19 October 2015
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
Half of all families who became homeless in Dublin in August did so because of high rents according to reports in this morning’s Irish Times and Cork City Anti Austerity Alliance Cllr Mick Barry (pictured above) this morning said that the report underlines the need for strong rent control legislation.
The report was written by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive and showed that 39 out of 78 families made homeless in the capital in August either lost or were unable to access private rented accomodation. Cllr Barry said that similar reports in other major Irish cities would show a similar trend.
The report comes as the Fine Gael party voice trenchant opposition to any form of compulsory rent controls after a failure to act on the issue in last week’s Budget.
Cllr Barry said this morning: “Entire families are being made homeless in the runup to Christmas by the greed of landlords and the rising price of rent. The Government must not be allowed to protect rackrenting landlords by refusing to act on this issue.”
Cllr Barry continued to highlight the strong landlord bloc within Fine Gael saying that 4 of the 9 Fine Gael TDs for Cork constituencies are themselves landlords.
According to the 2014 register of TDs’ interests Simon Coveney, Michael Creed, Aine Collins and Jim Daly are all landlords.
