Rory Hearne is an Associate Professor in Social Policy at Maynooth University. He is the author of 'Gaffs', a book about the implications of the housing crisis for certain generations.

The housing crisis, ending homelessness, and tackling the climate crisis. They are interlinked.

We have to provide homes to a generation locked out of a home, and we have to do it in a way that is sustainable for the environment. That means building social and affordable housing on a massive scale - using green methods like fast factory build homes, but also turning the hundreds of thousands of derelict and vacant housing and buildings in our villages, towns and cities into homes.

The other area is creating warm and energy efficient homes - through retrofitting - but we have to ensure everyone - homeowners and renters can have their home retrofitted. All this will require huge investment, and the European Union has an important role through the Green New Deal in providing additional investment to build sustainable affordable housing and retrofit homes.

We will join a group in the European Parliament that is on the Left, that is aligned with our policies, that will put housing as a priority, the green deal, a social Europe, and putting sanctions on Israel. We will certainly not be voting for the EPP group and Von Der Lyon who are complicit with the genocide in Gaza.

As a father with young children, I am standing in Europe for the Midlands-Northwest for all children to have a home, and a fair and sustainable future. I have been one of the strongest voices on the housing crisis in recent years, speaking up for the Generation Locked Out.

I have taken on the vulture funds, organised housing campaigns, and worked directly with people in homelessness, renters, social housing tenants and those looking to buy a home.

I am one of Ireland’s leading housing experts. I have worked as an Associate Professor in Maynooth University, Co Kildare, for over ten years where I have worked with students and staff from across this constituency, and have developed evidence-based solutions to the housing crisis, which I set out in my best-selling book, ‘Gaffs’. If elected I will put all my expertise, advocacy, and solutions to solve the housing crisis here by working at a European level, getting investment and solutions for Irish housing, and working here in Ireland advocating and pressuring the Irish government to act on housing. As an MEP I would remain connected to Ireland and not disappear off to Brussels for five years.

I would raise and campaign on solutions to ending homelessness, working for a rapid increase in social and affordable housing, for ending child poverty, for real action on climate change and investment in communities and our wellbeing.