*Robbie Scanlon. Photograph: Natasha Barton
The Clare branch of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) met for the first time on Saturday as they discussed how to tackle the current housing crisis facing the county.
CATU, which began in 2020, has over 4,000 members nationwide. They say they organise to combat the “urgent economic and social issues most of us face in our daily lives” mainly through picketing illegal evictions and lobbying the government. The new union division established in Ennis this weekend is the eighth CATU branch.
“Housing is one of the biggest problems across the country and Ennis has the same problems as everywhere else except, unlike in other cities, it has no rent pressure zone. That will be one of the things CATU will be looking to pressure. In Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway landlords can only put the prices up by 2% annually but here in Ennis they can decide to double it overnight and tenants have to pay it or get out” said Ruairí Ó Fathaigh, co-chair of the Limerick CATU branch who spoke to some of the new union members as they met by the Eamon de Valera statue in Ennis.
He said, “If you wanted to get a place [in Clare] it would be very difficult even though we know that there are over 500 homes empty in Ennis and across the county there are nearly 2 or 3,000 empty. I think there needs to be a change in policy of how housing is distributed and the only way to do that is through people joining groups like CATU, having collectives which push back against laws which are made by landlords for landlords.”
“We need to look at Clare as one of the main areas that was pushing during the land league for organisations like this, bottom-up organisations where tenants were saying no more, we won’t take rent increases, we won’t take evictions. The result of the land leagues was that the British government decided to give people loans to buy up their properties because the alternative was full all-out riots and people just taking properties for themselves. We need something similar today,” Ruairí maintained.
“It’s something that’s constantly pushed down by governments and it’s not just here in Ireland it’s across the world. When you have people joining together, collectively pushing for change that forces those currently benefiting from the status quo to give up something, whether it’s by government actors, whether it’s by the media, it’s often something that’s pushed down as an avenue people can take. The reason for that is because it is an avenue that brings about real change that can help people’s lives. I do think it’s something we should be pushing for here in Clare, it was a haven for those land league acts, and Clare could be the haven that pushes these ideas across the board” he added.
Robbie Scanlon, one Ennis local present at the meeting, was already thinking about radical steps the group could take. He commented, “remember the golden rule, he or she with the most gold makes the rules. Personally, I feel hit them where it hurts the most, their pockets. Basically, shut down the whole town of Ennis with a street protest and very quickly all the shop owners will be contacting the councillors saying those hippies are creating a problem whereby we can’t do business. Guaranteed the problem will be fixed very quickly”.
Many at the meeting shared Robbie’s frustration at the housing situation in Ennis. Meredith, another Ennis resident in attendance, explained her problems with housing, “it has always been very difficult to find housing since college in Galway. It has always been extremely high rent. It’s as bad now here [in Ennis] as it was then. I’ve been under threat of homelessness for about three years. I’ve been living in horrible places and horrible situations. It just shouldn’t be this hard to find housing. You’re just discriminated against all the time for not being employed,” she said.
