Musicians on the General Election: Tracy Bruen on housing, mental health and direct provision

There’s a real lack of security for everyone when it comes to housing. Back in the day, if you worked hard, saved your money, and did everything right, you could buy your house and have security for life. That’s not our deal anymore.

We’re adults, but our deal is different to the deal that our parents had.

Myself and my husband were evicted a couple of years ago. It was like the ground was taken out from under me. You can never really feel fully secure after that’s happened to you. You’re always looking over your shoulder wondering, ‘At any moment, could everything change again?’

The housing crisis and the increased homelessness has been the biggest issue on my mind ahead of the election. You hear of all these children living in hotels, and the increased amount of people living on the street – and it’s just absolutely horrific.

Life is tough at the moment, and it's expensive – so housing and this feeling of insecurity can also impact hugely on our mental health.

I live in Galway, and mental health is a huge issue here. We’re surrounded by water, and every couple of nights you hear the helicopter going – and we all know what it means. I’ve been in counselling and it’s completely saved me during difficult times in my life. But I’ve been privileged enough to be able to afford to pay for private counselling, and I haven’t had to wait around on lists – for however long that may take. Looking after your mental health is so expensive in this country, and it shouldn’t be.

I really feel that the government, and previous governments, just haven’t done enough.

At the moment, I'm also involved in campaigning against direct provision. I have friends in the direct provision community, and some have been served deportation orders and others are awaiting an imminent deportation order.

We had issues in Oughterard, where the far-right hijacked people's genuine concerns. People were worried that the government was strong-arming a situation – moving in a lot of people without any consultation or any services. But of course, it was completely taken over by the far-right and the so-called yellow vest movement. A lot of our public representatives said things that were untruthful, and it was pretty heinous at the time.

We had a government that didn’t call anyone to account – allowing these conversations to start happening, and allowing this sort of racism to brew. It allows people to focus on immigrants and asylum seekers as the problem – but they’re not. If we vote again for more of the same, nothing will change. The people who are the most vulnerable are the last people who will be looked after.

But it's not all doom and gloom! We have a really strong left in Galway at the moment, between the Social Democrats, the Greens, Independent Catherine Connolly and People Before Profit. With these candidates, we’re hoping to make some serious gains on the left in this election – which would be so inspiring to see.

Tracy Bruen's new single, 'Dream Away', is out now.