Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This morning, I attended the press launch of the Raise the Roof campaign at which trade unions, student unions, housing groups, anti-poverty groups and many more, including Opposition parties, outlined details of the national housing demonstration that will take place in Dublin city centre on the Saturday after next. We expect many thousands of people to take to the streets to demand action that has not been forthcoming from the Government to address the shameful, intolerable, ever-worsening housing and homelessness crisis.

There are many reasons for the crisis. I urge those affected by or angry about the crisis to come out on the Saturday after next. The reasons for the crisis include: the failure of the Government to control rents and house prices to make them affordable; the failure of the Government to stop the constant flow of families and individuals into homelessness and emergency accommodation; the failure to deal with the scandal of empty properties; and the failure to deal with vulture funds and property speculators that profiteer and benefit from the housing and homelessness crisis.

I want to ask the Taoiseach about another reason that people should come out on the streets, that is, the Government's commitment to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, between Canada and the EU. Last Friday, as a result of Deputy Costello's Supreme Court action, we found that CETA is, at least at the moment, unconstitutional because it has the potential to bypass the sovereignty of the court system and fundamentally undermine democracy in the interests of multinational investors. I want to ring the alarm bells about this matter for the public and remind them what is at stake here. In simple terms, the agreement gives multinational companies the right to sue governments that introduce progressive legislation or regulation to deal precisely with matters such as the housing crisis, environmental issues or workers' rights by means of a system that bypasses our courts. I refer here to the investor court system. Despite this, the Government continues to be committed to this attack on democracy in favour of the profits of multinational companies. This opens up the potential, for example, for property speculators and investors to sue governments that introduce measures to protect tenants, control rents and regulate the behaviour of vulture funds, property speculators and so on. Yet, the Government remains committed to this unconstitutional agreement and refuses even to agree-----

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