By Andy Spearman
Forty years ago The Specials had a big hit with a song about their hometown of Coventry resembling a ghost town such were the ravages of urban blight, unemployment, drugs and violence.
They could sing the same lyrics today about Drogheda which for many years has displayed many of the signs of being almost forgotten about by central and local government.
As we approach the end of 2021, which was supposed to be a year of celebration for the founding of the State, I can’t help wondering what the brave men and women who fought so hard, many at the cost of their lives, would make of what has become of the country.
Would they even recognise the Ireland of today with the ostentatious shows of wealth on the one hand and deep poverty and suffering on the other?
They would surely be shocked to see people living on the streets, whole families being put up in hotel bedrooms because there is nowhere else for them to live.
Shocked also, at the long queues at soup kitchens and food banks, all part of the hardship that is life for so many people in the Ireland of the 21st century.
They fought to rid this country of absentee landlords from abroad but they have since been replaced by home grown versions who are just as greedy.
The upshot is that we now have a generation of young people who are in despair of ever having their own home. The public housing sector is a shambles with waiting lists lasting many years and rents in the private sector are so exorbitant that it is almost impossible for young couples to save the deposit on their own home.
When they do manage to accumulate the deposit on a house or apartment, which has probably doubled in price whilst they were saving, the interest on their mortgage is roughly twice the rate of other EU countries. This from the institutions which we had to bail out to prevent the country going down the tubes the last time.
For months now the government has been blowing its “housing for all” trumpet promising over 300,000 new homes including 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable purchase homes and 18,000 cost rental homes to be built by the end of 2030 and strengthening the capacity of Local Authorities to initiate, design, plan, develop and manage housing projects.
Hopefully something will come of it all but, if Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and Louth County Council can’t even get the Port Access Northern Cross Route over the line, it has been in the offing for almost 20 years after all, it would make you wonder if it is ever going to happen.
The last time I asked Louth County Council for an update on the PANCR project, just before Christmas, they gave me their customary one line response: ‘It remains a top priority and all potential avenues for funding and delivery of the road continue to be explored.”
Private developers are already building houses around the town for those that can afford them but the lack of a proper road system means that the already chaotic traffic can only get a lot worse.
If the Council and the Department can’t crack the PANCR nut and get to work on it in the next few months then it is surely reasonable for people to think they are being badly served and to demand that heads must roll.
