‘Everyone Should Have a Home’: Cork songwriter’s 200 protests inspire new documentary

A documentary following a Cork songwriter on his 200th weekly trek to Leinster House to protest Ireland’s housing crisis is set to be screened at this year’s Cork International Film Festival.

For almost four years, Bandon musician Martin Leahy made his way every week to Dublin’s Kildare St, where he performed his song Everyone Should Have a Home.

In 2022, Mr Leahy discovered that he was about to lose his home because his landlord was planning on selling up.

While he considered himself lucky to have someone with whom he could stay, he became part of Ireland’s “hidden homeless”.

Although he had never been an activist before, Mr Leahy began a campaign that would make him a regular and prominent sight outside the gates of our country’s national parliament.

Rising often before dawn, he would drive from his West Cork base to Cork city, from where he would take the bus to Dublin, arriving on Kildare St before lunchtime.

In March of this year, Mr Leahy staged his 200th, and final, performance outside Leinster House. 

That was captured in a film by Tomas Heising, which will be screened at the Cork International Film Festival.

According to the Department of Housing, a record number of 17,885 people were in emergency accommodation in August, with 12,055 adults and 5,830 children in emergency accommodation.

That compared with 17,527 people in July, including 5,659 children in emergency accommodation.

September’s figures had been due at the end of October, but the department said on October 30 that, due to industrial action, the data was not yet available.

Mr Leahy told The Echo that he felt a little disappointed that there have been so few protests against the housing crisis.

“There’s just been so little going on, even as the crisis deepens; I believe in the power of protest, but I am disappointed about that lack of action,” he said.

“I believe we all have that superpower, the power to affect change, but we don’t tap into it.”

Everyone Should Have a Home will be screened, along with two other shorts, at 6pm on Tuesday, November 17, at The Everyman.