Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The crisis in housing is official Government policy. It is not an unintended consequence. The profit margins of the various corporate property funds that have entered the Irish housing market since 2013 require a crisis, in the supply of both public housing and affordable housing for purchase, leading to a […]
The mantra “You need to own your own house” or to “get on the property ladder” has great appeal in the Irish psyche. Young couples will queue outside building sites for days to get their “dream home.” While they wait, and it makes the evening news, the original price of […]
Housing policy in both jurisdictions in Ireland has failed the citizens abysmally. One of the sources of communal revolt in the North was the unfair distribution of housing. As only ratepayers and their spouses had a vote in local elections, priority in housing was given to the unionist community, to allow them to control the councils.
In 2019 there were 37,859 applicants on the social housing list in the north of Ireland. 26,387 of those were deemed to be in priority need of housing, described as housing stress; 74 per cent of those were considered officially homeless. These grim statistics are compounded by the fact that […]
The Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) is Ireland’s only union organised within the community you are living in—in the same way that a trade union branch is based within a workplace. CATU members come together to combat not only issues concerning tenancy but anything that affects the whole community, such […]
The efforts to form a “government of the willing” following the general election earlier this year rumble on. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had to pretend to dance and engage in a courting ritual to give the impression that there are significant ideological and political differences between them, thereby requiring such a long period to produce a draft programme for government. Fianna Fáil are desperate to get into government at any cost in order to re-establish a presence in urban areas.
But what drives the state and these two main parties of the establishment is the need to thwart the desire of working people for real, meaningful change, as
Covid-19 and the global economy – Ewan MacDonaldDownload Is coronavirus the problem? Over the course of the next few years we will hear the same excuse over and over again. The social and economic crises we are experiencing the first moments of will be levelled at the feet of the […]
Class solidarity, not social partnership – Jimmy DoranDownload The trade union movement must not compromise on “social partnership” after this pandemic is over. It is not our class that must compromise but the ruling class, as the failure of capitalism has been exposed beyond all doubt as a result of […]
Eoin Ó Broin, Home: Why Public Housing Is the Answer (Dublin: Merrion Press, 2020). Much like its author, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing, Home is a very nice and pleasant book. However, given the context of an ever-increasing homelessness crisis, it falls short of providing a truly transformative solution to […]
On the night of the census in 2016 there were 429 homeless students in Ireland, making up over 8 per cent of the total homeless numbers. When the Government’s student accommodation strategy was launched in July 2017 there was an excess demand in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) of over 23,000 […]
Vulture funds have become passé. The latest fad taking hold in the property market is the cuckoo fund—aptly named, as they push the individual or family buyer out of their potential nest.
Last month we saw the largest housing demonstration in Dublin so far, under the banner of Raise the Roof, as more than 20,000 citizens took to the streets. This campaign, launched by the ICTU, is going from strength to strength as the trade union movement takes the lead, uniting with […]
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 […]
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, […]