As Ireland’s vacant housing stock reaches a high watermark by European standards, the Irish Mirror spoke to squatters occupying buildings that are going unused.
Ireland’s ‘Housing for All’ policy - published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage - says that addressing building vacancy is a ‘priority objective of the Government.’
Yet tens of thousands of buildings all over the country lie dormant, with many falling into disrepair and near-ruin.
In Cork, we spoke to Thomas Ó Síocháin of the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM), a Marxist-Leninist youth movement whose existence is as a ‘vehicle for the elevation of class-consciousness among the youth’.
Ó Síocháin told us their reasons behind occupying a vacant property in Cork.
“The primary reason we began the occupation of this building was not so much to exert ownership over it as much as it is to use it as a means of protest to highlight the housing crisis that is currently taking place in Ireland.
“The fact of the matter is that we have so many derelict houses in not only Cork but all of Ireland. An amount of houses that are left unoccupied that far exceeds the number of homeless people.
“That is just one way that illustrates the housing crisis isn’t something that occurs naturally, rather something that has been imposed artificially. Something that can be solved quite easily if the Government actually wanted to - but they don’t have the political will to do that.
“As a group of young activists and students, we took it into our own hands. When we found this building - and it is a fine building - [we felt] it was a complete travesty that it was being left to ruin. We began the occupation in 2017 and since then we’ve made it into a home, as an act of political protest.”
The building still has no central heating or electricity, the squatters have cleaned it and added furniture to make it into a living space.
“[When we moved in] it was entirely uninhabitable because it had been left dormant for so many years.
“Everyone in the house recognises that we are comrades, and there is a great deal of camaraderie between us where we know we can sort each other, which lends us to overcome these difficulties.”
Ó Síocháin believes the two main parties in Government have a vested interest in retaining the status quo when it comes to housing.
“Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have landlords not only within their parties but as financial and political backers, that is their voting base. Ultimately, they believe that private property is superior to the needs of ordinary people - that is, the right to shelter.
“The Connolly Youth Movement utterly rejects the idea that private property takes precedence over the right to shelter. That is one of the reasons we are in favour of occupying buildings like this.
“We don’t see occupying buildings like this as a means of fixing the housing crisis but it is one way of illustrating the problem.”
Tommy Gavin, a Trinity College Ph.D researcher into vacancy, told the Irish Mirror about the legality of squatting in Ireland.
“There are over 10,000 people accessing homeless services, a record number in Ireland. The number of people on the list for public housing is well in excess of 100,000. Yet we have one of the highest rates of vacant buildings in Europe,” Gavin says.
“In Ireland, the laws around squatting are interesting. It is not a criminal offence to trespass. If you are squatting, the owner has to file an injunction in the High Court to make it from civil to criminal. You have to ask nicely first: ‘Please leave.’
“After that injunction is granted, it becomes a criminal offence because you are in contempt of court and the police can come and kick you out.”
As it stands, an occupant is allowed to apply to the Property Registration Authority for legal possession providing they are in continuous and uninterrupted possession of the property for 12 years. If the property is owned by the State, that is extended to 30 years.
The movement by the CYM in Cork is not the first to requisition vacant buildings for public use.
One of the most famous examples was the use of the Apollo House building in Dublin city centre in 2016, which was converted by activists into a makeshift homeless shelter.
Gavin highlights what the Apollo House situation did to raise the issue of vacancy in the public consciousness.
“The legacy of the 2016 Apollo House occupation is interesting because it was a mass-scale occupation of a building that was in receivership by NAMA,” Gavin says.
“This was the culmination of the housing movement that built up in the years of anti-austerity after the housing bailout.
“In those years we saw a huge increase in homelessness and families coming into homelessness for economic reasons on this scale for the first time.
“One of the responses to this was occupation as a tactic, similar to Spain where they weren’t called squats, they were called political occupations. It was to make a point of the contradiction of having so many empty buildings while there were so many homeless people.”
Apollo House in particular provided a paradox for organisers - they showed that it could run as an ad hoc charity but that they did not want to be seen as replacing social services.
“It was refurbished to the point that it was habitable to run as a homeless shelter and it did so for six weeks.
“The legacy is complicated because it was quite radical but ended up looking like a charity.”
Apollo House was a high-profile test case for the Irish state’s approach to squatting.
“The receiver appointed by NAMA filed an injunction that was granted by the judge but they didn’t make a compelling case for why it was urgent. They said that they were damaging the building but it was scheduled for demolition anyway.
“Some very notable homeless campaigners argued on behalf of Apollo House saying that the homeless services there were a better standard than those being offered by the State.
“The judge compromised and said they would have to leave but that it wouldn’t be effective until January 12th. When the injunction became effective, everybody left.”
Gavin makes the point that the intention of the Apollo House protest was not to replace homeless services provided by the State but to highlight that what the State was doing was falling short of what was needed.
Gavin believes that a lot of those services were also provided outside of official Government means through the Catholic Church, which has dialled down as the power of the Church has waned in Ireland.
“I think maybe it is not going far enough or asking enough to say ‘we’ll be a charity, let us have a building’.
“The current Irish housing movement is not asking for the right to operate as a charity, there are much stronger demands to be made about urban space and the built environment.”
The issue of replacing social services is one recognised by Ó Síocháin.
“We have had people stay in the house [in Cork] when they are in very difficult situations - having been evicted or not having anywhere to stay. But, however much we’d like it to be the case, but we aren’t social workers.
“We cannot operate as halfway home. We do other work for the homeless through regular food drives but as a squat, it is just CYM members.”
Ó Síocháin believes there to be a fundamental failing in the approaches of Ireland’s two main parties that means the country is falling short.
“There is a degree of profit being made in the provision of emergency accommodation when that is being provided by private companies.
“If [the Government parties] was to begin building public housing again, which the CYM supports and believes is the solution to the housing crisis, then that would not only end the housing crisis but substantially reduce the price of housing as an asset in Ireland.
“That is something that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do not want to do because they view housing as a commodity and not as an essential right.”
READ NEXT:
Part one: 'It's a nightmare' | The families struggling to find houses in Ireland's housing crisis
Part two: 'How the f**k are we supposed to sleep happily?' | Ireland's homelessness crisis
Part three: Why Ireland is failing to address vacant buildings - and what Government can do
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