Our hopes & dreams have been shattered by political choices – 2023 highlights the Governments list of failures
THIS was the year Holly Cairns swooped in as the new leader of the Social Democrats.
The party has seen a bounce in the polls since the 34-year-old Cork South-West TD took up the reins.
She took over from former co-leaders Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall.
And she has also found herself to be the second most popular leader of a political party, bounding ahead of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald.
In her first Leaders’ Questions, she was scathing of Varadkar’s attempts to fix the housing crisis.
Writing in the Irish Sun, Cairns says housing and the rise of the right are Ireland’s most pressing issues.
Read more in news
IF I had been asked this time last year for my political predictions for 2023, becoming leader of the Social Democrats certainly wouldn’t have been on the list.
Taking up the leadership mantle from party co-founders Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy was both daunting and exciting.
And despite only becoming involved in politics five years previously, I felt up to the challenge.
In my first Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, I reminded the Taoiseach I am a member of a generation that is worse off than their parents — a generation whose hopes and dreams have been shattered by the political choices of successive governments involving Fine Gael.
Most read in The Irish Sun
For most of 2023, the housing crisis dominated the political agenda.
This will be remembered as the year in which more than half a million adults were still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms, locked out of home ownership or unable to afford sky-high rents.
As the year drew to a close, more than 13,000 people were living in emergency homeless accommodation — almost 4,000 of them children.
Behind these stark statistics are countless human stories of lives put on hold and damaged childhoods. By consistently failing to meet its own targets for social and affordable housing, this Government has taken a wrecking ball to people’s futures.
For me, one of the political low points of 2023 was the Government’s refusal to amend its insulting redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes.
This deeply flawed legislation excluded 24,000 people from seeking compensation, including anyone who spent less than six months in an institution as a child or who suffered abuse while boarded out.
This Government has an appalling track record when it comes to its treatment of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
Endless waiting lists
It can be seen in the endless waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, in the continued underfunding of our threadbare disability services, and in the appalling delays for children awaiting an assessment of need.
Despite record surpluses this year, the Government continued to be in denial about the need to adequately fund health care.
There are now dire warnings that a €2 billion hole in the 2024 health budget will have serious implications for patient care and lead to longer waiting lists.
Much of recent Dail time was taken up by international events.
While Ireland was one of the first countries in the West to condemn Israel’s brutal massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza, strong words from the Taoiseach, while welcome, were not followed up with necessary action.
It was deeply regrettable the Government did not support a Social Democrats’ motion calling for EU-wide economic sanctions against Israel for its multiple breaches of international law, or the removal of diplomatic status from the Israeli ambassador.
Sinister side of Ireland
This year, we also saw a more sinister side to an Ireland we did not recognise — from attacks on asylum seekers as they slept in their tents to aggressive protests at libraries and the deliberate torching of proposed refugee centres.
In Dublin, far-right elements weaponised a horrific knife attack on a woman and three children to incite violence and cause mayhem.
Lost in the debate on immigration is the value of inclusion. Immigrants and refugees are our friends, family, loved ones and neighbours, not to mention the fact they are also our nurses, teachers, builders and hospitality workers.
Whole swathes of our public services would collapse without our migrant community. Our society, and the economy, is all the richer for them.
Politicians must be re-minded of their responsibility to prevent the insidious spread of hatred, fear and disinformation.
With local and European elections — and who knows, maybe a general election — coming up in 2024, this must be a key political priority.