Damien Dempsey, Glen Hansard and John Connors lead occupation of Apollo House in protest against housing crisis.

It is also supported by director Jim Sheridan, musicians Hozier and Christy Moore and actor Saoirse Ronan among others.

The Home Sweet Home group is a broad coalition of housing groups, trade unions, musicians, actors and artists. It operates in association with the Mandate Trade Union.

The last rough sleeper count found 150 people sleeping on the streets of Dublin alone. This greatly underestimated the count as people sleeping in parks and inaccessible areas were not counted.

People Before Profit fully support this action and we want to see a mass movement, like the people power movement that pushed back water charges, on the streets to demand housing.

There are over 250,000 empty properties in Ireland according to a Deutsche Bank report.

But the government won’t act because they are too tied to vulture firms and developers- the only groups benefiting from the housing crisis.

We need all community groups, trade unions and left political parties to come together to build a people power movement to demand housing.

We also need to build a radical left movement to replace the establishment parties. People Before Profit would:

– build 50,000 houses

– bring in rent controls

– stop evictions

– pass laws against intentional deriliction of property