Protestors gathered today at Cork City Hall and marched to demand action on the housing crisis following a national demonstration in Dublin earlier that day.

The protest, organised by the Cork Branch of People Before Profit for those who could not attend the Dublin ‘Raise the Roof’ event, saw over 100 people gather at Anglesea Street outside Cork City Hall and subsequently march across Cork City Centre. The protest called for the demands of the National Homeless and Housing Coalition to be met. These demands included calling for a housing emergency to be declared, an end to evictions, legislation for secure tenure and a minimum of 10,000 public houses to be built on public land each year.

The protest was attended by People Before Profit, Travellers of North Cork, the Connolly Youth Movement and Solidarity.

The protest took place in the week that the Central Statistics Office announced that they would send Statisticians to the Department of Housing in an indication that they do not trust the homelessness statistics from the department led by Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy.

People Before Profit Cork City South-East representative, Ed Fitzgerald said: “People have had enough of this government’s housing policy. All that Fine Gael have done is look for ways to use the crisis to help private developers and landlords. We need public investment in public housing to tackle this crisis. Reliance on the profit-driven private sector will solve nothing.”

People Before Profit Cork City South-West representative, Tjitske de Vries said: “Everyone in society is affected by this housing crisis in one way or another, and this is a direct result of Fine Gael’s refusal to address the crisis in a meaningful way. We will continue to organise and campaign with a variety of groups to pressure our elected officials on this.”

A short video of the demonstration can be seen here.