Raise The Roof: Housing Crisis At Boiling Point

Today's march on Dáil Éireann was one of the many examples of how students, workers and anyone affected by the Housing Crisis throughout the last year have shown their frustration at a government who seem to be reluctant to make any major intervention in the housing market. We've seen this frustration before, but today felt like people were saying "This is the last straw".

The event coincided with a motion brought forward by opposition parties to declare the housing crisis a national emergency, and is supported by PBP, Solidarity, The Green Party, Labour, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats and Independents4Change.

"This is going to be on Reeling In The Years." cried a young woman as the swarm of people venting their anger approached the stage set up for the various speakers, musicians and activists who were speaking at todays march, just outside the gates of Dáil Éireann, overlooking the doorstep on which Jonathan Corrie died in the winter of 2014. Three years on from his death and the crisis has only gotten worse, culminating in todays event. Among the groups represented today are student unions, housing action groups and trade unions, all of whom are united by their annoyance at this governments tepid reaction to the crisis.

Speaking about the event, leader of The Land League Jerry Beades expressed his annoyance at the fact the government have allowed it come to this point. " They don't get it, they don't get that they caused the housing crisis with their policies,". He believes the Frederick St incident where housing activists were evicted by force by masked Gardaí and an unknown private security force has resulted in massive support for housing protests like todays march. "It's fantastic,young people have gotten involved and woken up, thats what we were at in 2015 trying to highlight what was going on".

There were around 6000 students in attendance at todays rally, where USI president Síona Cahill gave a speech about how the crisis has impacted students across the country, explaining many of them have to sleep on couches, stay with friends or share rooms with up to three people. Her anger is echoed by the many student unions in attendance including TCD, UCD, UCC, WIT and Carlow IT.

Speakers also include Damien Dempsey, who decries the governments "laissez faire' approach to the crisis, whilst Fr. Peter McVerry, one of the key organisers of todays March, explains that the private rental sector will not solves the current crisis. Meanwhile inside the Dáil, the government were defending their actions taken on the housing crisis, saying that declaring a national emergency wouldn't build more houses.

Some more worrying scenes emerged at the end of the event, with Labour supporters, some of them being quite young, being ganged up on and verbally abused by a large group of individuals from different groups. Gardaí eventually had to step in and see to it they got a safe passage out. The crowd cheered as they left.