Ryanair, Housing and Class War

Housing Feeding Frenzy

The recent purchase of 25 family homes by Ryanair in Swords takes place in the middle of a housing feeding frenzy. In the Irish housing system, working class people are served up to satisfy the greed of landlords, investors and big corporations. This is not an accident: the invitation of investment capital into the Irish housing market by the Fine Gael and Labour government was one of many acts of savagery against the working class carried out in the years after the financial crash. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse for ordinary people. 

You get what you legislate for. Bulk purchasing of properties by huge operations such as Ryanair or S3 Capital, who bought up 85% of homes in Belcamp for €21.5 million, is made possible by a housing system deliberately built by successive Ministers for Housing from Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. This “system” places all of the cards in the hands of the already wealthy - tax breaks and direct exchequer support for landlords, tax-free profits for corporate investors, impunity for land speculators, a failure to build social homes, unrestrained profiteering in the sale of houses, and runaway escalation of interest rates - and deals a losing hand to everyone else. 

Darragh O’Brien, the minister for landlords, was recently reported by the ruling class propaganda sheet, the Irish Independent, as being “angered” by the Belcamp transaction. Little wonder. He’s angry because it’s getting harder and harder to hide the truth behind his spin and bluster. He’s angry because the more people realise the system is rigged against them ever owning their own home the harder it might be to control the backlash.

Social Robbery

In truth, his policies should land him in jail. Under his watch, REITS, REIFS and other investment vehicles continue to benefit from the social robbery of tax dodging arrangements abetted and designed by Revenue, tax lawyers, and corporate accountants. Renters’ hard-earned wages vanish along with their hopes of ever getting their own place. Tens of thousands are stuck in emergency accommodation, direct provision, and living in their family homes well into adulthood. According to Pavee Point’s 2021 Advocacy Paper on Travellers and Homelessness, thirty-nine percent of Travellers live in housing that meets the internationally recognised “ETHOS” framework’s definition of homelessness. These policies are having ruinous effects on real people.

The worst that will ever happen to O’Brien is losing the housing portfolio because in a coalition with Sinn Fein that job will go to Eoin O’Broin.

Ban Bulk Buying Homes

Back to the Ryanair bulk purchase in Swords. In a radio interview on RTE in January, Michael O’Leary mentioned that they had actually bought forty properties to house cabin crew. Bulk purchases such as these should be outlawed. Not just by the puny, indirect means of increasing stamp duty as proposed by the Social Democrats but by explicitly banning corporate and vulture landlordism.

Housing Policies for People

But this alone would not be enough. A massive state-run programme of direct building of high-quality, green social homes without ghetto-encouraging income limits needs to get underway.

Compulsory purchase of residential homes needs to be scaled up enormously. In Fingal County Council there are only three vacant homes being bought by CPO – South Dublin County Council recently voted down a motion brought by Cllr Madeleine Johannsen to purchase vacant properties.

The middle class “side hustle” of AirBnB needs to be brought to an end – planning requirements on short-term lets are not being pursued in Local Authorities.

These last two actions can take place at Local Authority level – and this is why socialist candidates need to stand for election for councils in June 2024. For what it’s worth, if I am elected in the Swords ward in Fingal County Council I will pursue matters such as these relentlessly - regardless of how unpopular it’s likely to make me.

Class War

For now, Ryanair is gonna Ryanair. Their entry into landlordism was bound to happen sooner rather than later. The company is notoriously anti-worker. As socialists we must not lose sight of the fundamental class antagonism that structures capitalism and its extension, imperialism. It should come as no surprise to us that Ryanair are opening up new sources of profit in the form of rent, new ways to hold power over their staff by controlling the roofs over their heads. 

Company Towns

The Ryanair purchase resurrects the phenomenon of “Company Towns” in nineteenth Century America. Hardy Green’s 2010 book Company Towns traces the history of these towns from Lowell, Massachusetts 200 years ago, through the “Satanic mills” of coal towns such as Butte and Gary, right up to the present tech campuses created by Google and Facebook. Ryanair is now employer and landlord but the extent of their control over workers and their influence over the politics and economy of North County Dublin is wider.

Considered in its geographical context, the Ryanair bulk purchase is part of the economic and political domination of North County Dublin in general and Swords in particular, by Dublin Airport. This domination is underlined by the deafening noise of aircraft taking off from the newly built (July 2022) north runway. Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) breached the terms of its planning permission by changing the projected flight paths of departing aircraft. Locals report the noise as intolerable and the jet fumes as unbearable. DAA recently submitted a 7,000 page planning application to Fingal County Council that outlines growth in passenger numbers from 32 to 40 million per year over the next 15 years and massive further infrastructural development. 

What is to be Done

The battle lines are drawn. In housing, as in employment, Ryanair will act as it always does: serving the interests of their board and shareholders, extracting all they can get away with in profits and, now, rent. On the Clare Byrne show, Michael O’Leary said he doesn’t see employees staying beyond a year in those houses in Swords.In other words, he seems to think residential tenancies law doesn’t apply to his workers. 

As socialists, we must continue to pressure trade unions to seek to recruit Ryanair employees. Indeed, given that Ryanair is now also a landlord there is an opportunity for us to collaborate with organisations like CATU, opening and joining another front in this class war. 

More widely, the challenge is not just about employment and Housing. In Fingal, it seems, the DAA does what it wants, Ryanair does what it wants. Fingal County Council and the Department of the Environment under its current Minister will not stop them. 

Revolutionary socialists are not scared of DAA or Ryanair. These corporate bullies are trying to railroad hundreds of thousands of locals into accepting a massive increase in pollution, noise and congestion. And for what? So that big businesses can increase their profits.They say there is no alternative. 

Locals need to get serious. Current challenges to DAA’s political and economic domination of North County Dublin take the form of strongly worded letters and lobbying of councillors and TDs. 

But direct action without a plan is useless.We need to advance minimalist aims such as banning private jets and severely reducing, not increasing, passenger numbers. Furthermore, we need to nationalise DAA bringing it under direct, local democratic control. Those advocating for the expansion of Dublin airport often argue that it will preserve and increase employment. The answer to this is simple and fundamental. Direct, state-build of housing, ramping up of construction of free, green public transport and publicly owned renewable energy projects will create jobs that make life for working class people better while directly attacking the profit margins of big corporations like DAA and Ryanair.

North County Dublin is facing its own choice between socialism and barbarism. As revolutionary socialists we must organise to face down the local threat posed by the DAA and the likes of Michael O’Leary. At all times, we must relate this to the wider struggle for socialism. The real enemy is the billionaire ruling class and their allies, the only people who can defeat this enemy are ordinary working class people acting in solidarity.