PUBLIC MEETING: The Right To Housing

The housing crisis is having a devastating impact on thousands of people throughout Ireland.
There is no provision in the Constitution of the importance of secure, adequate and affordable housing and this is having dreadful consequences on many ordinary people who are left without the security of a home.

There is no doubt that there is a huge amount of incredible activism going on around housing, and there has been for decades.

Housing is a Human Right.

At this latest milestone, the opportunity to campaign for a referendum on the human right to housing, how can we all come together to make it happen?

The meeting will begin with a screening of The Apology’ a short performance that brings together diverse experiences of Ireland’s housing crisis as one compelling narrative.

The Apology is the first public act from ‘Multi-Story – Creative Engagement for Housing Change’, a project by artists Fiona Whelan and Feidlim Cannon, and Housing Action Now, developed through a unique online collaborative arts process, exploring direct experiences of housing injustice through collective writing and performative story-telling.

Representatives from the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland, Irish Traveller Movement and the Union of Students in Ireland

Dr Rory Hearne, Academic, Author of Gaffs, advocate, Home for Good

Clare Dunne, Writer and Actor – Author of the film ‘Herself’

Fiona Whelan and Housing Action Now, speaking about ‘The Apology’

Fiona Crowley, Amnesty International Ireland

Louise Bayliss, Focus Ireland

Frank O’Connor, Derelict Ireland

Avril Corroon

More speakers to be announced

We will close the evening with a demonstration of Avril Coroon’s DAMP TANK installed in PAC foyer. If you have a dehumidifier you are invited to bottle up and donate the water from the tank. Ongoing donations will be welcomed throughout winter and spring and the resulting volume will be used in the making of an artwork.

Rory Hearne is an academic, author and advocate on housing and inequality. He is assistant Professor of Social Policy in Maynooth University, expert on Ireland’s housing policy, author of Gaffs: why no one can get a house & what we can do about it (2022), Housing Shock: The Irish Housing Crisis and How to Solve It (2020), and host of the podcast of hope, Reboot Republic. He is also a steering group member of Home for Good

Clare Dunne is a writer and actress She wrote and starred in ‘Herself’ – a story about a woman leaving an abusive partner to go on and build a home for herself and her children during the housing crisis in Dublin.

Fiona Whelan is a Dublin based artist, writer and lecturer (NCAD). Her arts practice is committed to exploring and responding to systemic power relations and inequalities through long-term collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations. These processes are rooted in complex relational networks and typically accumulate over time through a series of public manifestations, including text-based, visual, performative and dialogical artworks.

Fiona Crowley is Interim Director of Human Rights. She has been with Amnesty International Ireland for over 20 years, and has conducted or overseen its research, advocacy, partnership-building and other campaigning on a wide range of domestic human rights issues.

Frank O’Connor challenges cultural norms, unethical & unsustainable systems through policy, practice & protest. His latest activism with his partner Jude Sherry spawned the #DerelictIreland movement.

Avril Corroon is a visual artist working with sculpture, film and performance to examine precarious living and inequity in architecture. She is a trade unionist and in 2017 was a spokesperson for Strike 4 Repeal. Currently she is working on ‘Got Damp’ a research and development project exploring qualities of damp in housing as both harmful and lively material.