Social inequality: the case for change

The biggest driver of social inequality and health poverty in Ireland today is the Irish political establishment's decades long negligence in its duty of care to ensure the basic human rights of permanent shelter, drinkable water, and equal access to healthcare for all of the citizens of Ireland.

Apart from its obvious primary functions, social housing performs a hugely important secondary function in keeping rents and house prices from spiralling out of control.

Without adequate provision of social housing to stabilize and balance 'The Market' (aka naked greed of banks, property developers and landlords) the cost of renting or buying a home will continue to soar beyond the means of most young people in Ireland.

Without a fully functioning public health system, the cost of private health insurance will also continue to soar, grossly inflated by the absence of an alternate way to access essential healthcare without suffering the indignity and discomfort of lying on a trolley in an overcrowded hospital corrider, essential procedures being cancelled due to a lack of resources, and years-long waiting lists for healthcare interventions required sooner rather than later.

In short, social housing helps keep housing costs affordable, and public healthcare helps keep health insurance costs affordable, because they provide a credible alternative and competition to the monopoly of provision, and artificial manipulation and inflation of prices that occur in a so called 'free market'.

So, quite aside from any sense of civic solidarity and altruism, it is in the selfish self-interests of everyone in society to agitate for the provision of social housing and a top class public health system: to provide balance and stability against market greed and the neoliberal exploitation of basic resources essential to human dignity, health and happiness.