Gleeson urges investment in communities lacking services to ‘bring people along’

Irish actor Brendan Gleeson has said communities that are lacking in public services should be invested in if they are to accommodate large groups of people.

He was responding to a question about whether the Dublin riots in November or anti-immigrant incidents in some towns had changed Ireland’s image of being a welcoming country.

The Dubliner launched a fundraising drive on Wednesday asking people to support Bewley’s Big Coffee Morning for Hospice on September 26, organised by Together for Hospice.

Speaking to PA in Bewley’s Cafe, Gleeson said issues such as population increases in Ireland and people living for longer poses challenges which should not be met with “a blame game”.

“I would look to people to encourage and allow the more creative, positive, kinder instincts to prosper,” he said.

When asked if the Dublin riots or protests in Coolock in north Dublin, where asylum seekers are to be housed, had affected the image of Ireland as ‘the land of a hundred thousand welcomes’, Gleeson said people should be seen as the solution, not the problem.

“If you can’t go through the city, or you can’t get on a Dart (Dublin train service) without there being problems… I was just thinking today, why can’t they employ more people?

“Everywhere, they’re worried about employment being taken over by technology.

“But why don’t they have people on Darts that make sure that nobody is getting messed around, that old women feel safe on it, that old men feel safe on it?

“There’s a little bit of an element that happens where people are the problem instead of people are the point.”

Gleeson said that this was not done deliberately by politicians and that solving such issues are difficult, but emphasised the need to “bring more people on board”.

“If Ireland wants to stay more of the Ireland of the welcomes and less of Ireland of the division, I think you invest in the people. That’s what you do.

“By the way, my situation with people going out to particular areas, my idea is that if you are bringing a second child home to a first child, getting a new brother, new sister, you bring a little present.

“You make the first child feel enriched, not impoverished. It’s not ‘you’re out the window’… you bring the first child into it.

“I think if you’re going to put in a whole pile of people into an area, and the area is lacking in a proper health centre, a proper GP service, whatever it is, proper social facilities, you bring a present home from the hospital with you, and you bring in, say ‘we’re going to pump in this’. ‘It’ll be for the entire neighbourhood.’ ‘We’re going to put in a proper health centre.’

“That’s what you do.

“That’s how you accommodate the things because what you do is you alleviate some of the issues that were there already, instead of making them worse by saying ‘by the way, if you thought you didn’t have access to a GP now, you’re now going to have less of it’.

“And if the government is serious about accommodating that, what they have to say is, let’s bring a present home with the second child.”