Cork Simon Director, Dr. Dermot Kavanagh, talks about what Cork Simon means to him, the right to housing and Cork Simon’s recipe and ambition for ending long term homelessness in Cork.

“The people who become homeless should have as equal a chance to benefit from life’s opportunities as everybody else. They’re absolutely equal to everybody else and deserving of the same chances and opportunities as everybody else. Collectively, as a society, we have to recognise that reality and that you have to have your home and your health to make a go of it in society.

It’s a shame that we don’t have a society where having a home is considered a fundamental human right, as yet. I know the majority of people think it should be, but we don’t have that kind of society yet and we have seen a prioritisation of private profit when it comes to housing rather than meeting social needs and that’s pretty disgraceful.

There’s been a revolution in attitudes on other matters and endings of other forms of oppression, or at least severe curtailing of, like the recent referendum on marriage equality and the women’s right to choose referendum. So, we’re a very different society to what we were 50 years ago and there just needs to be a biting of the bullet on these other social matters. There’s never a better time than now.”

Dermot’s potted history of Cork Simon’s journey to date…