Dublin Homeless Awareness, a non profit organization collaboration with People from Profit , a right wing party protest about homeless in Dublin at the O’ Connell street at 2:30 pm on Saturday. The protest was demonstrated to provide awareness about the increase of the homeless people. Around 20 people showed up for the protest including the activists from the People from the Profit party and a member of city council to support their cause.
The protest started from General Post Office and March towards the city council in the rainy busy streets of the city. They again march back to General Post Office and move forward from there. Making people aware through their banners. They shouted their slogan for “We care” as they marched the rainy street. There were banners marking that it’s a Dublin Homeless Awareness whereas the activists from People from Profit carried their flags of the party. The banners that were displays spoke of investing around 16.8 million euro on the Greyhound race rather than on homeless people. “There are 4,000 children homeless. It’s a disgraced for a rich city like Dublin” says one of the protesters. There were other people like a radio news reporter from the station called as Dublin’s Q102 covering the news and film students making the documentary about the protest.
When ask why they are here? One of the protester stated that winter season is the main enemy of most the homeless people and it will get worst in coming month. Most of them die because of this; we are spreading awareness people out there. Among them was one of the members of the city council, Tina McVeigh who supports the homeless and such protest spoke that the protest is important and it is the duty to hear the voices of youths. Homelessness is a big issues for everybody and the protest will a great way to aware the future generation. Yesterday , the Minister of Finance, Paschal Donohoe said there is an “unveiled capital” funding to support the delivery of over 11,000 new social homes in 2020 during the announcement of the next budget. When asked about this statement made by the Minister of Finance, she commented that the main tactic behind the housing system is to push through their own agenda and basically to prioritize the developer and wealthy people over the needy people. Because of this the housing and rent continue to grow up. She also adds up that most of the social housing system is not fair and they don’t support them, especially young people. People should raise their voice now.
Even though the protest was for the great cause, due to the rain and busy street some of the protestor was putting in harm’s way when a Dublin Bus hit nearly the protester. The protest itself was not that much emphasized by the bystanders due to the weather and the traffic. The protest kept on demonstrating the problem of increasing rate of homeless people in Dublin.
Sukrity Sharma 