DEMAND FOR homeless accommodation and hot meals from Crosscare has “increased dramatically” in recent years, the social care agency said yesterday.
The agency, run by the Dublin diocese, provided 45,000 bed nights last year – an increase of more than 40 per cent in three years.
Its director, Donal Hickey, said 90,000 hot meals were given out last year. They were provided to people caught in the poverty trap and others who found themselves lonely or isolated in Dublin.
Mr Hickey also announced the closure of Crosscare’s night shelter for homeless men in Longford Lane, Dublin 2, because of its unsuitability.
With help from the De Paul Trust, the men will move to a new purpose-built centre, with 24-hour support and their own space and privacy.
The Longford Lane accommodation was opened nine years ago as an emergency response to homelessness. “When it comes to homelessness in Dublin, we have been “making do” for too long.
“The old-style dormitory accommodation of Longford Lane had become home for our clients, when it was meant to be an emergency service,” Mr Hickey said.
“Keeping people for long periods of time in emergency accommodation must stop. In times of tightening resources we need to be innovative and work together with the statutory services and other NGOs to create more of these homes.”
He was speaking as details were announced of Crosscare’s annual church collection, which will take place this weekend.
Launching the appeal, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin expressed concern that the economic downturn would affect the vulnerable and would lead people to think only of themselves.
“Prosperity has not always brought with it greater social concern. As our prosperity is challenged in economically difficult times, we must work to see that social concern is not replaced with self-concern,” Dr Martin said.
“A society which cares is a mature society . . . Selfishness and self-centredness are signs not of being clever or smart, but of never having reached maturity, of being fixated and stilted in our human growth.”
Dr Martin also repeated his concern at the “unacceptable levels and the increasingly cold brutality of violence in our society, much of it related to the drug trade”.
And Dr Martin congratulated An Garda Síochána for recent successes “in fighting this callous trafficking in death”.
He also expressed concern that faith was not been fostered by some elements of today’s society.
“Faith exists in the context of a culture, but not all cultures are such that they foster and enhance faith. Indeed, the opposite can be the case, as we can see increasingly in some aspects of Irish society,” he said.
“It is all too easy to take potshots at the faith from its margins. Faith challenges all of us to go deeper into the fundamental questions of our life and to live out our faith ever more authentically.”
