‘Do they want the Church to run the country for them’ – Bro. Kevin

Homeless campaigners question why State won’t build on existing land

Leading homelessness campaigners have questioned why the Government is turning to the Church asking for land for housing when the State is sitting on vast swathes of available land.

Insisting that the Church and faith-inspired agencies should and will continue to play their part in helping tackle the housing crisis, Capuchin Bro. Kevin Crowley asked: “what do they want us to do? Do they want the Church to run the country for them?” he told The Irish Catholic.

It comes as the Government leaked a letter Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien wrote to Archbishop Eamon Martin asking the Church to identify vacant land and buildings that could be used to build housing.

As this newspaper went to press this week, the letter had not yet been received by the Archbishop of Armagh despite the minister’s claim that he sent it days before the contents were leaked to the press.

Bro. Kevin, director of the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin, said he feels his own congregation is doing all it can to assist the homeless and people in need.

“The Church is doing a lot. As far as I’m concerned, we as Capuchins, we are doing sufficient for the homeless and the people in need,” he said. “What do they want us to do? Do they want the Church to run the country for them?”

“We made our church available during the lockdown because we weren’t allowed to have people into the centre because of Covid-19. What we are doing is we are giving out takeaway food and dinners and they’re allowed to have these in the church.”

While primarily addressing hunger, the Capuchins also donated €5m in 2019 to housing charity the Peter McVerry Trust to fund the building of 25 homes.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Fr Peter McVerry SJ welcomed the Government reaching out to the Church, saying the “enormous” housing crisis requires an “all hands on deck approach” but the “primary responsibility must lie with the State, and the State must start building”.

“I think the Church should be using everything at its disposal to alleviate the crisis. Having said that, the State has enough land to build more than 100,000 houses,” he said, and that any Church land that can be disposed of should be used to supplement that.

“The State does have enough land, what it has been doing to date is selling that land to the private sector in return for 10% or 20% social housing. That is a waste of public land, it’s selling the family jewels, public land should be used for public housing and if the State commits to using public land only for public housing, then I think the Church should play its role,” Fr McVerry said.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy RSC, who founded Focus Ireland, said anyone who has free land should make it available for housing, as Ireland faces “a huge crisis and we need all the land we can get to build on”.

“I would be encouraging the Church, if it has land it doesn’t use, if it has buildings it doesn’t use, make them available. They may not be able to afford to give them for free but I think the State would buy them,” Sr Stan said.

However, she added that “I think it [the State] should do a lot more itself, any land that it has available should be used for housing, it may have the impression the Church has a lot of land, I don’t think it has…any land that is available – rather than selling it to developers – it should be made available for social and affordable housing”.

Sophia Housing, a charity which provides housing and homeless services, has already been working with a religious congregation who are using the land they own for housing.

CEO Tony O’Riordan welcomed dialogue between Church and State regarding housing, something the charity has already been doing with congregations including the Presentation Sisters, Sisters of Mercy, Franciscan Brothers, Sisters of Charity of St Paul the Apostle, and the Sisters of St John of God.

“From the Sophia side there’s an awful lot of positives to learn from in terms of the number of housing units that we’re bringing on board because of the support of religious congregations,” he said.

“There’s an awful lot to be learned from the imagination and courage of the religious congregations in how they step forward to meet probably one of the most pressing social needs in Irish society,” he said.

A spokesman for Archbishop Martin said that “when received” the archbishop will “consider its content carefully and will, in consultation with his brother bishops, reflect on it during the Autumn General Meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in October.

“The crisis of housing and homelessness is a key social justice challenge of this generation. Catholic social teaching recognises that housing is a universal human right, with corresponding responsibilities on societies to honour that right.

“Therefore, we must all work towards resolving this crisis in the interest of the common good. In recent years, the faith sector has been particularly vocal in calling for radical action from the State in order to alleviate the housing and homelessness problem,” he said pointing to the number of times the Church has called for action including pre-election statements and a pastoral letter in 2018.