Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The recently launched campaign by three of our largest trade unions—SIPTU, Fórsa, and Connect—is to be welcomed. Under the slogan “More Power to You,” it is asking voters to take the local power pledge: “I believe in local government.” This is a pledge to use your vote in the coming […]
On 30 January the Irish Congress of Trade Unions held a housing conference under the banner of “Raise the Roof.” The two main demands to come out of the conference were the need for public housing and for the right to housing to be enshrined in the Constitution of Ireland. […]
There has been a lot of spin about the recent eviction in Co. Roscommon. The fact of the matter is that the Central Bank stated in April 2018 that more than 29,000 mortgages are in arrears for at least two years. It estimates that more than half of these will […]
The true class nature of the Irish state was exposed recently at the eviction of the Take Back the City group from a house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, when employees of a private security firm, masked and armed with sledgehammers and cutting equipment, smashed into the occupied premises while […]
This summer has indeed been very different from summers of the past—and it wasn’t just the long period of hot weather. There has been a sustained period of civil disobedience by ordinary citizens, who have been marginalised by high rents and low pay as a result of the neo-liberal policies […]
Cork Branch, Connolly Youth Movement Members of the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM) had inhabited two buildings, dubbed Kent House and Mellows House, to highlight the ongoing housing crisis. The six residents had been living there for over two months. However, on July 24, a worker of the maintenance group […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland 24 July 2018 The Communist Party of Ireland notes with interest the comments made by the minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, when addressing the media. He admitted that the rent of a two-bedroom apartment in the proposed “cost-rental” development at St Michael’s Estate, […]
“Cost-rental model” is the flavour of the month as a way of solving the housing emergency and making the provision of shelter more affordable and sustainable. The cost-rental model is a system whereby the total cost of a housing development (land, design, construction, property management and maintenance) is divided by […]
Universal public housing available to all is the only lasting solution to the housing crisis. The latest homelessness figures should be shocking and sickening for a civilised society. However, in modern Ireland they are just the latest in a long line of failures by this Government and its neo-liberal housing […]
Ideology has dominated the Irish housing sector since the outset. There is no period in history, even during times of relatively robust state house-building, that could be said to have had a stable or working housing system. From tenements to failed housing experiments to bubbles, the Irish story of housing […]
Many people in Ireland yearn for a change of government, to one that would govern in the people’s interests and not renege on electoral promises once they enter Dáil Éireann. A noble dream it may be, but how real is it? Let’s briefly look at the Right2Water campaign. The CPI […]
The Campaign for Public Housing was launched in Dublin at the end of October. The CPI is one of a number of socialist organisations, tenants’ associations, community activists and other groups that make up the broad alliance within the campaign. The campaign was launched in Dublin, but it is planned […]
The saying “After all is said and done there is usually more said than done” would nicely sit with the Dublin government at this time, especially in their response to the housing crisis. If we are to believe the media, Simon Coveney more or less begged the previous taoiseach, Enda […]
Frustrated at the failure of governments to tackle the problem of homelessness, a number of organisations under the umbrella of Home Sweet Home, including the Irish Housing Network, trade unions, and artists and musicians, have taken on the Government in an organised act of civil disobedience. There are now 6,847 […]
As a solution to the housing, rent and homelessness crisis we need a massive public housing plan, with both new construction and the conversion of NAMA property into public housing. The advantages of public housing to working people are many. It would not just resolve the present crisis—a national emergency […]
A small number of builders and developers own the land zoned for housing around Dublin. They are the suppliers of housing, and they have control over supply. As monopolists or semi-monopolists they have a vested interest in the high and rising prices for new houses. If prices rise, their profits […]