When Cork musician Martin Leahy first stepped off the train in Dublin, guitar in hand, he had to ask where the Dáil was. Exactly a year later, as he began strumming the chords of his song, Everyone Should Have A Home, outside Leinster House on Thursday, he struck a familiar figure with a familiar message.
Leahy (47) has been singing the same tune on the housing crisis, literally and figuratively, for 52 consecutive weeks, spurred on by his own experience with pending eviction.
Having moved to a remote part of west Cork eight years ago in search of affordable accommodation, the working musician fell into the same uncertainty trap as thousands of others when he was told the property was being sold. Initially saved by the temporary eviction ban, his eviction is imminent.
“I always had this idea, wrongly, that when I was willing to move to the middle of nowhere, rural parts, that I would be able to get a house and I would be able to get by,” he said before his anniversary performance.
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“It kind of halts a lot of aspects of your life. The area that I’m in – music, creativity, recording – that’s all affected. And, your general wellbeing seems to be affected.”
Inspired by it too, Leahy penned his song last year and took it to the seat of power on a sunny May afternoon. He has been doing so ever since. His “empowering” weekly musical vigil has struck up something of a folk following and he regularly takes the stage at protest events.
With no political affiliation and a considered, soft-spoken take on the housing crisis, he believes a new moratorium essential. By the end of last month, almost 12,000 people were living in emergency accommodation.
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“Looking back, it’s always been an issue. Housing becomes this monstrous idea from the time you leave school. Will I be able to afford a mortgage or can I get a mortgage? And when you’re renting, will the landlord put up the property? I’ll have to move out,” Leahy said.
“You never really have this feeling of permanence and you never have this feeling of security and you never have a feeling of a home.”
After a short performance, capped with some political speeches from opposition TDs, Leahy was off back to Cork for a gig with John Spillane.
“It doesn’t actually have to be this way,” he said. “Renting doesn’t have to be this unstable, insecure state of being.”
