In the Irish worldview I was reared in, it is fair to say that the landlord was only one up from an informer.
My Mayo grandmother was born in the time of the Land League.
The spectre of eviction wasn’t something from the history books.
Rather it was an ever-present threat then.
As this image shows in the Ireland of the landlords, the Crown forces were always on their side and against the needs of the ordinary people.
As the move to national sovereignty gained momentum, James Connolly, the Irishman from Scotland, warned that merely changing the flag would be meaningless unless it was a Republic for all of the people.
This is my favourite scene from Ken Loach’s film the wind that shakes the barley.
It summed up beautifully the Irish Republican prison tradition.
My grandmother’s brother Michael was a graduate of Frongoch.
That is why I chose him as my pen name during my An Phoblacht days.
Connolly’s prescient words have been the lodestone for generations of Republicans faced with Free State gombeenism.
Now, we’re back there.
The Republic of homelessness.
Apparently, our wealthy and privately educated Taoiseach has claimed that he “agonised” over lifting the ban on evictions.
Yeah, sure…
Varadkar knows full well that this state is already experiencing a full-blown homelessness crisis, and this move will only pour petrol on that fire.
When it comes down to it, he cares more for the financial needs of landlords than for people facing the prospect of being on the street.
There are no other feasible explanations.
Just watch this questioning of Varadkar by Sinn Féin’s Mairéad Farrell.
The featured image is of a rough sleeper taking shelter from the elements at the GPO on O’Connell street.
When it was Sackville Street, James Conolly stood beside Pádraig Pearse as he read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
Connolly’s ideas are woven into every sentence of what is very much our founding document.
Now, this is what authentic leadership looks like.
Hopefully, she is not just this state’s first female Taoiseach but also one who understands that having a roof over your head is a basic human right.
James Connolly would approve, and so would my Mayo grandmother.
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so over here in the USA we had a freeze on collecting rent and evicting tenants. What resulted were “landlords” going into foreclosure and losing properties to banks. A long standing road to financial security and independence has been the acquisition of real estate for rental income. Average hardworking people have scrimped and saved to invest in properties to gain passive income for later in life. Then the federal government prevented them from collecting rent to service the mortgages and taxes owed on the properties but gave no relief to the “landlords”. And thus another cog in the largest transference of wealth the world has ever. Banks foreclosed and sold off the properties mostly to large companies. Whenever the Government is involved the average man losses.
Desperately sad.
As I pointed out the other day, both UK and Irish Press are skirting over this problem along with the immigrants problem which only exacerbates the crisis, SNP in Scotland also dallied with a similar freeze on evictions/rent increases. Landlords just sold or withdrew rental properties. We used to visit Ireland 3 or 4 times a year, looks like one this year because of ridiculous prices and fewer hotels/houses to rent. I can have a week in Tenerife all found for 3 nights in Dublin. So sad!
Phil, have a look at how many house your politicians, MsM stenographers and central bankers own.
There’s a real story in there being ignored by all western MsM outlets.
Today the unelected federal reserve bailed out bankers and rich men in silicon valley.
The normal working class people of the world has a real problem and its name is the banking system.
This happens periodically throughout history, iirc last time the bankers had this much power it ended in WW2
My mayo grandfather and my donegal grandfather would agree as well Phil. But until there’s a big foot change in Eire nothing will sadly..