Mick Clifford: Cork musician has his own lyrical way of protesting about the housing crisis

Martin Leahy travels from Ballinadee to Dublin every Thursday to perform his song, 'Everyone Should Have a Home' outside Leinster House, a small but significant gesture that is doing society a service

Every Thursday, Martin Leahy rises at 6.15am, gets into his car in village of Ballinadee and drives the 32km up the N71 to Cork City. 

He knows a spot near Collins Barracks where he can park for free for the day but you have to get there early or it’s gone. Once parked up, he takes from the back seat his guitar case and a little sign that somebody gave him that has #housingcrisis printed across it. 

From there, he walks down Patrick’s Hill as the city is coming alive and catches the bus to Dublin. At €27 for the round trip, it beats the hell out of the train for value if you’re travelling every week.

The bus drops him on Bachelor’s Walk on the banks of the Liffey and he has at least an hour to kill before it is time to do his thing. 

At 1pm every Thursday, Martin Leahy unpacks his instrument a few feet from the pedestrian entrance to Leinster House on Kildare Street, tunes it up, hits a few chords and begins singing. He sings the same song on a loop, pausing for a few minutes between each rendition. The song, which Martin wrote himself, is titled ‘Everyone Should Have A Home’.

The chorus goes: “Everyone should have a home, in this world, in this life, it’s a basic human right, to have a dignified place to call your own. Safe and warm where you belong, everyone should have a home.”

Martin Leahy came to write his song in early 2022 when he was told he would have to vacate his rented home as the landlord was thinking of selling up. Picture: Moya Nolan

When the Dáil is not sitting, as it wasn’t this week, there aren’t many people around, the odd politician or reporter. Last Thursday, a family of four tourists was crossing the street and the dad started beating a fist on his thigh to the rhythm of the song. 

A couple of young women on the far side of the street stared over, but for the greater part little heed was being paid to the man in dark glasses with the guitar singing about a home. Now and again, the garda on duty at the entrance popped his head out for a few friendly words. 

And then at 2pm, as on every Thursday, Martin repacked the instrument, picked up the sign, and walked down to the quay to catch the 2.30pm bus back to Cork.

This has been a weekly ritual for Martin Leahy since May 2022. In all that time, he has missed two Thursdays, one of those attributable to the death of his father. He works as a session musician, has done for the best part of 30 years. 

Often on a Thursday night, he may have a gig, in Cork or Kinsale, or regularly in Clonakilty. It doesn’t matter. He will be back in time for the soundcheck, and up for the gig because it’s his bread and butter. If necessary, he can sleep on the bus that brings him back down south, but one way or the other, he now feels obliged to make the weekly pilgrimage.

“It’s become part of my life,” he says. 

My view is that there should be some representation there every week because we should not accept this housing crisis to become part of life in Ireland. It’s relatively new that we are in this situation so I don’t think it should be accepted.

Leahy is bearing witness to the housing crisis. Politicians can debate it, economists explain it and journalists report it. But Leahy’s ritual is all about using an artistic expression on behalf of many to recite simply in song: “This is wrong”. 

He doesn’t have the answers, be they simplistic and populist or difficult and drawn out. Sure, to use one trite expression, not a single extra house will be built because of his weekly exhibition. His presence will not effect one new policy, or force the Government to inject some urgency into what is an emergency. He will not cause consternation among the politicos who monitor public opinion to identify a bag of floating voters. He will not make or break an election campaign.

Yet he performs an important function, bearing witness to a basic anomaly in a State where private wealth is conspicuous and exchequer funds in rude heath, so many are being fleeced to put a roof over their heads in the rental market and shut out of of buying a home, safe and warm, where everybody belongs.

Martin Leahy: 'The prices are crazy, even out where I am which is more or less in rural Ireland.' Picture: Moya Nolan

There is a role for bearing witness in a crisis. So it went with the Ballyhea Says No campaign, where a protest march took place in the Co Cork village for nine years to object to the Irish public bailing out bondholders. 

Such gestures act as an awkward reminder to the powers that be and a symbol for historians who might wonder why societal injustices elicited such little response.

Leahy is not an activist by instinct. He’s not even a singer by instinct. He is a musician who performed with some of the country’s top artists. He came to write his song in early 2022 when he was told he would have to vacate his rented home as the landlord was thinking of selling up. 

This awoke him to the urgency of the crisis, forced him to look at the market and he got a complete shock at what renters were expected to fork out even in areas outside the main conurbations. So he wrote the song and one day decided he would give it a blast outside the Dáil. He’s been coming back ever since.

The crisis has also revisited him personally. Circumstances that had nothing to do with him ensured he got a reprieve on his rental home two years ago, but now he is back living under the threat of eviction again next month.

“It’s got worse, no doubt about that,” he says of his attempts to find somewhere else to live. 

The prices are crazy, even out where I am which is more or less in rural Ireland. I might get a call from a friend who is trying to help out to say something like, ‘there’s a place going there for €1,100 and not €1,300 like we thought’. 

"And you just say, that kind of money, for a small place to live in? It’s just not right.”

He doesn’t know how long he is going to continue travelling up to Dublin to bear weekly witness. He has no plans to stop, but the future is uncertain in so many ways he doesn’t want to look too far down the road.

Wherever he goes from here he has done society a service. It’s a small but significant gesture in the big scheme of things, requiring a considerable effort from one individual, who resides out there far from the centres of power, where so many are subjected to living in quiet desperation.