A report in The Irish Times has shown that a mother and her 18-month old son are living in a damp, mould-infested one-bedroom apartment in Palmerstown at a cost of €1,000 per month. This is indicative of how bad Ireland’s housing crisis has gotten, according to David Gardiner, Workers’ Party rep. for Palmerstown-Fonthill.

Gardiner said: “These conditions are terrible for anyone to be living in, let alone an 18-month old child, but it shows how bad the housing crisis is that €1,000 a month would only get you something like this. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. There are plenty of stories of people renting cramped apartments or rooms for prices way above their value. As it stands, people are left with little choice but to cough up the cash.”

“Elsewhere in Palmerstown, the apartments at Palmers Gate on the old Vincent Byrne site are costing people almost €2,000 a month for a one-bedroom unit. A two-bedroom apartment there, meanwhile, costs €2,375. Why should people pay so much for so little?”

“The Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green government is ultimately to blame. Ireland has a total overreliance on the private rental sector and the only winners are the landlords and the developers. They go laughing all the way to the bank while working people are left struggling.”

“The solution to the housing crisis is mixed-income, universally-accessible public housing. It can provide for those who struggle to rent, struggle to buy and struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Until we get a government who are committed to public housing, we are going to see more people living in substandard accommodation, more people struggling to move out of their parents homes and more people dying on our streets.”