The Workers’ Party will this morning (Friday) put a picket on Minister Simon Coveney who is attending a closed meeting at Cork City Hall to promote the government’s “Rebuilding Ireland” housing scheme which, Cllr. Tynan insists, “repeats the same failed formula of throwing money at developers”.
Cllr. Tynan described the meeting as part of a public relations exercise to give the impression that the government’s housing programme will tackle the housing crisis. The Workers’ Party councillor said the plan puts more focus on enriching developers and speculators than on building accessible and affordable public housing.
He said, “The Workers’ Party does not accept the idea that builders and bankers are legitimate stakeholders with equal status to those on the housing waiting lists or those in need of affordable housing. Yet the developers have been invited to today’s meeting which is closed tot he public”
“It is outrageous that Minister Simon Coveney is allowed to use Cork City Hall for his Public Relations exercise to a select audience. He has already made it patently clear that he sees public housing policy as an opportunity for developers and investors to make a fat profit, a theme he repeated at a conference in Kilkenny only last weekend. We can expect to see large publicly owned land banks around this city and elsewhere to be sold off to private investors instead of developing genuinely affordable mixed income schemes such as the one at O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin which Minister Coveney and others conspired to overturn this week.”
Note: the meeting is taking place at the Millennium Hall which is behind City Hall and is accessed from Eglinton Street.