Liam Cunningham marched front and centre at a housing protest yesterday as he told the Government: “You have taken the hope from people.”
The Game of Thrones star was among those leading the Raise the Roof rally in Dublin over what he called a “breakdown in the social contract”.
Speaking ahead of the march, which attracted over 3,000 demonstrators, Cunningham said the crisis would affect families for generations to come.
Read More: Raise The Roof protest: Thousands take to Dublin streets to highlight housing crisis
More than 3,000 demonstrators took to the streets and marched from Parnell Square to the home of the Dail at Leinster House.
The protest came a day after the latest homeless figures showed record numbers living in emergency accommodation at 11,397 - 3,480 of them children.
Demonstrators vented their anger and voiced their struggles in the face of record homelessness, record rents and a record shortage of accommodation.
Dublin actor Cunningham, 61, said the social contract - which states that if you study hard and get a good job you should be able to get a home - had been broken.
He told the Brendan O’Connor show on RTE Radio 1: “Look at the amount of doctors packing their bags as they wait for their graduation to get out of here because they can’t afford a home.
“Look at the nurses, guards, people who are incredibly important to the running of society that can’t get a home anywhere near a hospital or a garda station.
“They have no hope. What they have done is... you have taken the hope from people.
“It is 100% about children. The irony here is that, and I don’t want to get on anybody’s back because they want to think well of the people they have put in power.
“But the consecutive Governments are responsible.
“The behaviour of these consecutive coalition Governments specifically are the reason international financial institutions have been able to buy up everything.
“And their job is to maximise profits. And that has alienated people from being able to afford (homes).
“The thinking was ‘pile them high and sell them cheap’ to bring them in and get developers here. Give them tax breaks.”
The dad-of-three said he grew up in Coolock in Dublin at a time when social housing was built to “give us a bit of freedom, dignity and hope”.
Speaking at the rally he added: “I am sick and tired of foreign investment and vulture funds, and what was known as absentee landlords when I was young and growing up, that the revolutionaries in this country took 800 years to remove, and this government and the previous government have invited back in.
“These people are for profit. They don’t have a soul, they don’t have a heart and the people who live in this country are suffering because of it.”
Pensioners joined students, young families and hard pressed workers in urging the Government to take urgent action to tackle the housing crisis.
Their anger was palpable as they chanted: “What do we want? Homes for all. When do we want it? Now.”
The Government said this week the effects of its winter eviction ban had not yet been felt.
But People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said it was too little too late.
He said: “We need to ramp up the delivery of social and affordable homes and stop the evictions now.
“We have an epidemic of people being evicted through no fault of their own.”
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said: “There really isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel.
“We have a Government in denial... a complete lack of appreciation of how bad things have gotten for people.”
Her party’s housing spokesman Eoin O Broin vowed: “This is the first Raise the Roof protest in some time and there’s going to be more.
“We’re going to keep marching. The trade unions, homeless groups, opposition parties, we’re all going to keep demanding change.
“The children who are going to sleep in emergency accommodation tonight need us to keep doing this until the Government gets it right.”
The latest figures recording 11,397 people living in emergency accommodation does not account for rough sleepers or those couch surfing.
It marked the fourth consecutive month where the Department of Housing’s figures have increased to a record high.
There was an increase of 422 people in one month to October, from 10,975 people recorded as homeless in September.
Focus Ireland said the figures represented a 29% rise in the number of people homeless in 12 months, up from 8,830 people recorded as homeless in October last year.
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