People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin said,
“We welcome the Trades Council Consultative Committee statement opposing plans by the Sinn Féin Department of Communities Minister Deidre Hargey to privatise the Housing Executive.
The Trades Union Council statement highlights what we and many other housing campaigners have said over many years – there have always been alternative ways available for the Executive to restore the Housing Executive’s ability to build new houses and renovate existing stock.
For example, the Executive parties, nationalist and unionist, were united in wanting to use £300 million a year from the block grant to cover the cost of their plans to slash taxes on big corporations. The Executive could have been putting £100 million into the Housing Executive every year over the last decade. That would have allowed the NIHE to end the housing crisis.
In her influential book Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein describes how governments and corporations take advantage of crises to ram through long opposed objectives. Sinn Féin have cynically chosen to pursue a plan to privatise the NIHE by reclassifying it as a mutual/co-operative entity during the pandemic crisis.
All our public services – the health service, transportation, education – are facing intensified pressures because of the pandemic. Those, including all the Executive parties, who have pushed privatisation before the pandemic are using the crisis to further weaken all our public services. Their aim is to radically reorganise our society to benefit corporations and the politically connected.
People Before Profit will work with others to make sure there is a determined fight to defend public services. We need to unite across the divide and utilise people power to defend all working class communities. This includes a demand for the Housing Executive to be given the ability to build thousands of new homes.”