Cork's Raise the Roof rally: Housing 'not just a crisis anymore, it's an emergency'
Raise the Roof protest march against government housing policy at Grand Parade Cork city on Saturday afternoon. Picture Larry Cummins
More than 1,000 people attended a cross-party, trade union-led rally in Cork city this afternoon to protest the lack of available housing.
A number of unions were present at he Raise the Roof rally including SIPTU, Forsa, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Connect, Unite, the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation (INTO), Mandate and Community Action Tenants Union (CATU).
TDs and councillors from Sinn Féin, the Green party, the Social Democrats and Labour attended the march, alongside members of People Before Profit, the Socialist party, Workers' Party, Connolly Youth Movement, Derelict Ireland and the Irish Traveller Movement.
Singer Martin Leahy performed his song at the protest, and said that the protest was personal to him as he spent over six months “among the hidden homeless”, staying with friends after he was evicted when his landlord was selling the property.
Protestors held signs as well as Irish flags, with Vivienne Farrell from Unite saying: “We’re reclaiming the tricolour, bringing it back where it needs to be.
Ciara Gannon, who was marching alongside other members of the Socialist Party, told that as a young person “we should be facilitated to stay in Cork and build lives here – I don’t want to move to Australia, so we need to keep coming out and demanding change".
“Immigrants are being scapegoated, but there’s more than enough houses there, we could house everyone in Ireland. We need to demand the government turn these empty houses into social housing, we have enough money to do it.”
Brendan Horan, vice president of the INTO, told “the cost of housing is a teacher’s issue as well as every other worker”, saying that currently teachers cannot afford even to rent properties in Dublin, which makes it difficult to fill teaching posts, and trends indicate this will be the case in Cork soon too.
Cork teacher representative Pat O’Sullivan added that there’s an “equality issue, it’s really difficult for people from different backgrounds to get into teaching”, as family financial support is needed for housing and to buy a car while they are doing their training.
Natasha Linehan Treacy of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions and SIPTU said: “There’s empty houses all around the city and the whole country, we need to get the government to honour what they committed to do.
“This is affecting people of every age, people with high paying jobs can’t get mortgages or they’re being outbid when they try to buy.”
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