Squatting in Ireland

Squatting in the Republic of Ireland is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. In the 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee highlighted the housing crisis by squatting buildings. From the 1990s onwards there have been occasional political squats such as Grangegorman.
History.
Squatting in Ireland was mentioned in letters in 1846, but by 1870 the issue was said to be in the past. Irish Travellers wanted houses in the Republic of Ireland in the 1970s and used squatting as a tactic to gain them. The Dublin Housing Action Committee (DHAC) was active between 1968 and 1971. It would occupy buildings to protest the housing crisis and support those who were imprisoned. Dennis Dennehy had previously squatted in Birmingham and London. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1969 after occupying 20 Mountjoy Square the previous year.
When he decided to go on hunger strike, it galvanised protests over housing. There were nightly marches to Mountjoy Prison and blockades of O'Connell Bridge. The Dublin Trades Council supported him and President De Valera was heckled. Later in 1969, three men were imprisoned after the eviction of the Carlton Hotel on Harcourt Street and five activists barricaded themselves inside a room at the Four Courts. 
Many young people emigrated from Ireland in the 1980s and squatted in London. In Dublin, there was a political squat on Arran Quay in 1995. Housing activists occupied Disco Disco on Parnell Square in July 2003 and were evicted within 24 hours. From 2003 to 2004 the Magpie Squat was a residential space which housed activists on Upper Leeson Street. It had a library and a vegetable garden.
Legal.
DHAC's campaigning resulted in some successes but also the Prohibition of Forcible Entry and Occupation Act of 1971, which criminalized squatting. Squatters can gain title to land and property by adverse possession as governed by the 1957 Statute of Limitations Act. An occupant is entitled to apply to the Property Registration Authority for legal possession provided they are in continuous and uninterrupted occupation of the property without the permission of the owner for 12 years. If the land is owned by the state the period is 30 years. In 2004, a squatter who had occupied a building for 16 years was unable to gain title because the owner had been paying for insurance on the house and in 2008 radio presenter Pat Kenny failed to gain title to land owned by his neighbour.
2010s.
In the 2010s, with the construction of ghost estates across the country there was a rise in occupations in rural areas. 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. Activists from Occupy Cork squatted a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) building in Cork at Christmas 2011, with the intention of using it as a community resource centre. 
Dublin hosted the 2014 International Squatter Convergence, which had previously been held in cities such as Brighton, Dijon, Berlin and Leeds. Events were hosted by Seomra Spraoi, a self-managed social centre. The Grangegorman squat in 2015 was a complex of buildings which successfully resisted eviction. The news of the successful resistance spread across social media and international news. The squat was publicly supported by the Lord Mayor Christy Burke and by Irish Times journalist Una Mullally, before being evicted the following year. 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. Illegal evictions also occur, such as a 2015 case in which three men were convicted of false imprisonment.