Sick Ireland in a nutshell

Map­ping inequal­i­ty? The Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Ser­vices Cen­tre where the body of a home­less man was dis­cov­ered.

Bren­dan Ogle: A home­less sup­port group has described how the body of a home­less man was dis­cov­ered in the Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Ser­vices Cen­tre (IFSC) today. This need­less loss of human life on our streets is a per­son­al tragedy for this man, and for their fam­i­ly and friends. It is hard to escape the dark sym­bol­ism of deaths of peo­ple with­out homes with­in the IFSC.

This area was specif­i­cal­ly estab­lished to cel­e­brate and pro­mote greed, inequal­i­ty and tax avoid­ance and it places Ire­land as one of the major hubs of glob­al inter­na­tion­al tax dodg­ing.

The IFSC is home to €2,200,000,000,000 (€2.2 tril­lion) of wealth, a sum that is eight times the size of the entire Irish econ­o­my.  For some more per­spec­tive, €2.2 tril­lion would pay for the states cur­rent hous­ing spend for over 400,000 years. Yes, you read that right: 400,000 years.

Our entire econ­o­my is root­ed in grow­ing inequal­i­ty, grow­ing home­less­ness and depress­ing­ly, we wit­ness reg­u­lar deaths on our streets because peo­ple are liv­ing with­out a home.

A man with­out a home dying at the IFSC?
What sym­bol­ism.
What irony.
What a pic­ture of our sick, sick soci­ety.

ENDS