The Emigrant Irish - Bring Them Home For Good With UP Housing!
It may only be the day after Stephen’s Day, but there is already a dread rising in the hearts of tens of thousands of people across Ireland. The dread of the car being loaded for the airport run. The dread of the final kiss on the forehead of the infant grandchild. The dread of tear-filled hugs between sisters. The dread of enforced separation. The dread of a house that will remain silent until the next fleeting visit by children and grandchildren.
Mass emigration has been a feature of Irish life for at least 400 years. In the 1600s tens of thousands of Irish men, women and children boarded ships to take them to Britain, continental Europe and the ‘new world’. Among that number were many ‘indentured’ labourers, destined to live and die as little more than slaves in the plantations of the Caribbean.
But the horror of the Cromwellian transportations was just a foretaste of the national catastrophe that was to follow in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when the flow of emigrants increased from the tens of thousands into the millions.
Even the partial independence that Ireland achieved in 1921 didn’t stem the flow of mass emigration. It is estimated that a staggering 10 million men, women and children have left Ireland since 1700. This has created a 70 million strong global diaspora who claim some Irish ancestry - more than ten times the current population of Ireland.
Even now, in the midst of an alleged economic recovery, the number of Irish-born people leaving Ireland is still greater than the number of Irish emigrants returning home.
An estimated 4.5 million people emigrated from Ireland in the sixty years following the genocide of the 1840s.
Today well over one million people that were born in Ireland are living overseas. That’s the equivalent to about one in six, or 17% of living Irish-born people. Of the 36 states that make up the OECD, none has a higher proportion of their people living overseas than the Twenty-Six Counties.
When it comes to rating the many failings of the Twenty-Six County state, few failings can rank higher than the abject failure to end mass emigration.
Mass emigration, fuelled by colonialism and capitalism, have shredded generations of Irish families and Irish communities. Mass emigration has become embedded into the psyche of the nation, to the point that it has become completely normalised.
But there is nothing normal about a ‘developed’ country continuously haemorrhaging its youth - nothing normal about raising children for export.
Of the million Irish people that live overseas, many are fully settled into their host countries with no desire to permanently return to the country of their birth. But there is also a very significant - if unknown - number of emigrants who want to return home now or at some point in the future.
UP Housing - Universal Public Housing is the only model of housing that can provide affordable, secure homes for large numbers of returning Irish emigrants.
For these reluctant Irish emigrants the lack of affordable housing in Ireland represents a major barrier to them returning home. Even those who are able to secure well-paid employment in Ireland find it difficult to justify paying rent or mortgage repayments that are significantly higher than those in their adopted countries.
It isn’t just the high cost of housing that is problematic. The chronic lack of rental accommodation and the lack of meaningful security of tenure within the private rental sector create additional barriers to returning emigrants who need to rent a home when they first arrive back in Ireland.
Finding and securing a suitable rental property in Dublin, Cork or Galway is difficult enough for people that live in those cities. It is nigh on impossible for those that are living in Sydney, New York or London.
The changing nature of employment, where self-employment and contract work are replacing permanent jobs, further compounds these housing problems. Without a secure, permanent job the prospects of securing a mortgage and subsequent housing security, are slim.
Éirígí would build tens of thousands of high-quality publicly owned homes for returning Irish emigrants
Éirígí For A New Republic believes that the state not only has an obligation to end the flow of economic emigration out of Ireland, but also to reverse it. We believe the state has an obligation to provide all Irish citizens with secure, affordable housing regardless of where they currently live.
The only system that can deliver on this fundamental right to housing is UP Housing - Universal Public Housing. Under an UP Housing system the state would take direct responsibility for providing housing to every individual or family that needs it, in much the same way that the state currently takes direct responsibility for providing every child with a school place.
UP Housing would give all returning emigrants secure, affordable housing as soon as they arrive back in Ireland. Their rent would be linked to their income and security of tenure would be guaranteed for as long at they wanted.
For some returning emigrants UP Housing would provide short-term stability to allow them secure work or buy a home. For others it would provide a long-term housing option free from the uncertainty and chaos of the private rental and purchase markets.
The full roll-out of UP Housing would take many years to complete, but with the enough political will significant progress could be made within as short a time period as five years.
UP Housing is the housing revolution that Ireland needs and Éirigí is at the forefront of demanding that it happens. To achieve UP Housing we must first build popular support for the concept and then build political will to make it a reality.
If you’re ready to join the fight for UP Housing get in touch with us today via the contact form here.
You can find out more about UP Housing on our campaign page here.