Sir, – As we head into the Christmas season, many families in Ireland will be struggling with the pressures of the festive season. Years of austerity have put huge strains on family budgets, hundreds of thousands are out of work and rising rent prices are forcing people out of homes across the country.
But the good news is that more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Thousands have marched against the water charges and hundreds of thousands of families are using the Christmas period to donate to charities of all kinds. And all those people know that if we want a better Ireland, we will need to work together.
Yet not all of us realise that our efforts to build a better Ireland will not succeed unless we strengthen the way we work together across borders.
Our world is connected like never before. From international bank debts to the spread of infectious diseases, what happens in one part of the world matters to us all.
And what drives people in developing countries into poverty is directly linked to the type of situations that cause people in Ireland to lose a job, a home or an income. In 2015, let us endeavour to do our best to overcome the challenges that Ireland is facing, by understanding them as global, not just local, problems. And let us celebrate those around us who are providing inspirational examples of what it means to be an active citizen in a highly inter-dependent and interwoven global society. – Yours, etc,
HANS ZOMER,
Director,
Dóchas,
1-2 Baggot Court, Dublin 2.