What you mean you missed it? Don’t worry so have a lot of people.
The Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2007 is currently going through the Oireachtas. Contained in that bill is a clause that will mean that private developers in the many areas of Dublin will be able to tell buyers that nobody on social welfare is renting in the area where they are building.
How is that the case? Well in a few weeks it will be the law that any area under regeneration will not be accessible to anyone in receipt of rent supplement. The builders and the land owners seem to have done a deal so that they don’t have to provide housing for people even if the government are paying for it. The government tried to do this without introducing a law in Ballymun of all places a few years ago. Now they are making sure that this apartheid is legal.
In the bill as amended by the Dail and due to go before the Seanad the clause reads
Section 25
…..(3B) Subject to subsection (3C), a payment referred to in subsection (3) shall not be payable in respect of a person’s residence where his or her residence is situated in an area notified to the Minister by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government as being an area of regeneration for the purpose of providing for greater social integration.
An area of regeneration for the purpose of providing for greater social integration? How socially integrated will an area be if families on low incomes, older pople, people with disabilities and others entitled to rent supplements will not be able to live there??
If one lives in the area already and is receiving rent supplement then one should not be affected. However that too could change. And then as many already know finding a landlord who would take rent supplement was hard enough.
Therefore those who rely on the private rented sector for housing and receive supplement will be forced to live in areas where accommodation is not regenerated, where there is no real social mix, and where the government have not done deals with builders and private property owners to banish the poor.
So the affordable housing (20%) deal has been shown to be a load of rubbish with builders doing deals with councils to absolve themselves of their responsibilities, and now in areas where they rent out or own properties they will be able to say that those who could never afford to buy any house or apartment will not be renting theirs either.
Ah yes Bertie we can all see what the next step is!
Thanks for posting this, another exemplar of dodgy legislation slipped through the net while people were partying.
I saw several adverts in an estate agent’s window recently, and was puzzled then to note how many apts for rent expressly excluded people on rent allowance. It is clear that this has something to do with the legislation you mentioned. Another instance of how the govt seeks to control social life and establish ‘purity control’. A day or so later Poodle and I watched ‘Cabaret’ again, and I felt very uneasy by it [and not solely thinking how actors had to actually DO something to win an Oscar thirty five years ago!]
I think you’re alluding to something to more more expansive than apartheid, Maman Poulet, its about segregating those who are considered to be denizens of this State. There’s not solely the poor, but anyone who doesn’t ‘fit’ with the Celtic Tiger ethos. Taking a larger view, there are other instances, where we can live, who we can marry, who we can leave our money [huh?] to, etc. It is a process of excluding ‘non-believers’.
Seventy years ago, the Nazis introduces a legal code, which included Paragraph 175 [which criminalised homosexuality], which prescribed who could associate with and marry who, etc. This led to more montrous things: a racist State (as Lentin, etc) has termed it. Its not that far from proscribing who can live where (as your post mentions), to Polish style policies (you mentioned lately). The point is that these moves are established by the State, the institution which was supposed to promote the betterment of the social.
ILGA’s latest email to me today helped me to put this instance in a wider context. ILGA points to how the ‘Berlin Declaration’ of the EU focuses on the paramount position of the ‘individual’ rather than communities’ needs. ILGA’s critique (written by Patricia Prendivelle) calls for a greater emphasis on equality and human rights. The EU can get away from this because nobody’s listening.
While I sometimes wonder if anyone else can see that we’re living in 1930′s Berlin, I think many people are unhappy with the shift to the right.
An impending election miscellany at ask direct – fundraising and marketing for non-profits and charities // Mar 29, 2007 at 18:11
[...] Could this be the most slimy, nasty piece of legislation to emerge from our current leaders? OPEN are campaigning against it. [...]
I wonder is this constiutional.
“Article 40
1. All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.
This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function.”
I wonder how President McAleese deals with letters asking her to consider referring legislation to the Supreme Court before signing it?