Sharon is a working mother of two small children who has been privately renting in Wicklow since her marriage broke down in 2018. Sharon, who faces eviction in April was served notice to quit last year due to her landlord selling the house so she began her search for a new home on the private rental market.
Sharon moved to Wicklow with her ex husband shortly after they married, and while the relationship is now amicable, Sharon’s husband has bought a new home with a new partner and now lives in the West of Ireland, so Sharon is, for all intents and purposes, a single parent of two children.
Sharon spoke about the desperation of trying every thing to find a suitable rental – in January she had agreed to rent a 2 bedroom apartment, only for it to fall through due to an offer of 6 months rent up front from a young working couple with no children.
That was the closest she came to finding a new home for her and her children.
Sharon works in a well paid corporate job and both her children attend school in Wicklow. Although her salary is good, she has struggled to make ends meet over the past year and is reluctant to approach her ex husband for help.
“I have my pride, I have never asked the state for anything and was raised with a strong work ethic, I was given the opportunity to get a good education, I have a great job and I have always done things the right way,” she said.
Sharon has watched the events of the past few months unfold, never thinking she would form the opinions she now has about government policy and the media. She watched as two friends attended a Wicklow protest in November, which was based around concerns about hundreds of migrant men being placed in the Grand Hotel in Wicklow Town overnight, while the existing families living at the hotel say they lived in fear and uncertainty.
“Local politicians and local media here in Wicklow put out a narrative that people raising concerns were racist, and at that point I knew something was very wrong.
“I spoke to people locally who agreed with the people at that Wicklow protest, but they were afraid to be seen supporting the march because they had businesses or they didnt want to be seen as racist. The politicians behind that narrative were clever, it worked to shut people up, but there is a growing sense of anger among Irish people, and I am one of them – we are not stupid – we can see what they are doing.”
Sharon spoke of how she then saw the same narrative being played out across national media as protests around the country saw the same influx of asylum seekers.
“All the politicians and those in the media made out that if you had concerns about the logic of thousands of people from a multitude of different cultures arriving into a community without any long term plan for housing, resources or integration you were somehow racist or “far right”.
“The people marching [in Wicklow] that day were decent people, they had concerns for the existing hotel residents, they had concerns for their community.
”These were people who, for the most part just wanted answers and wanted reassurance – the media and politicians called them the worst possible thing you could call anyone, there was a fear of that label of being racist and there still is.
”As other protests arose, the government parties and the opposition parties used that tactic in unison and I was horrified.”
“Now I am in direct competition with thousands of new people that have entered the rental market, I see the statistics, I know how many people have arrived and are still arriving. I have to pay for food, electric, rent, what do they pay for?
“The local forums are full of people from everywhere looking for somewhere to live – I am in direct competition with these people, what hope do I have? If you add thousands more people to an already full market, where does it end?”
Sharon spoke about her anger at seeing a well organised and well funded concert and march promoted by almost every party in the country.
“I saw every party in opposition march in that “refugees welcome” March in town and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I saw your reporter ask Sinn Fein and Social Democrats representatives where all the people they wanted to continue coming into the country were going to go and they didn’t have an answer.
“How could that be? I was always a big fan of the Social Democrats, but how can you be advocating for thousands and thousands of new people to come into Ireland with nowhere to live and then complain about a housing crisis.”
“From my perspective, Stephen Donnelly, Simon Harris, John Brady, Steven Matthews and Jennifer Whitmore are all culpable for the mess we are in. On the one hand you have the opposition parties marching for unlimited immigration in the middle of a homeless crisis then you have the government parties piling more people in while voting to evict existing tenant’s – every single one of them should be ashamed to show their face but they don’t seem to care, they have their big salaries and expenses, faux concern doesn’t cut it, they ignore emails and pose for selfies on their social media accounts. It’s disgusting.”