year plus dinner and breakfast.
2. 25 emergency accommodation beds for 365 days per year and breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper.
3. A day centre for six days a week, 51 weeks of the year, plus dinner for anything between 25 and 35 people per day.
4. A four-bed supported housing project for people with an intellectual disability for 365 days per year, including breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper.
5. Warmth, comfort, support and hope for the future for some of the most vulnerable people within our society.
These services can ensure that people do not have to sleep rough on the streets, that people can quickly get somewhere to live when faced with a crisis, that people can get their lives back on track and have a home where they can live peacefully and independently with hope for the future.
Surely those outcomes are worthy of an investment of one million euro? At a time when we are questioning the priorities of the past, an opportunity arises to define the values of the future. Let us ensure for everybody’s sake that those values protect and respect all members of our society. – Is mise,
NIALL MULLIGAN,
Kells,
Co Meath.
Madam, – The front page (March 30th) tells us tax revenue may be €3 billion lower than previously predicted. This is the latest in a series of drip, drip, drips of altered estimates, each worse than the last. Could the Government (and its advisers), take off its rose-tinted spectacles and publish a pessimistic estimate of our situation, so that future drips will be in the other direction? The fact that each prediction is worse than the last does not augur well for the Government’s predictive powers or its capability to deal with future events. – Yours, etc,