Raise The Roof Rally Saturday 21st June 2025 Cork: Statement from Cllr. Ted Tynan, President of the Worker’s Party
Housing is a human right and should never be left to the vagaries of the capitalist market to decide who has a home or who is left homeless.
Thousands of people are expected to gather at lunchtime on Saturday 21st June in Cork city centre for a trade union-led rally to protest against the housing crisis. The ‘Raise the Roof’ rally, which is being organised by a coalition of trade unions and parties including the Workers Party, will take place at 2pm at the National Monument on the Grand Parade. March behind the Workers Party banner on Saturday.
The President of The Worker’s Party Cllr. Ted Tynan said that housing is a human right and should never be left to the vagaries of the capitalist market to decide who has a home or who is left homeless.
“For decades now successive governments have adopted this approach which has left thousands homeless and hundreds of thousands of people struggling to pay super high rents and mortgages, in many cases amounting to most of their earned weekly or monthly income.
As long as this continues the housing crisis will never be solved,” said Cllr. Tynan.
“Recent changes to rules relating to private rentals will make matters worse for tenants. It is now quite clear that the present very right-wing Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Lowry rump government is only interested in promoting the rights of landlords, whether they be native or foreign vulture funds”
He welcomed the revival of Raise the Roof Campaign and said it must speak out for the tens of thousands of voiceless homeless people who are losing all hope of ever being able to own or rent their own homes at a reasonable proportion of their income.
“While local authorities are letting empty houses faster than at present and taking over derelict properties and renovating them for rental are important, these initiatives on their own will not provide housing for all those who require it.”
“What is needed to end the crisis is the declaration of a housing emergency and the setting up of a State Construction Company to build the houses for Local Authorities.”
“A state construction company would directly employ building workers with decent pay and conditions and would therefore attract workers, many of whom currently are forced to work as sub contractors for private builders, and workers who have emigrated, to work for it.” Said Cllr. Tynan.
He also called for the urgent implementation of the Kenny Report on building land, first published over 40 years ago. This proposed that the price of land which was needed for house building should be capped at its agricultural plus no more than 25%.
“This report has been sitting on a shelf since its publication, with vested interests claiming that it could be unconstitutional, however legal opinion in recent years has dismissed this argument.”
“As site cost makes up a very high proportion of the cost of houses the implementation of the Kenny report proposals would reduce the price of houses significantly,” he said.
“The main reason that we have a housing crisis is not that the country does not have the resources to house all our people but that the present and past capitalist class and their political representatives have not the political will to implement policies which would lead to housing for all.
It is using housing as just another commodity to be bought and sold like cars or mobile phones.
Local authority houses were built in their tens of thousands from the 1930s up to the 1980s when the state had far less financial resources than it has now.
Since then, ideology of capital has dictated that the state divest itself from all areas of the economy except when it comes to subsidising vulture funds through tax breaks “
“As socialists, the Worker’s Party rejects this capitalist approach and we demand that housing for all be treated as a human right.
Government policy on housing should be dictated by the needs of our people and not by vulture fund managers in Wall Street.” Said Cllr. Tynan.
