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Some of you may know that I worked with emigrants. When I read the work of many selfless men and women I commissioned a book which was researched and written by Dr. Patricia Kennedy of UCD. What started out as an objective work on her part opened her heart and mind to these amazing folk one of whom was Eamonn Casey. If we had their kind around today we’d have the migrant crisis near sorted.

Here is an extract from her book entitled ‘Welcoming the Stranger’:

© 2015 Patricia Kennedy
Fr Casey soon recognized that Slough had a housing problem as acute as anywhere in the country. He found that a few young couples had, on the arrival of their first baby, been evicted from the singleroom flat they had rented for £5 per week. A close examination of their problems, their pattern of employment, savings and future savings potential, disclosed that with a little financial assistance they could secure a mortgage and a house of their own. He spoke of the thousands of families in caravans who had given up hope and had ‘staked out pathetic little gardens’.7

He recognized that many had lost any hope of homes, families, having children, and reunificationwi th their families. He also realized, however, that a house could be bought with a £200 deposit: ‘This amount was the difference between
appalling conditions and a “normal” life.’ He discovered that people had a difficulty, not with repayment, but with getting money for a deposit. Explaining the origins of the scheme, he laughed at his own enthusiasm and innocence: he had walked into a bank in Slough,and in forty minutes, standing at the counter, he convinced the bank manager to back his scheme. ‘I went into the bank where the church
had its account and I asked to see the bank manager. I explained what many Irish parishioners were facing when trying to buy a house.’ He asked, if he were to lodge £1,000 (which he had received from his own father) as security and wanted no interest, would the bank loan amounts of up to £400 to individuals who had already saved £400
for their deposit, up to a total of £5,000—which would help twelve couples.11 He went on: ‘When the first £1,000 was committed, I lodged another £1,000.’12 He encouraged people to save systematically. He set up his own Parish Savings Scheme, a facility with a dedicated volunteer
which stayed open late on Friday evenings to accommodate the return of men working outside Slough on the motorways and other building projects. They gave Eamonn Casey money, which he put in the bank. Once they had saved £50, eighty percent of it was put into a building society. This helped the individual to save with both bank and building society and establish a reputation as a saver with both. Fr
Casey explained: ‘All these guys would not get home until about nine on a Friday night. They were out working on the roads. I opened myow n savings scheme and a volunteer attended it for fifteen years from 8 pm-12 am on a Friday night.’ In the first year of Fr Casey’s scheme, the bank advanced a total of £4,865 on the strength of the original £1,000 deposit.14 Nineteen families were enabled to purchase their houses. Encouraged by these results, in July 1962, he made another £1,000 deposit provided by local
fundraising efforts and another £1,000 given by a donor, in January 1963.

By the end of March 1963, forty-five families had purchased
houses.