The Galway City Council must issue a compulsory purchase order on the site of the old Corrib Great Southern Hotel and use it to build publicly-owned student housing.
This is the view of the Éirígí For a New Republic Galway representative Ian Ó Dálaigh. While the council signed off on demolition orders, and the demolition of the site having begun recently, Mr Ó Dálaigh warned that this will “mean nothing if the site continues to lie idle”.
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As a result, Éirígí is calling for the site to become a new location for student accommodation, especially given its closeness to the GMIT. “Many students have had to defer their courses, or even drop out of college entirely because they cannot secure accommodation in the city,” said Mr Ó Dálaigh.
“We need to stop viewing housing as a commodity and start to treat it as an essential public service,” said Mr Ó Dálaigh. “We can look to Europe for positive examples of what housing justice looks like. Vienna has operated a highly successful public housing system for decades, while just last week in Berlin, a majority of people voted for a proposal that would see up to 240,000 privately-owned rental properties brought into public ownership.”
