The government’s Housing and Residential Tenancies Bill, presented to the Oireachtas this month, would if implemented introduce very (very) basic residence requirements for access to social housing waiting lists.
Applicants would be required to demonstrate both a legal right to reside in Ireland through a residency test before becoming eligible for social housing.
On its face, this sounds entirely reasonable. Almost too reasonable or moderate in a state that is cannibalising itself over housing and the adjacent issue over mass migration.
Yet the proposal has already provoked a sharp response from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), a statutory body established in 2014. Rather typically, the IHREC warned that the legislation would almost certainly conflict with Ireland’s obligations under EU law and international human rights frameworks, and signalled its willingness to put its money where its mouth is with strategic litigation.
In an open letter to Housing Minister James Browne, IHREC argued that the reforms could result in more people being denied access to social housing assistance centering the plight of human trafficking victims. The letter and challenge itself by IHREC exemplifies the problem perfectly with any attempting of reining in the nation’s asylum rubbsih fire.
Should the government advance the proposals IHREC (and the state funding that underwrites it) will no doubt fire away ECHR and ECJ challenges. Successive governments have funded and empowered a network of statutory bodies and advocacy organisations that frequently position themselves against even modest efforts to reform migration and housing policy.
Clear public preferences and even the most basic common good is now subordinated to the priorities of a permanent NGO and quasi-state sector that faces little direct public accountability like the IHREC.
The language of human rights has ceased to be a shield protecting fundamental liberties and has instead become a mechanism through which political decisions are removed from democratic contestation altogether.
Questions of housing allocation were even the last decade purely matters to be decided by elected representatives answerable to voters. For many voters, the actions of bodies such as IHREC raise a fundamental question: who ultimately governs Ireland the representatives elected by the public, or the backroom NGOs empowered to constrain them?
It would add to the article if the fat, ugly people in the photo were named.
“People are weaker than institutions”
Honest politicians would just abolish the IHRC, but if the elections are rigged, they won’t allow many honest men into the Dail.
Minor detail, but all these human rights NGOs hate the Irish language. They sneer at you if you try to speak it to them.
☘️☘️☘️…and a handful of Taxfunded NGO
Parasites ruin the lives for thousands of irish
People and futures of Irish Generations.
….and this shite can be easily fixed, just do it