‘Stop The Vultures’ Protest Announced For Sandyford IRES Offices
Éirígí South Dublin has announced the details of their latest housing protest - a ‘Stop The Vultures - Build UP Housing’ protest which will take place at the offices of IRES REIT in Sandyford between 1pm and 2pm on Saturday, September 19th.
The protest is part of a rolling series of housing-focused public meetings, protests and direct actions that Éirígí has organised in South Dublin since 2016. The most recent action saw Éirígí activists pasting a large anti-IRES poster onto a billboard just 100m from the IRES office in Sandyford. You can see footage of the action below.
IRES already owns more than 800 homes in the developments below in Sandyford and Stillorgan:
Beacon South Quarter - 225 homes
Rockbrook South Central - 189 homes
Beechwood Court - 101 homes
Rockbrook Grande Central - 81 homes
The Maple - 68 homes
Time Place - 67 homes
Grande Central - 65 homes
The Forum - 8 homes
IRES has also secured full planning permission to build another 512 homes on the ‘Rockbrock’ and ‘Beacon South Quarter’ sites in Sandyford. When built this will bring the total IRES portfolio in Sandyford / Stillorgan to over 1,300 homes.
Since it began operations in Ireland in 2014, IRES has deployed an extremely aggressive rental pricing strategy. In the Sandyford area this has seen the company repeatedly breaking through several alleged rent ‘ceilings’.
As far back as 2017 the company made national headlines when it set the rent for a two-bedroom apartment in The Maples development at a then record price of €2,570 per month. Rents have only risen since then.
Where IRES have led other vulture and ‘traditional’ landlords have followed. Rental prices in Sandyford, Stillorgan, Dundrum, Ballinteer and the surrounding areas are now among the most expensive in the country. More than any other single landlord, IRES is responsible for this situation developing.
IRES is the largest of up to a dozen vulture landlords that are now operating in these areas of South Dublin. Collectively they already own several thousand homes, with plans for thousands more at various stages of planning.
These vulture landlords have radically impacted on the housing landscape in South Dublin over the last five years. By buying up entire apartment complexes they have denied thousands of potential owner-occupiers the opportunity to buy a home, whilst simultaneously driving the cost of rental properties ever higher.
The September 19th protest will give local (and not-so-local) people the opportunity to register their opposition to the vulture takeover of housing in the area and the governments overall housing policies.
The protest is open to all so please spread the word and come along. Together we can build a housing justice movement that the government cannot ignore. Bígí linn.