Dail Protest and Motion on Housing Emergency – an acid test for Fine Gael and Fianna Fail
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, must today choose between vulture funds and speculators and the housing needs of ordinary people
In a statement, Richard Boyd Barrett, TD for People Before Profit in Dun Lagohaire who will open and close today’s Dail debate on the housing emergency as part of the #RaisetheRoof housing protest has said:
“Today’s Dail motion is an acid test for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Today we will discover where their real priorities lie: with a generation who need affordable homes or with the property speculators who are profiting from the current housing emergency.”
Today’s Dail motion, will be taken in People Before Profit’s Private Members Time, but is also supported by Solidarity, Sinn Fein, Social Democrats, Independents 4 Change, Seamus Healy, Greens and Labour.
The motion calls for the following:
- A declaration of a housing and homeless emergency
- A dramatic increase in the capital spending on housing to €2.3bn in budget 2019
- End evictions into homelessness
- More aggressive measures to bring empty properties and unused building land into use for housing.
- Real rent controls top achieve affordable rents
- Increase the proportion of public and affordable housing in private developments
Richard Boyd Barrett said: “Today’s protest and Dail motion will reveal the true colours of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail when it comes to the housing emergency.
“Are they prioritising the needs of a whole generation who are losing hope they will ever have a secure, affordable home of their own or will they continue to promote the interests of vulture funds, property speculators and landlords who are profiting from the housing crisis.
“The government say their plan is working and that it will deliver both public and affordable housing. The reality is that in Dublin City Council area in the first half of this year only 16 council houses were built, and this is the council with the longest housing list in the country. Only 203 were built across all 4 Dublin councils, this is a disastrous failure and a recipe for the crisis to escalate.
“This is not a matter of ‘things taking time’; this is a matter of fundamental antipathy on the part of Fine Gael to build housing and an obsession with a private and for-profit view of housing
“Only a mass movement of people power, of the homeless, of housing applicants, of workers, of students and young people affected by this ciris will force radical change of policy that is needed.”