Homelessness is the subject
du jour in Ireland following the death of a homeless man which occurred within a hundred yards of our Parliament building. Homelessness is terrible but as usual with today's media what they omit is more important than that which they report.
For a start it emerged that the man found dead came from wealthy parents. They had bought not one but two houses for him. However he had sold them both, purchased drugs with the proceeds and ended up penniless and on the streets. A fate not helped by his objection to living in shelters. A terribly sad case and maybe the state could have done better. But you'd imagine listening to the commentariat that he'd been flung out on the street to die by an uncaring society.
Then the numbers. We're told that there are about 2,500 in the country. Given our population of 4.5 million that figure doesn't seem enormous. We're also warned that this figure is 'exploding upwards' - that we face a 'tsunami' of homelessness. In fact figures from the CSO show the trend to be
downwards and that only about 200 are actually sleeping rough. The rest of the 'homeless' are those living in emergency accommodation and in 'informal settlements', usually meaning travellers and Roma who often want to live that way,
Quite a different picture emerging, isn't there? But it gets better. The Irish taxpayer hands over €120 million annually to the homeless industry...the quangos and various other charities operating under this rubric. As this doesn't include the vast sums they raise in charitable donations there's a minimum €40,000 for each homeless person and realistically it must be nearer to double that. That is - quite literally - enough to put them up full-time in a four star hotel with no additional costs incurred.
So where's all the money going?
Which brings me to Social Justice Warriors in general. Have you ever noticed how, despite their rejection of materialism, their demands for the rest of us to eschew selfishness (cf. Bob Geldof) and their constant appeals for funds for 'the most vulnerable' they're bloody good at getting their own snouts in the trough? Who are they? 'Academics', invariably with useless degrees like Sociology or English, or else opportunists swimming in our endless sea of quangos. We have seen that, before the needs of the 'most vulnerable' are ever met these SJWs make sure they trouser salaries of €100k (often more) and luxuriate in massive contributions to pension funds when not entitled to taxpayer-funded index-linked public sector pensions. And they always seem to have plenty funds for exotic
vacations fact-finding missions and conferences. No wonder that a whole industry has grown up around the plight of the homeless.
And finally we have
lodgements to African dictators' Swiss bank accounts 'foreign aid' of about €700 million annually. That could have all of our homeless living the life of Reilly. But the funds cannot be touched. They are sacrosanct, irrespective of the
impact on politicians' careers. And let's not forget our own cultural enrichers. The now retired Kevin Myers wrote
this article about five years ago which graphically illustrates the insanity of our current situation whereby the vast majority of Nigerians, despite having no right to be here, are provided with taxpayer-funded accommodation. And a lot more besides.
But as Kevin points out, we cannot speak of those facts. The West gets more like the USSR or East Germany every day.