Amy Ní Ghiolla
Supervisor: Dr Marie Luce-Paris
Research Area: Right to housing, Jurisprudence
Thesis title: A study of the Housing Crisis, and its Effects on the Social Contract
Abstract
There is currently a housing crisis underway. Many people in Ireland, a wealthy and developed country, are without homes, living in emergency accommodation, or feeling trapped in leases with rents rising disproportionately to wages, coupled with a cost-of-living crisis, leaving many unable to properly save deposits to buy homes outright, in contrast to cultural tradition.
The aim of this paper is to pinpoint some of the causational factors, to establish the grounds for protecting the right to housing, and advocate for such concrete answers, while consider realistic solutions based on the ways others have protected this right before, and then to consider some of the ways this may have affected the younger generations, currently suffering the most obvious symptoms. I earnestly believe that aside from the fundamental right to housing that should be protected regardless, and aside from the current housing crisis that has affected so many aspects of Irish life, the effects of this crisis will be felt for many years to come, and a strain between the younger and older people is just one of the many ways that it is likely to manifest.
Biography
Amy is a PhD researcher in UCD Sutherland School of Law studying the Housing Crisis in modern Ireland, and the social contract (with a focus on generational relations). Amy holds an LLM (General, with honours) from University College Dublin, with a dissertation focused on jurisprudence; specifically on Kelsen and his theory of revolution. Prior to this, Amy graduated with honours in a general LLB from Maynooth University. Amy has also represented Ireland in sport, and currently assists in research, with interest in both the Irish and French languages.