Ireland’s housing hunger

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ireland has booming investment and lots of new jobs. But Chris Bowlby discovers how a huge housing crisis is haunting the country’s young people in particular. Anger about poor housing, and fear of mass emigration by the young are issues with deep roots in Irish memory. And the housing crisis was a crucial factor in the recent Irish election which shocked the main parties and saw big gains for the nationalists of Sinn Fein . Chris travels to the city of Cork in the southwest of the country. He traces the roots of the crisis in a crazy house buying boom a few years ago. And he hears how a lack of good, affordable housing is affecting everyone from students to young families to Ireland’s many younger migrants who hope to stay in Ireland, but have nowhere to call home. Presenter/Producer: Chris Bowlby Image: Student rent strike in Cork. Credit: Chris Bowlby/BBC

Transcript

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0:00.0	Visit UCC, the main university in Cork in the south of Ireland, and at first all seems
0:10.6	peaceful.
0:11.6	A campers approach through a leafy park with elegant buildings, and then an ancient
0:16.1	quadrangle, and a sudden surprise, around 20 tents pitched on the lawn by angry students
0:22.3	protesting against a rise in university rents.
0:33.8	The students here, like many who voted for more radical parties in the recent Irish
0:37.4	election, want to freeze on rents, and the government programme to build much more affordable
0:42.1	housing.
0:43.1	Here, a keely from the student's union led the protest.
0:46.1	I'm actually overwhelmed, I suppose, but the amount of support, like every day that
0:50.4	we're down here, more and more students come wanting to camp and want to show their support
0:53.9	with us.
0:54.9	This might be dismissed as privileged students complaining about having a bit less to spend
0:58.9	on socialising, but student journalist Kaelin Coffey has investigated how the less well
1:04.2	off here face not just rent increases, but actual homelessness.
1:08.8	He describes the blighted life of one individual he's known personally.
1:13.2	Let me set the scene.
1:15.2	I'm a student coming into UCC.
1:17.2	I'm coming from Cooke County.
1:18.2	I'm coming from somewhere outside of Cork.
1:20.6	I'm trying to get a house.
1:21.6	I can't do it, so I'm ending up having to go to homeless shelters at night.
	...

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