January 17, 2017

After Spain, anti-eviction activism flares up in Ireland

located:	Spain
editor:	Maria João Morais

Eight years after the financial crisis rocked Europe, a major anti-eviction movement has finally erupted in Ireland, where housing activists are following the example seen in Spain by carrying out a series of actions aimed to prevent banks and vulture funds from continuing to evict tenants.

Inspired by the success of the Spanish Anti-Eviction Platform (PAH), an active movement which has successfully raised awareness of this issue in Spain, a group of Irish housing activists occupied an abandoned ten-storey building in December in the centre of Dublin giving shelter to 40 of the city’s homeless. However, the occupation of Dublin’s Apollo House, a former home to the civil service, didn’t manage to last more than a month. A court ruling approved demolition and residents were forcibly evicted from the historic building. This consequently sparked a protest movement across Ireland over the right to adequate housing.

According to official figures, there are currently 7,000 homeless people in Ireland and among them 2,500 are children. These shocking statistics are decried by activists, when accompanied by the fact that 20,000 buildings stand empty in Dublin alone.

Apollo House has become a perfect example of the Irish authorities mismanaging the crisis. The building is owned by the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), created in 2009 by the Government to administer toxic assets from bank bailouts. However, rather than using its assets to alleviate the national housing crisis, NAMA (which is known as a bad bank) has sold off more than 200,000 million euros worth of property holdings to North American vulture funds.

After the headline-grabbing occupation, now some activists are trying to go one step further and tackle home evictions through a new bill put forward by the Anti-Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit party. Due for debate today in the Irish parliament, the bill aims to end legal loopholes used to evict tenants and to guarantee access to housing.