People Before Profit (PBP ) Mayo will hold a public meeting on housing and homelessness at 8pm on Tuesday, March 20 in the Station House Hotel in Ballina.
Guest speakers on the night will be Independent Councillor Gerry Ginty and Garie Beattie from Mayo Land League.
PBP candidate for the next general election in Mayo Joe Daly said that he government’s policies of relying on the private market to solve the housing crisis has failed and that same private market gave us the Celtic Tiger bust – so it is hardly surprising that it won’t solve the current housing crisis.
“When a ship is sinking, one would expect the captain, in this case Fine Gael’s housing minister Eoghan Murphy to shout abandon ship but no, Mr Murphy is still refusing to declare a housing emergency to allow the state to get around the fiscal straitjacket rules of the EU and fund the building of thousands of decent council houses directly.”
“This isn’t surprising given that decades of privatisation of housing has enriched an elite layer of developers and big landlords tied to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael since the 1950s while bankrupting the state and leaving thousands homeless and thousands more on social housing waiting lists.”
Daly went on to say “the market will never put a roof over poor working people’s heads. The only way to solve the housing & homelessness crisis is to cap rents to affordable levels, compulsory purchase thousands of empty homes and build tens of thousands of council houses directly.”
Daly also called on the people of Mayo to join the National Homeless and Housing Coalition march on Saturday, April 7 in Dublin, saying: “To force the establishment parties to do all of this will take a huge people powered campaign. The housing coalition has the full support of over 60 major civil society organisations like Fr. Peter McVerry Trust, SIPTU and FÓRSA (IMPACT ). We owe it to the thousands suffering this crisis to take to the streets on their behalf.”
