The housing crisis is the most important issue on which the trade union movement is campaigning on at present and one of the few that that unites almost every strand of society, according to the recently appointed general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu).
Owen Reidy was speaking on Tuesday at the announcement of “a national rally for housing” to take place in Dublin on November 26th in Dublin. This is intended to highlight the public concern over the issue and to call for more effective action by the Government to tackle it.
The event is being organised by Raise the Roof, a coalition of trade unions, housing and homeless agencies, political parties and a range of other groups.
This is “probably the most important campaign the trade union movement has involved in currently, because it’s probably the most fundamental issue facing our society today,” said Mr Reidy. He called the public to support the event, which starts at Parnell Square at 1pm on the day and will include music performed by artists including Glen Hansard, Lisa O’Neill and Dónal Lunny.
“The situation remains appalling for so many people, so many cohorts in society, not just workers, not just the people that we represent,” said Mr Reidy. “You look at young people who’ve been effectively let down by the State, essentially locked out of not just the aspiration to own a house, but the aspiration even to decent rental accommodation.
“And I think workers right across the public and private sector ... what is different this time is those who are on decent incomes, those that we would have considered to be well paid in the trade union movement – white collar, professional background ... they are struggling just like everybody else,” Mr Reidy said.
“I think this is one of these moments where civic society is saying: we’re all in it together, and we need to stand together ... to make sure that we truly have a housing policy for this State that meets the needs of its people.”
Campaign co-ordinator at Focus Ireland Louise Bayliss said although the widely published homeless figures make for stark reading, they are still a significant underestimation of the problem.
The figures, she said, suggest there are “almost 11,000″ without adequate accommodation, but she said this figure does not take account of those who cannot get into emergency accommodation on a given night, those mothers and children in domestic refuges, or those in direct provision who have leave to stay in the country but who are unable to secure accommodation of their own due to the costs involved.
“So the figures are definitely way under,” she said.
Rose Marie Maughan, accommodation policy officer with the Irish Traveller Movement, said the problem is particularly acute for members of the Traveller community with around 2,000, or almost one of five of the generally acknowledged total, currently homeless.
“Irish Travellers have always experienced an accommodation crisis, long before the mainstream housing crisis erupted within our society. And that has been characterised by substandard provision, overcrowding, insecure tenancies, and significant over-representation within homeless figures despite the fact that we are less than 1 per cent of the overall population in Ireland,” she said.
“Traveller families are 22 times more likely to experience discrimination and racism in the private rented sector,” she added, making them “more vulnerable to ending up homeless”.
