HOUSING and urban renewal Minister Liz McManus is welcoming her counterparts from around Europe to a conference on Housing and Social Exclusion here in Dublin this week. People who have no place to call home have for many years been the Cinderella of Irish politics, but the fact Ms McManus has invited her European colleagues to discuss housing for the socially excluded is a most welcome development and a fine tribute to Ms McManus's commitment to housing and to alleviating homelessness.

We look forward to hearing what the conference has to say and to seeing new initiatives for the homeless coming out of their deliberations.

Another event this week is the publication of an anthology of poetry and prose called Home. The anthology comprises the varied responses of some of the finest poets and writers in Ireland today to the theme of "home".

Some people who were asked to give a contribution from the body of their work to this book chose reflective pieces about childhood homes, laden with memories of house and family - not all happy memories, but deeply personal and rooted in place: I can't remember, it all happened too recently, But somebody was born in every room.

Eilean Ni Chuilleanain

Others wrote about new homes, for example, the new house of a couple starting out together, building their first home: This house is built on our embrace

And there are worse foundations

Eavan Boland

What is this room

But the moments we have lived in it?

Brendan Kennelly

The book also reflects the despair of those who lose their homes: Unsettled, panicky, astray

I course over the whole country

Seamus Heaney

And it looks also at homecomings, events that are not always the joyous occasions we might expect: What a surprise the familiar always is. It was all there, the broken gate, the drive, the long meadow, the oak wood - home! - all perfectly in place, waiting for me, a little smaller than I remembered, like a scale-model of itself... I must go carefully, this is perilous ground.

John Banville

I trailed unwillingly in the wake of those memories ... I tried to hold out against the thought that no matter how many ties or under what circumstances I might arrive in that station, the feeling would always be one of defeat.

James Ryan

I have worked for many years now with Focus Point Ireland, the organisation behind the publication of Home, and whose mission is to alleviate and prevent homelessness in Ireland. The inspiration and the seed bed for Focus Point was a group of women who were out of home, with whom I lived and worked 11 years ago now. When I talked with them and listened to them about the experience of being out of home, it became very clear to me that a home is more than a roof over one's head - though a place without a roof wouldn't qualify as a home. They said being without a home meant being without safety and security, being without dignity and respect. They were saying very clearly that a home is a place where one can feel safe and secure, warm and dry and protected, where one can be oneself, where one can rest and eat, sleep and be entertained, love and laugh, argue and cry, read a book, share a meal, watch a television programme, play an instrument, do a bit of gardening, play with the kids, have a drink, get the housework done and the bills paid, where one is at ease with oneself and with one's family and friends, without fear of intrusion or interference: I closed my eyes and breathed in and breathed out

It is ecstasy to breathe if you are at home in the world.

What a windfall! A home of our own!

Paul Durcan

Then I knew what a house says to the people who make their home in it. It comes up behind you and whispers in your ear: "You have a life. You are a family. This is where you are from."

Eleanor Flegg

Over the years, we at Focus Point Ireland have worked to help people who find themselves without a place that they can call home. We provide practical help, information and advocacy for people who are out of home, we provide housing for people who might otherwise find it difficult to be housed, and we research and publish studies on homelessness and housing. We also campaign and lobby on behalf of people who are out of home, and we try to educate the public and keep them aware of the issue of homelessness. But underlying all this practical work is a philosophical commitment to the idea of home and to the tenet that everyone has a right to a place to call home.

We who work so closely with people who have no homes feel that is important to reflect from time to time on the emotional construct of home - a place to be safe and at ease, as opposed just to an address or a house. We are always keen to find new ways to share these reflections with the public, on whom we rely so much for support. That is one of our principal reasons for publishing Home.