By Finn McKenna
Henry Joy McCracken, a leader of the Irish 1798 rebellion, observed that “the rich always betray the poor.” In 2025, the rich of Dublin and their representatives also have contempt for them, and resent any uncomfortable reminders of their existence.
This is evident in proposals mooted for Dublin City Council (DCC) bylaw changes to prohibit volunteer groups from providing on-street food and personal services to Dublin’s homeless. It represents another callous attack on some of the most vulnerable people in Irish society.
Taskforce report
Many ordinary people are rightly outraged at this suggestion, which comes from Taoiseach Simon Harris’s Dublin City Taskforce report, published last October. Incredibly, those pushing the notion that volunteers providing soup runs are part of the problem, not the solution to the issue of glaring poverty in the City Centre, have the gall to portray these proposals as an act that’s protecting the “dignity” and “safety” of the recipients of these services.
But this veneer masks the reality: with ever-increasing numbers trapped in homelessness – with a record 15,000 now in emergency accommodation as per the most recent shameful figures – the state is embarrassed at the real-world visibility of this disaster.
The cynical veneer of concern
The Taskforce report argued that the model of on-street delivery in “high-profile locations risks the privacy, dignity and the safety of people using the service, attracts anti-social behaviour and drug dealing, and degrades the public realm.” (our emphasis)
The last part is particularly revealing. The parties of Irish capitalism have decimated much of the City with a decade of austerity and many more decades of neglect and poverty, resulting in social crises ranging from addiction to drug dealing (which overlap), and then bemoan the consequences of their political decision-making.
Perhaps more constructive and humane approaches, such as investing in a national public health service, expanding social services, implementing drug policy based on ending the criminalisation of drug abuse and building adequate and accessible public housing on a mass scale, would present more lasting solutions. It would also help those who need high-level care to recover.
The parties of the rich want to establish mechanisms which would push the most impoverished of the population out of the city in a cynical attempt at cosmetics tailored to tourists and big businesses.
Action to stop proposals
People Before Profit councillors on DCC submitted an emergency motion to oppose the implementation of these bylaws. If passed, this motion would materially reduce the provision and distribution of food and essential services for homeless people, as no alternatives currently exist. This motion should be supported.
Hundreds of people mobilised for a Dublin Food Not Bombs (the self-organised groups who altruistically take it upon themselves to provide care in the face of mass state neglect) protest outside City Hall on 6 January. This is an important start to building a movement to fight for a Dublin City geared towards our needs, such as ending the housing crisis, not one run to suit the interests of Ireland’s corporate elite.
