‘Put right to a home in Constitution’
Spiralling rents, a sharp rise in mortgage owners struggling with arrears and increasing repossessions of family homes were among the issues highlighted by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy.
The Focus Ireland founder told the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Donegal, that the lack of a coherent housing policy had created a housing crisis and rising levels of homelessness in Ireland’s towns and cities.
The campaigner was particularly scathing about Environment Minister Alan Kelly after he promised to help control rents at a Labour Party gathering earlier this year but had still not.
“In January at his party’s national conference, Minister Kelly promised to introduce ‘rent certainty’ for both tenants and landlords but in the intervening months, rents have continued to escalate and action from the minister is long overdue.”
Sister Stanislaus outlined how cuts to rent supplement in recent years had left families without a roof over their heads: “Rents have shot up, competition for accommodation is intense and people are becoming homeless as a result. We are seeing the catastrophic results of this situation every day in Focus Ireland as more and more newly-homeless families come to us for help.”
Sister Stanislaus describing the dire situation faced by some of the charity’s clients said: “We are seeing families having to sleep in their cars. There are more than a thousand children in this country who don’t have a roof over their head because of the complete failure of regulation of the private rented sector and support for families who cannot afford their rent.
“For these families, the outlook is bleak. There is almost no social housing, and there is a critical shortage of rental accommodation.”
Sister Stanislaus called for people’s entitlement to housing to be guaranteed in the Constitution: “Focus Ireland believes that enshrining such a ‘right to a home’ in our constitution would vindicate Ireland’s international human rights commitments on the right to adequate housing and would underpin policies to reduce homelessness and create a fairer approach to the provision of housing.”
Economist Dr Ronan Lyons said Ireland needed a coherent social housing system. He suggested that an industrial estate near Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin could supply up to 10,000 homes for the capital.
