REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ‘WHY NOT’, DEPAUL IRELAND’S STRATEGIC PLAN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ‘WHY NOT’, DEPAUL IRELAND’S STRATEGIC PLAN 2009 – 2013 CLIFTON HOUSE, BELFAST
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. It is such a pleasure to join Depaul Ireland for the launch of its five-year strategic plan entitled ‘Why Not?’ aimed at helping people to move through and out of the darkness of homelessness into the light of a full life and community.
So thanks to Kerry Anthony [CEO of Depaul Ireland] for the kind invitation to be part of this special day. You chose this place well and indeed I know it well for I not only visited it not so long ago but it was part of the architectural landscape of my childhood when I went to primary school just a few steps from here. It was always a beautiful if rather forbidding building, its history as a Poor House hanging like a cloud over it for many years until it was so magnificently refurbished as a new home for residents of HELM Housing Association and the Belfast Charitable Society today. It has seen many Belfasts come and go in its three hundred years of existence and has been witness to awful deprivation and waste of human potential as well as care and compassion for the weak and infirm.
It is a good place to declare, as Depaul’s strategic plan does, that “everyone should have a place to call home and a stake in their community.” The ethos of this still relatively new charity for the homeless, is older even than Clifton House for it draws on four hundred years of Vincentian tradition of outreach to the marginalised and the outcast. Just a short walk up the road from here I used to live quite happily until one day gunmen came and drove us from our home. We were for a while technically homeless and it was a traumatising and dreadful experience but we were not like so many of those whom you deal with, we were not without help, without community, or without a supportive family and friends. Indeed a lot of people rallied around us helping us to bridge the unexpected bad patch that had interrupted our lives. For those who are clients of Depaul homelessness is not just the temporary loss of bricks and mortar or a fixed abode. It is so often the estrangement from family, friends and community and an aloneness that is deep, profound and paralysing. The joy in life switches off, the light of care for the self and care from others goes off. Into that space comes Depaul to make of itself a friend, guide and community to the stranger who has neither and whose lifestyle is chaotic thanks generally to a complex mix of things from perhaps mental health or addiction problems, family or relationship breakdown, failure of institutional or family care, job loss, criminal behaviour, bad life choices, poor coping skills, personality problems and weak life supports. Sometimes their families or communities have given up on them and sometimes they have given up on themselves.
An old Irish proverb “is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine,” we live in one another’s shelter. Depaul Ireland creates that shelter for those who do not have it and out of its experience in this field it now asks a question that North and South we have been struggling with, is it possible to end homelessness and give everyone not just the bricks and mortar of a home but the sustaining strength of their own self-belief and a supportive community. Depaul challenges us all to ask, why not? And beyond that how? These are not mere academic debates that Depaul Ireland is initiating, for this is an organisation operating across this island and dedicated to practical help offered through facilities like the accommodation, training, outreach and personal development opportunities you offer to men and women whose lives are seriously messed up and likely to remain so without your intervention and without the client’s determination to break the cycle that keeps them trapped in exclusion.
No single organisation can take on this job alone nor should they have to and one of the contemporary strengths of this sector has been the growing partnerships between voluntary and state agencies. This has led to greater effectiveness generally and to a more strategic approach to transitioning to a community which helps prevent such catastrophic breakdown of the person and his or her social and psychological supports. Your new Strategic Plan places strong emphasis on ensuring that every penny is well spent to ensure we are all using available resources to the best of our ability so that this tragic waste of human potential is stemmed by a capacity and willingness to embrace change in order to improve its services. You still rely heavily on the generosity of volunteers and fundraisers for it is their sense of responsibility for those who are weak and whose lives are messy which is at the very heart of this service. It is in the end about daring to love those who have long since come to see themselves as hard or even impossible to love. That message alone at the heart of your work sends out a message of reassurance to your clients that they are worthwhile, they have much potential for good and for rebuilding their lives still to be explored, that it does not have to be a lonely journey but can be an exciting journey back to a full life, with good, helpful, non-judgmental, ever-reliable friends.
I would like to wish you well with the implementation of your Strategic Plan and to thank you all for the valuable work, energy, commitment, love and care you bring to your mission of providing homes and quality services to those who need them most.
Go n-éirí go geal libh agus go raibh maith agaibh.