Newstalk has reported that 300 people queued, some overnight, for just 38 houses priced at up to €500,000 in Seven Mills in Clondalkin. With scenes like this now the norm in Dublin, it is abundantly clear that the private market cannot fix the housing crisis, and that the mass construction of public housing must be undertaken, according to David Gardiner, Workers’ Party representative for Palmerstown-Fonthill.

Gardiner said: “It is glaringly obvious that the private market, be it for renting or buying, simply will not solve the housing crisis. No matter how much people might wish that wasn’t the case, no matter how many times Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil try to rehash the failed attempts of the past, and no matter how much more public money is funnelled into private hands, kidding ourselves that the private market will somehow solve the crisis is a fool’s game, and one in which working people will continue to lose at every turn.”

“Why would private developers and landlords want to solve the problem, after all? They’re making millions from it in rent, mortgages and subsidies from the state. The current set-up suits them just fine. If the government were serious about solving the crisis, we would see the mass construction of universally-accessible, mixed-income public housing by the state.”

“Public housing can take the profit motive out of housing in a way that the private market won’t, making it genuinely affordable for working people. It can also provide security of tenure, something which many people cite as their reason for wanting to buy. The neoliberal attitude towards publicly-owned housing, that it is just for the ‘have-nots’ of society, does not have to be the case if it is accessible to all regardless of income. Huge numbers of people would benefit greatly from the state taking the lead on housing in this manner.”

“We don’t have to blindly accept the housing crisis as inevitable, and we don’t have to accept that slightly more social or so-called affordable housing is all that we should ask for. This crisis is the result of political decisions that serve the interests of the very rich. In similar fashion, it can be reversed through the political decision to build public housing, changing the tide in favour of working people.”