Squatting in Ireland
Dublin Housing Action Committee's campaigning in the late 1960s resulted in some successes but also the Prohibition of Forcible Entry and Occupation Act of 1971, which criminalized squatting.
A man in Tullamore, County Offaly defeated a claim for possession in court when the judge saw the improvements he had made to his squat, on an empty estate.
[19] The squat was publicly supported by the Lord Mayor Christy Burke[20] and by Irish Times journalist Una Mullally,[21] before being evicted in 2016, with the site later developed into student accommodation for those attending Dublin IT.
[2] A building which once housed Neary's Hotel on Parnell Street in Dublin's north inner city, was occupied in 2015 and renamed The Barricade Inn by the squatters.
[24] In August 2016, a group of squatters which had been recently evicted from a nearby Grangegorman squat complex, began occupying the Debtors' Prison in Dublin's north inner city with the stated aim of converting the building into a community art space.
[26] The occupants sought support and cooperation from the Office of Public Works, as well as the local community with their stated intention being to restore the building and open the ground floor "for exhibitions and walking tours which would highlight social injustices from the past until today".
The property had sat vacant awaiting an upgrade, a status the activists deemed unconscionable due to the shortage of housing in Dublin.
The activists attempted to re-activate the building, located on Bolton Street and referred to as the "Bolt Hostel", but were made to leave the premise a number of weeks later following a court order.
However, by 2019 no such development had taken place and the possibility of the building being sold for a token amount of money to a local housing charity was being openly discussed.
[30] In December 2016 Apollo House, a 9-storey office block in Dublin City Centre, was taken over by squatters who attempted to convert it into a homeless shelter.
The building, which had previously been used as office space for various companies, had fallen under the control of National Asset Management Agency by 2016 in the wake of the Post-2008 Irish economic downturn.
[41] The group began operating "That Social Centre" aka "Sunnyvale"; offering free services such as a cafe and a bike repair shop.
Five weeks later, on the morning of 27 October, a large group of private security guards, in view of some despatched Gardaí, attempted to evict the squatters from the premises.
In May 2022 a socialist republican group called the Revolutionary Workers Union (RWU) seized a property on Eden Quay in Dublin and dubbed it "James Connolly House".
[47][48] In late May the High Court ruled that the squatters must leave[49] and in early June, after the RWU said they would not abide by the order, they were evicted by the Garda Síochána.
[51] Since June 2022, the organisation has created several squats, primarily in Dublin, although these are usually short-lived, as their tactic of publicising their actions often results in a rapid response from An Garda Siochana.
