Madam, – Your Letters page highlights very clearly how the people most in need of help from the State continue to suffer and sadly many have already been lost.
Carl O’Brien’s excellent journalism (Stories of Suicide series) not only highlights the inadequacies but has succeeded in conveying the pain, frustration and lack of hope experienced by so many people and this at a time while millions was spent on glossy reports, all gathering dust.
We in Trust have been involved in working with people who are homeless for over 35 years and, despite the so-called Celtic Tiger, have witnessed the results of the running down of services through many of the people who come to our door every day. We are back to where we where when Trust was set up in 1975.
Writing to the Minister for Health in 1985 we referred to “the totally inadequate, unimaginative approach to services . . . In dealing with people so damaged, so often by our many institutions and that only long-term commitment from people free enough to search for the human being beneath the labels can help”. Alas, it has now been left to the Irish Times’s Carl O’Brien to highlight this issue, at a time when more and more people are becoming depressed and disillusioned. It is incumbent on those with responsibility to plan and deliver services to take heed and not hide behind highly-paid spin doctors, glossy reports and experts full of jargon. The Irish Times series should be mandatory reading for all concerned about how people are living in these troubling times. – Yours, etc,
ALICE LEAHY,
Director Co-Founder
Trust,
Bride Road, Dublin 8.
