Over 350 Students Homeless Due To FF/FG Housing Disaster
Students are facing the same crisis that the working class is, as the core of the issue is the same, landlordism, a housing disaster created by FF/FG.
Data obtained from a Freedom of Information act has revealed that hundreds of students in Ireland’s third-level institutions are homeless. In the 2024-2025 academic year, at least 346 students reported being homeless to their higher education institutions. Students are facing the same crisis that the working class is, as the core of the issue is the same, landlordism, a housing disaster created by FF/FG.
USI/AMLÉ President Bryan O'Mahony stated in a message to Aontacht Media, that “while the confirmation of at least 346 homeless students in the 2024/25 academic year is absolutely devastating, it is, unfortunately, it is not a surprise to anyone on the ground in supporting students. What is most alarming about these figures is that they are undoubtedly a massive underestimation. With major institutions such as UCD, TCD, DCU, UCC, and TUS unable to provide data, we are looking at merely the tip of the iceberg, “ adding that “the true scale of student homelessness in Ireland is largely hidden. For every student officially recorded as homeless by their HEI, there are many more that are couch-surfing, sleeping in their cars, undertaking exhausting daily commutes, or staying in precarious and unsafe environments simply because they have no other choice”,
He pointed out that “students cannot be expected to be successful academically, engage in college life, or maintain their mental & physical health when they do when they do not even have a safe place to sleep at night. We are seeing the normalisation of a crisis where young people are being priced out of their right to an education. AMLÉ continue their call that urgent, systemic intervention from the Government. We need state-funded, truly affordable student accommodation, statutory protections for those living in digs (rent a room scheme), and a definitive move away from relying on the private market to house our students. No student should have to choose between a roof over their head and their degree.”
Landlordism in Ireland is a result not of natural market laws, something inevitable, but it is a conscious policy by those in power. Due to decades of neoliberal social and economic policy perpetrated by this government on the people of Ireland, housing has become both scarce and expensive. Bad living conditions, landlords running amok and setting high rents, an entire system based on the extraction of wealth results in what Engels called social murder, where members of the working class meet premature, unnatural deaths. Homelessness and precarious living situations have become commonplace in Ireland. Recently, the Health Research Board reported that 124 people died while sleeping rough in 2022. The FF/FG government does not represent the will of Ireland - they have sold off the country to foreign capitalist interests, the EU, Brussels and America.
It can thus be said that this is deliberate. Government rhetoric remains the same, that the housing crisis cannot be fixed overnight, while they continue to pursue policies that benefit the rich, the vulture funds and the multinational companies. This is happening because the government is tied by "a thousand threads" to the capitalist class, they too benefit from these policies, as Lenin pointed out. Rather than build universal and affordable public housing, they subsidise the private market to build housing, resulting in failure. The workers’ movement will build a new society, one in which basic human needs such as housing are not commodities, but fundamental rights accessible to all.
