THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
Six months back at the table and the Government is stricken with inertia when it comes to solving the ongoing problems of health, special needs education, asylum seekers, still high energy costs and the crisis that is homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. Indeed, the lack of any housing. And the same old dross is trotted out each day on media by those we put in charge about the “Government’s plans” and so on, ‘til the cows come home. Zilch has been achieved in any guise.
Lack of housing is arguably the most contentious issue. The timeline for the setting up of a proposed housing activation office is now uncertain after the Government was forced to climb down over the appointment of Nama boss Brendan McDonagh as its ‘housing tsar’. McDonagh told Housing Minister James Browne that he was withdrawing his name from consideration for any role with the Strategic Housing Activation Office because of the outcry over, among other matters, a whopping €430,000 salary for the job.
A recent RTE Frontline with Katie Hannon saw an angry audience take issue with Minister of State for Older People Kieran O’Donnell who advocates that seniors should be “encouraged” to trade down their ‘big house’ – where their children have grown and left – and make way for up-and-coming families. The minister floundered, not least on the question of where those willing to downsize could in fact downsize to, given – you understand – the lack of, eh, housing.
There are those in their autumn years who would be willing to downsize, given the right settings and where a big house on one’s own, with ageing, proving increasingly impractical. Then, there are many who do not wish to downsize, citing their own home as being their life-long adult dwelling place and the community and good neighbours a pertinent factor.
A man’s house is his castle. The adage likely dates back to the English judge Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cooke) who in 1604 declared in a ruling, known as Semayne’s Case, that there were strict limits on how sheriffs (or bailiffs) may enter a man’s house. It was his fortress, his castle.
I abide alone in my four-bedroom house. It is in a cul-de-sac and overlooks a heritage park with two watermills and a lake, providing a peaceful and serene setting. My three adult children have long left the nest and their mother and I are amicably divorced. I am in relatively good health – the old balance, unfortunately, isn’t what it used to be – and bar some future decrepitness which, heaven forbid, sees me in a care home I intend staying put, thank you very much.
There are too many memories hidden in the walls and crevices, so many echoes of joy, laughter and tears and sadness that reverberate down 40 odd years for me to just up and walk away and start all over again – indeed, I don’t have that time on my side. In the once playroom-then-office there is now a silence, the top of my desk and its drawers full of remnants of old newspaper work and framed photos of the children, when children, that gaze back at me when I enter. It was only yesterday they were playing carefree.
In the conservatory lies the now silent high-end stereo equipment and too-many-to-count vinyls and CDs that are testament to my eight years as a music critic, I can still see us all dancing on a Saturday night with our neighbours, firm friends, to the music of the Stones or Abba. My Africa Corner has books of the history of that troubled continent – there are books and tomes on shelves and such all over the house – and memorabilia, statuettes made of soapstone, a bloodied dagger from the killing fields of Kenya, from the many trips transversing the sub-Sahara. My wife recently did a big revamp of that corner and it looks brighter and better, and within its confines I hear the crackle of gunfire from the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe war or once again watch close-up a lion in Tanzania kill a kudo (antelope) by wringing its neck until it succumbs.
As I climb the stairs, weary at night, the creaking sounds of the steps are like being enveloped in an old familiar overcoat. Indeed, every thing about my house, its sounds, its smells, is soothing in its familiarity, and my refuge from the chaotic world outside.
Sorry minister but I ain’t movin’. Go, do your job…
