Turning up the heat on house crisis

TAXPAYERS will be fuming that Leinster House is to spend €1.5million refurbishing chimneys despite health and safety measures preventing fires being lit.

The Irish Mirror exclusive comes just days after we revealed the Central Bank had splashed out €130,000 on a fancy light shade for its new headquarters.

Surely €1.5million would go some way to ensuring the hundreds of people sleeping on our streets and the thousands of families in hotel rooms have a place to call home.

At the weekend more than 400 GAA players showed their solidarity when they slept out on the streets as part of an initiative to raise awareness of the growing crisis.

During the past year, despite numerous promises, our politicians have done very little to address the homelessness problem.

It is 12 months since the Apollo House occupation brought the issue to the forefront of the public consciousness.

However, as winter passed the momentum fizzled out – and that cannot be allowed to happen again.

The dozens of rallies during the Weekend of Solidarity and Protest for Public Housing shows the amount of anger that still exists.

To date the response from Government has simply not been good enough, but if these acts of solidarity continue there will be immense pressure on the politicians to act.