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Lisa O’Neill enlists Pete Doherty for new single to highlight the plight of Dublin’s homeless

Lisa O’Neill enlists Pete Doherty for new single to highlight the plight of Dublin’s homeless

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Is it cause my landlord  can’t even look at me? / So high up on the ladder, they can’t see the streets.

Cavan singer-songwriter Lisa O’Neill has released a charity song called ‘Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin In The Digital Age)’ aimed at highlighting the ongoing homelessness on Dublin city streets.

Pete Doherty of The Libertines provides vocals and words on it, while Cormac Begley plays the concertina and Colm Mac Con Iomaire plays violin. It was shared over the weekend with a statement from Lisa, and was performed on the Tommy Tiernan show on RTÉ over the weekend.

We write what we see. I have lived in Dublin City for 24 years. As winter 2024 approached, this is the song that came to me. And here are some thoughts on why I’ve chosen to put it out at the start of this new year. As our new Government make plans to rejuvenate our capital city centre, by spending to embrace the streets, its history, its buildings (occupied and empty) and its artists, I hope my song will help them recall what is truly at the heart of this, and any city or community around the world. At the heart of the city is the people of the city. They are the pulse. If the pulse stops, the heart stops.

Kindness is human strength.

Housing is a human need.

January 2025, and Ireland has a housing crisis that is off the charts. It is 109 years since Padraig Pearce stood outside the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street and read The Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

“The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.”

Outside that same GPO today you will find several charities operating soup kitchens to help feed those in need.  To name a few The Muslim Sisters of Eire, Hope in the Darkness Soup Run and Dublin Herb Bike – all of whom have been providing hot and nourishing meals, sleeping bags, care, attention and hope to people that need their services.   These charities, amongst many others, have been operating for at least a decade…

Introducing by-laws to regulate these soup kitchens, as our newly formed government is trying to do now, will hide the harsh reality of homelessness from the eyes of society.

The problem will not go away by unseeing.

The problem can only be resolved by seeing and helping.

– Lisa O’Neill

Thank you to the musicians who helped make this track, Peter Doherty for vocals and lyrical contribution, Brian Leach on Hammered Dulcimer and Banjo, Joseph Doyle on Double Bass, Colm Mac Con Iomaire on Violin, Cormac Begley on Concertinas and David Odlum for production and mixing. 

lyrics

Homeless in the thousands
Worsens everyday
This the state the Dublin in the digital age

They were homeless in the dozens 
When I was a kid
They say that things were bad then
But this is off grid

Is it cause my father
Went and lost his way
When he lost his wages 
out of Dublin bay?

Is it cause my Mammy
Had me out of wedlock?
Born in to a laundry 
Never did catch up..

Is it cause my landlord 
Can’t even look at me?
So high up on the ladder
They can’t see the streets 

I’m begging cause I’m hungry
I’m strung out cause I’m cold
I just want to lie down
And be left alone

No, it’s cause like, I calls it Gods apples or Gods fish type cause those times, 
Ye know, it was a smaller, smaller type population,
you could go get your own fish and apples, 
Not like needing money an idea and that 
I was laughing about it with my sister, man well she’s not my sister cause she’s Asian ,
Well, I know you can have an Asian sister but it’s cause we were both put in the same foster care,
same foster family, was saying right that even though we’ve been in care,
we’ve both got kids who’s in care,
No-one really cared like,
Like that bloke from the BBC, he was saying like, I should trust him,
I said, I don’t need to trust you to talk to you about being homeless
Because ye know,  no-one trusted me  and I never really trusted anyone, ye know
But I was laughing about it with my sister who’s not really my sister,
Yeah? 
Is that?

Some say change is coming
I say change has come
No one carries change in
their pockets anymore 

You might spare a moment 
Share some poor souls pain
Meet them in the eyes at least
If you can’t spare change 

All our heroes would be reeling
and rolling in their graves
If they saw the state of 
O’Connell street today 

Homeless in the thousands
Worsens by the day 
Thiss the state of Dublin 
In the digital age 

As the rich get richer are they free?
They just as lost as you and me?
There’s a thousand cranes along the quays
Keep building up, pushing down on me
I was born into the Liberties
Got no clean clothes and nowhere to sleep
But I’m rich in soul and history
Least I’m home in this poverty
They are building a hospital it seems
5 star rooms but no room for me
I was born into the Liberties
I’ve been 16 years sleeping on these streets


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