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EVERY DAY OF the campaign, TheJournal.ie puts one of the pressing issues of the campaign to the snap judgement of the public.
Today, we want to know who you think came out on top following Brian Lenihan’s decision to postpone the bank recapitalisation on the the grounds that it had a “limited mandate”.
At 6.05pm yesterday, Fine Gael welcomed it as a prudent move, but by 6.25pm, Michael Noonan was accusing his counterpart of pulling a “political stroke”.
What do you think: was Fianna Fáil merely bowing to the inevitable under pressure from the Opposition, or was Lenihan pulling off the greatest stroke of the campaign so far?
Who wins?
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Government policy is to allow investment funds own property and the public to become renters
Also to increase house prices to ensure banks remain in strong position
They gain more tax while these two aims are fulfilled. Their targets are below what is needed so matters not whether they are reacher not. The government policy is not In the public interest. They do not serve the Irish people. We are seen as consumers not citizens. This is why there is no right to housing in Ireland. Unless your a refugee or asylum of course as the government has stated we have to meet our international obligations. This is not racist btw , its what the government has said.
Capitalism relies on less supply for more demand. Drop the supply of houses (which FG done), house demand increases and house value increases. It suits those who have. Housing can’t be for everyone. As long as housing is under FFG’s capitalist model. Which results clearly show after 12 years in power. Compare that to the mass building of houses decades ago when Ireland were ‘poor’.
@9QRixo8H: Government interference in the housing market is not capitalism, it is socialism. So you are complaining about capitalism while confusing it for socialism and suggesting more socialist policies are the answer. You want the government to “provide” housing for everyone but the government does not provide anything! It only distributes tax payer funds (badly) and then says oh look how great we are for providing stuff! It’s farcical. If they wanted to actually help, they would interfere less, remove barriers for people, planning etc and stop giving preferential treatment, loans and subsidies to developer oligarchs.
@Furious George – The Wasp: not racist? Your drivel is precisely that.
@9QRixo8H: FG have been in power for 12 years, FF haven’t, and changes having a FF Minister for Housing is clear in the huge investment in housing since June 2020
@Roj Blake: where have I mentioned race ?? I am talking about housing policy and asylum seekers at the end. Any person can claim asylum. Do you think all asylum seekers are one race or something??
@9QRixo8H: No, the enemy is “rentier” capitalism. The ability of foreign capital to be introduced / promoted by a neo liberal government like ours into a tight rental or purchase market to create profits based only on the mismatch between supply and demand – and then to have those profits exported to the capital owning / manipulation classes in foreign countries for their benefit not ours. All this in the name of free competition for resources, which of course most people in the countries, like Ireland, adhering to the so called “Washington Consensus” do not have.
Few if any builders in Ireland are willing or able to produce good quality housing for less than 250,000 euros. Yet local authorities (when they are allowed to by central government) can and do regularly produce housing for rent at these prices. There is absolutely nothing stopping our government directing it’s housing policy towards allowing more public housing to be built for rent and for sale (to income and wealth assessed applicants) – as was done in Dublin in the 1970′s and 80′s. The reason it’s not done is entirely ideological – the fear that if we stop parasitic foreign investors buying into our “honeypot” government designed and approved housing crisis to keep supply low and demand high then we might jeopardise our imagined international status as a country open to investment from whatever source, wherever. We are after all the country where money laundering schemes deemed too hot for the City of London were routinely passed here in Ireland a decade ago. How nuch has changed. Not much I would say.
Corruption and Lies.
Propaganda by RTE wholesale telling these lies.
Way worse than FFG want you to understand.
So nonstop house building but 0 infrastructure, no improvement to public transport? Oh and they want less cars as well? How are people supposed to come and go to these new builds?
@GoodBrother: er….bicycles. My 1992 BMW motorcycle instruction book suggests that for journeys less 10km I should ditch their motorcycle and just ride a bike. Of course this was from a time when people and businesses actually cared about the climate and environment, as opposed to just pretending that they do, or did. So obviously it does not apply to our present reality.
Very much working out as intended for the government. A complete disaster for young people. New government very much required….no more FF/FG, we need a breath of fresh air!
@A F: fresh air won’t build houses.
@brian o’leary: Therefore FFG = Fresh Air
@A F: last thing country needs is the whiff of semtex the Shinner criminal gang brings.
@A F: if u had a New Government in the morning are you really that Naive that u believe everything will be wonderful Houses will be built for everyone take the blinkers off
@Roj Blake: Hang on now, they could blow a few holes in our mountains and house people there. Back to cave dwelling castles!
How about reducing immigration as well? That would mean more Irish people getting their own houses?
We all know these housbuilding targets arent going to be met… even if they were met, do we really want to build on greenbelt? Start deporting failed asylum seekers and stop handing out visas and there will be more houses for Irish…
FFG arent on the side of the average Irish citizen….
@Voice of Reason: too much sense all at once I’m afraid pity those idiots in the dail can’t see even a glimmer of common sense to what you’re suggesting but they won’t cause it doesn’t effect them so sod everyone else
This Government is not doing its job! What’s the point of everyone working if they can’t afford anything?
@Michael Mc Gee: To create more government dependence and keep the whole show running according to their rules. You are mistaken, they are doing their jobs and doing them very well. It’s just that their job isn’t what you think it is. They don’t work for us. When you come to terms with that, everything they do makes sense.
@Michael Mc Gee: not much point and with fuel set to rise again in October and that’ll pass on through everything else once again to compensate there’ll be less point more so.
@Michael Mc Gee: The government represents the interests of foreign private finance institutions. Why do you think you matter? Grow up. Did you vote for 70 data centres to take 33% of the electricity capacity in this country at the last election? Did you vote for this capacity to given to international commercial interests and their financial backers for nothing?
Maybe cut the taxes on building materials instead of newspapers?
Ever since we completely shut down the country for a prolonged period of time in 2020, and the sky didn’t fall as we’d been lead to believe it certainly would, I’ve had the feeling that all government planning, and forecasting is nothing but hot air. Action is the only thing that means anything. I wish, just for once put “leaders” could step out of the election cycle for just a moment, stop pitting us against each other according to voting models, and actually do what’s right.Talk is worse than cheap. It’s completely redundant.
@Louis Jacob: The first move in your plan should be a referendum to make the Dail an alcohol free zone. The second should be a referendum on getting all government ministers to publish their income sources in the public media.
Ireland is a victim of its own success. Thousands of well paid MNCs attracting skilled foreign labour, which increases housing demand. Meanwhile we don’t have half enough construction workers are because any 18 year old with sense can see that a high paying STEM desk job is far more attractive than trades.
Also Eastern Europe is booming, so those workers who fuelled the 2008 boom are staying home instead of coming here.
Add in a government who are burying their head in the sand and doing ANYTHING to keep the price of houses high.
The financial services industry controls the government and the nation. Wake up people!!!!
Wicklow isnt allowed build one new house. Why?
Because the population target has already been met. So no new builds.
I kid you not…..
Source : the Wicklow Times. Free local paper
We have an auctioneer in our town, he is a FG councillor and must be making a ton on land sales. How many, are Solicitors/Auctioneers/Engineers/Builders, making huge profits and that is why the housing problem is not solved!
We cannont begin to rebuild the country – for that is what is needed – until we get this
government out.
The word ‘useless’ is now toxic but you can see where it fits in the above sentence.
@Fearg: thankfully polls show current Govt has a substantial lead over the alternative Shinner criminal gang
Stop relying on private company’s to build homes that is the states job. I work in dlr county council and I started in the housing section (I got a transfer recently thankfully) I was verbally abused every day over the phone by foreign nationals demanding they should be housed when poping out kid after kid as well as that I seen the council contracts that they entered into to with private companys such as the council giving the land for free to the developer to build homes then the developer would charge unbelievable amounts to the council to buy 10 percent of these I remember the council bought a lot of three beds apartments that worked out at €700 thousand euros and you can guess who got them…. Government are a disgrace and they should go back to previous and let council build homes for everybody and house accordingly
@zy: Councils are government. It is not the responsibility of government to build houses for people, that philosophy is what has gotten us into this mess. Look at the childrens hospital fiasco. Do you actually want that to be the norm? Imagine the same people in charge of building 10s of 1000s of homes. Are you for real? We have plenty of small independent builders here, we don’t need more of big developer, government buddies building stuff and charging what they like. If you want the government to house everyone, all you will get is poorly built commie blocks and insanely rich developers, bribing govt official for contracts to build the commie blocks.
@Daddy or Chips?: small builders don’t have the expertise or finance to deliver large projects, they do however benefit from work as sub contractors
Imagine what you know from RTE propaganda and government lies
NOW IMAGINE what you don’t know…..
@N D K: for you sake I hope the shops never run out of tin foil and hand lotion
How come nobody ever mentions uncontrolled mass immigration?
@Dan Breen: Because the housing crisis was a housing crisis for nearly a decade before that. FFG are collecting their rent money regardless of who lives in their shoeboxes.
@Dan Breen: probably because the Nazis are too busy hunting down their gold bars.
@Roj Blake: Retaŕd
@Paul Cunningham: Exactly, rentier capitalism has taken over from the capitalism that actually produced anything people could use. The finance “industry” has conned everyone about the meaning of the word progress.
@Dan Breen: mentioned more than twice in these comments.
There’s no need to penalise one population in order to support another. To put it politly
Roj works for Rte lol.Man will ever take that tinfoil hat off.Go for a walk or something man
Government should give back the public housing building program to the local Authorities as private builders are not interested unless it’s in the riches part of the Country
have your say