People need to ‘back off and give housing staff a break’
SPECIAL MEETING HEARS THAT COUNCIL HOUSING STAFF ARE BEING ‘TARGETED’ ONLINE AMID CONCERNS OVER WEXFORD’S ROUGH SLEEPERS
AT yesterday’s special meeting of Wexford County Council focused on housing, Council Chief Executive Tom Enright once again blasted the use of social media to criticise county council housing staff.
In previous weeks, local charity Wexford People Helping People ( WPHP) had been extremely critical of the council’s response to rough sleepers in cold and stormy weather and had taken to Facebook on a number of occasions to update the public as to some of the barriers they were facing. Founder of WPHP Claire Malone was in attendance at yesterday’s meeting, but as a member of the public, could not contribute. However, Mr Enright did not reference any particular group in his comments.
‘In terms of homelessness, it’s important to say that the only way that we can address this situation is for the council and other agencies to work together,’ he said. ‘ This situation won’t be solved by using social media to attack. I’m seeing names of people accessing homeless services quoted on social media. I’ve also seen some very misleading information presented as fact. None of this is helpful and we won’t solve this issue by criticising on social media. We need to work together in order to provide more supports and help these people as best we can.’
Cllr Davy Hynes said that GDPR issues were a big problem, because it’s hard to find out what exactly is going on.
‘GDPR is a disaster,’ he said. ‘No wonder things end up on social media. Nobody knows what’s happening. We never know who gets houses etc.’
Cllr Tom Forde pointed to the housing department’s ‘inability to communicate effectively’ with elected reps, external organisations and the general public.
While the majority of elected members conceded that the housing staff were doing their best, Cllr Michael Sheehan was particularly vocal in his defence.
‘Last Friday night, I was speaking to a housing official at midnight over a particular case,’ he said. ‘Some of the staff are being targeted by people on social media by people without the proper information. A lot of the staff are under severe pressure and I would suggest that these people need to back off and give them a break.’