Sir, - It is about 10.30 on Saturday night and Dublin is humming. People have places to go, friends to meet and avoid, plenty to say, money to spend and many's the pub in which to spend it. This isn't a bad place to be of a Saturday night in August, unless you are nine years old, with your arms wrapped inside a T-shirt to keep them warm, as you watch feet and legs pass you by. There's not much more to see when you are sitting on a pavement in a doorway trying to catch the attention of some of the chatty passers-by, hoping they will see you, hoping they will give you some money. Some of them do, most of them don't even see you.
"I need enough money for a hostel. . .Edward. . .I'm nine." He answers my questions in the kind of monotone voice in which no nine-year-old should ever speak. Is there a hostel for Edward at 10.30 on a Saturday night? I have no idea what it is like to sit on the side of a street and depend on the attention of passers-by for my security for a night. I have no idea what it is like to be so invisible and insecure. I don't imagine anyone reading this letter has either.
I joined my own particular group of chatty people. The pub was crowded but signs asked us not to take our drinks outside - it would be breaking some law or other. Anyone who chanced going outside was soon sent back in - a steady Garda presence ensured that. The agents of the State could be spared to keep a street free from a spill-over crowd from a pub as Edward sat 50 feet away. Which agents of the State are responsible for him? Where were they and where are they, night after night?
This is not complicated. For crying out loud, in the name of anything that is half-way decent, can we cut the debate about how we should spend the famous surplus? Surely it is obvious. - Yours, etc., Mary Bigley,
Belfield Court, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.