REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF CUAS RESPONSE ON BEHALF OF THE DUBLIN SIMON
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF CUAS RESPONSE ON BEHALF OF THE DUBLIN SIMON COMMUNITY USHER’S ISLAND
Cuireann sé áthas ar mo chroí bheith anseo libh inniu. Go raibh maith agaibh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom agus as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur romham.
Two things bring me here, the first of course is to officially launch the Cuas Response, the second to see some of the exceptional work that the Simon Community has been doing on behalf of homeless people here in Usher’s Island. I had the pleasure last year of launching Simon’s Joint North/South Report on the needs of the homeless – but this is my first visit as President to visit the facilities here in Dublin. I am very grateful to Greg Maxwell for giving me this opportunity to meet the staff and users of the services here and to pay a warm tribute to your work.
In launching the Cuas Response, I am very conscious that this is simply the latest stage of 30 years of hard work, another bit of the roadway which Simon started to build back in 1969. There is a saying in Irish: ‘Tús maith is leath na hoibre’ - a good start is half the work - and that is certainly true in Simon’s case. In the early days the work was as simple as the name suggests - soup in the middle of the night - but almost immediately Simon became a household name as its work opened up a window on a forgotten and neglected world, on forgotten and neglected men and women. Today Simon has greatly expanded the range of services it provides here in Usher’s Island, in Sean McDermott Street and through your outreach services. The name of Simon today is a radical name, more than just a soft symbol of caring, it is a rejection of complacency, a conspiracy of doers to push to the limits the demands of human decency, the belief in the sacredness, the entitlement to respect of each human being.
Here we are enjoying times of prosperity not experienced before in Ireland, times to be proud of but times too in which the need for services of this kind is growing rather than diminishing. This is no time to get smug or complacent. There are too many people still on the margins watching today’s success, mere spectators not participants.
We have long taken pride in our tradition of being a generous and giving people. We like to believe that a critical mass of our people still subscribe with passion to those values. We now have a chance to prove that this ethos is still very much alive, that it has not been abandoned in the rush forward to further affluence. A very real test of our vision for the future, of what type of society we want to have in the next millennium, will be in how we deal with poverty, with homelessness, with social exclusion. We are blessed to be the first generation that really has the means and resources to tackle these problems once and for all. We are the first generation with the resources, the insight and the energy to make history of poverty, to mainstream opportunity, to draw the margins in to the centre.
It need not be just a pipedream – after all, who could have predicted 10 years ago, when the human tragedy of unemployment was at its height, that the challenge for today’s policy makers would be how to cope with labour shortages, how to manage success? The scope of what we have already achieved reassures us that what we are able to achieve in the future will be limited only by our imagination, by our commitment to each other, by what we dare to dream.
We cannot count ourselves a success unless all of our people have the means to live a life of hope and decency, and possess that most basic need of all – a place that they can call home. Homelessness is a state few people truly understand for it is not just about having a place called home, it is about having a place in society, having a network of support, being rooted, recognised, being inside a complex system in which your life counts. I am not sure if I am the first President to have had a brief personal exposure to homelessness but it was enough to introduce me to the frightening feeling of freefall, of not counting, of being on the outside of a hermetically sealed inside where real life was and which we could no longer access. What my family and I needed most during those days was a sure and helping hand, someone to lead us confidently out of that bizarre and terrifying landscape, someone who had no reason to care about us but who did. We were lucky.
It showed great vision on the part of the Simon Community to recognise that the needs of the homeless extend far beyond food and shelter. Exclusion from the mainstream destroys self-confidence and self-esteem, can make even simple things awesomely difficult. It means for example that even when employment is plentiful, it is not easily available to those who have no address to their name. Simon has given invaluable assistance to so many hopeless people in accessing these basic services.
Even more importantly, through the Cuas Response, you are offering real hope to people of ultimately escaping the trap of homelessness. It takes a real sense of courage by homeless people to take up that opportunity, to abandon a way of life that they have become used to, to take on the responsibility of paying rent, of making decisions, of working and living with other people. It takes even more courage to keep alive the dream of a long-term home of your own. But it is possible. You have the example before you of others who have succeeded. I would like to warmly congratulate you on taking this first step and I wish you every success on your journey towards resettlement. You have made that ‘good start’.
I know that you could not have succeeded in getting this far without the wonderful support of the very dedicated staff, both here in the Cuas house, and in the Usher’s Island shelter. I would like to pay tribute to all of those people, especially Malcolm Darrach, Project Leader of Usher’s Island, Paul Traynor and Susan Neill from the Settlement and Training Service and Niamh Ní Cholmain, the Cuas Co-ordinator.
Simon has also been supported down through the years by many volunteers and fundraisers. All of those people should be very proud of what has been achieved here, for it is their caring and selflessness, their giving of themselves and their time with such generosity, that has made a very real difference to the lives of so many people.
I would also like to commend Dublin Corporation, the Eastern Health Board and the Department of the Environment and Local Government for the support they have provided through the Homeless Initiative, both to Simon and to many other voluntary groups. That spirit of partnership with the voluntary sector is a real beacon of hope for the future.
I wish all of you here every success in your future work and I have great pleasure in officially launching the Cuas Response.
Go gcúití Dia bhur saothar daoibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.