It began when Varadkar told his Fine Gael members that Irish homelessness was ‘low by international standards’. It was followed up by a concerted campaign by state officials attacking the ‘bad behaviour’ and claiming that ‘homelessness is normal.’
Junior Minister, Damian English even had the gall to suggest that talk of homelessness was damaging Ireland’s ‘international reputation’.
This rhetoric is designed to have an effect.
Just look at how an obscure agency, Irish Waterways, has raised the water levels on Dublin’s Royal Canal to force people who were living in tents to ‘move on’.
Varadkar’s comment were a calculated attempt to push the homeless out from public view. He wants to make them invisible. He wants to stop talk about a housing crisis.
He wants people to look down on the homeless by suggesting that their ‘own chaotic lifestyle’ is the cause of their misery.
But in doing so, Fine Gael has revealed exactly where they are coming from.
Most times, they pretend to show ‘concern’. They engage in, what political scientists call ‘triangulation’. They start with a pretence that they care about a particular social problem and then move to stick in the boot.
Just listen to how they repeat endlessly that there is ‘a supply problem’ with housing and nothing can be done until developers are ‘incentivised’ to build new houses. This is simple code to give more profit to a greedy class of builders.
Yet this week the mask slipped.
We now know that this government is run by a bunch of snobs, one third of whom are landlords. Fine Gael’s only strategy is to encourage middle Ireland look down on the poor. They have no answer – just pure snobbery and contempt.
We need to drive them out of office – to bring ‘regime change’ to this country.
It is pointless just getting angry – we need get organised to change this country.
