FF/FG/Green Next Government

efanton

Bishop of hope wrote: »

But you're still talking provision at a much higher cost than is being touted.
We've gone full circle now and we are back at where we started.
If you take workers away from the private market then you see the cost of private construction increase because of a worker shortage and you have to compete with that.
It's a vicious circle.

Sorry but we have heard this argument before in this country, and its just as much boloney now as it was then.

We are part of the EU, where there are open borders and free movement of workers.

In the early 90's we heard that contractors could not get labour for love nor money.
Yet just a few years later there was a building boom going full swing, and there was absolutely no shortage of labour jobs in the building industry. In fact workers were travelling from across Europe to work here.

If the work is there, at reasonable pay, those jobs will be filled.

markodaly

Bowie wrote: »

It's like a game of three card monte with you.

You made a mistake, or pretended to, twice now on two figures I supplied with links.
Your last post claimed the 1.2 billion spent on buying houses to use as social was an error on my behalf as it pertained to builds.
I re-posted it to clarify.
Now you are posting like I pulled it out of my arse for no reason. It was reposted for your benefit.

You are posting the 1.2 Billion figure as if we can save this off the bat every year if we build or something. That of course is bull****, and now you know that.
I have demonstrated that you actually save **** all per year, regardless of the headline big number you put forward.

You asked where money would come from I gave some examples of savings we could make on a move to building. I never claimed it would or would not cover the complete cost of an as yet unknown amount of social builds for an as yet unknown cost, no.

Yea, 15 million extra per year will surely solve the housing crisis for us. It will what, build an extra 75 houses per year.

Can you tell me where we'll get the tens of millions a year required for the yearly cost of buying, leasing and renting for use as social housing? Or is that the money tree I keep hearing about?

It comes out of borrowing or taxes. As I said before. Now if someone is advocating massive spending spree to fix a problem, for them to point out to existing spending as some 'saving' when its not really a saving anyway, tells us all how they do not understand the basics.

markodaly

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Looking back to see how much of a core policy it was?
You betcha.

Why are you whinging about the SD's - you are the one who claimed it was a core policy of the govt?

What to I want them to do?
Get their fingers out of the amply fed arses and start implementing the plan it took them 2 years to come up with - since it's a core policy.

It is and was core policy, it was part of their manifesto in the last election.
FG as government launched the plan and started implementing it, in small parts granted, but the ball was moving.

Again, a certain thing called Covid-19 has kinda changed things a bit and the government is a little bit pre-occupied.
Now if you are seriously suggesting that the government should be completely reforming the health system in the middle of a Global and national pandemic then I feel you are being totally unrealistic and unfair in your criticism.

James Brown

markodaly wrote: »

You are posting the 1.2 Billion figure as if we can save this off the bat every year if we build or something. That of course is bull****, and now you know that.
I have demonstrated that you actually save **** all per year, regardless of the headline big number you put forward.



Yea, 15 million extra per year will surely solve the housing crisis for us. It will what, build an extra 75 houses per year.



It comes out of borrowing or taxes. As I said before. Now if someone is advocating massive spending spree to fix a problem, for them to point out to existing spending as some 'saving' when its not really a saving anyway, tells us all how they do not understand the basics.

You wanted to know where we could get money. If you want to go that route I could say building would be really expensive one year then free the next. I AM NOT SAYING THAT BY THE WAY, JUST TO BE CLEAR.
Houses will need be done in batches over a number of years I'd imagine.
You seem angered.
You have not demonstrated anything. You keep throwing up crap and then moving goal posts when challenged. You've also a habit of asking questions then avoiding answers you don't like.

Where did you pull 15m out of? You asked were money would come from. You got some examples. All you have to offer is borrowing and more taxes.

Here's as basic as I can make it.
The more we invest in building, the less we need spend on buying or leasing.

markodaly

efanton wrote: »

Simple answer. The details of the contract.
FIXED PRICE, fixed deadlines, and penalty clause. If the contract does not have all three then the minister takes on full responsibility if that contract is signed.

Lots of contracts are fixed prices however some arent especially when the terms of the contract are still up in the air, as was the NCH because the project was so big.
Afaik, I remember that one of the reasons the bill escalated was that the design team kept changing the terms and the fit out of the hospital.

Better people than me can answer that question in lots more details, but again, its a little bit more complicated than you put forward.

It really not that hard a principle to understand, even a FF minister could understand that.
If the contractor fecks up and the three clauses are there, then the minister is covered, he did his job and its down to the civil servants and the contractor to sort to out the mess. If the three clauses are not there then the minister made a judgement call which was a bad judgement and takes on full responsibility

Yes, its sooooo simple.... :rolleyes:

No need to sack any civil servant.
If the top jobs are contract only, that reward those that deliver with a higher wage and bonuses for cost saving, only those that are confident they can deliver will apply lest they lose their civil service pension and cushy little number. The other advantage of putting the top civil service jobs out to contract is that it need not be a civil servant that apply for the job.

Even though they royally screw up?
Sorry but if you want accountability, there has to be the option of getting rid of people in the process.

Nothing politically complex about it at all. Making the top jobs in the civil service contract only will not affect 99.999% of the civil service, and dare I say it but ordinary hard working civil servants are probable likely to support it.
How many of them are sick and tired of having to clean up the mess of a lazy or incompetent boss?

There is zero point hiring the top guy on a contact basis, when those directly under them in the Dept. continue on working in the same vein.
Its like hiring a new manager, expecting magical results but the football team are still unfit and lazy.

Its a tender process. Given that the contract would have fixed price and deadline no doubt the likes of BAM would demand a higher initial cost. They know if they do not take the contract competitors might, so yes I think even the likes of BAM would accept a fixed price contract. Market economics 101.

Is that how it worked in the NBP? If the government makes the contract process so difficult,then they will have a hard time getting tenders accepted.

I have no doubt that tendered prices might be higher, but they would be fixed price, with little possibility of over runs in both cost or time.
Obviously there will be occasions here and there where an over-run happens due to unforeseen circumstances such as covid, labour strikes etc, but that is then a decision for a government to make as to how much additional cost they are will to accept or how long extra they are prepared to wait for a contract to be completed.
But the point is here that a government could plan budgets and borrowing confidently, and any possible additional cost would be far outweighed by potential overruns and deliberate under-costings by the likes of BAM

So, from the frying pan into the fire. Costs and expenses will go up anyway... don't see how we are saving in the long run so.

Which is precisely why I advocate top civil service jobs being contract based. Only the smartest and most effective would apply. Also as stated earlier who said these contracts need be only open to existing civil servants. Plenty of extremely effective professional around the world make a living out of contracts such as these. The are well paid (because they deliver and get the bonuses), enjoy the variety of having multiple jobs and new challenges in their career, have the people management and organisational skills that would be required to deal with those working in the civil service, and their reputation is everything to them so they are unlikely to feck up.

Also if fixed price price, fixed deadlines and penalties were all included in the contract the wide boys that the likes of BAM employ to negotiate deals wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

I do not disagree in principal to the concept of having the people at the top of the Civil Service tree contract only, but it would not be the silver bullet you make it out to be at all.

markodaly

Bowie wrote: »

You wanted to know where we could get money. If you want to go that route I could say building would be really expensive one year then free the next. Houses will need be done in batches over a number of years I'd imagine.

And the government is doing this no? Providing money to build social houses.

Where did you pull 15m out of? You asked were money would come from. You got some examples. All you have to offer is borrowing and more taxes.

All money spent is either tax money raised or money borrowed.
The 15 million is the savings one would have building those 1,100 houses rather than buying them on the market.

The point, the savings echoed by you are no where near the big headline figures you pronounce of 1.2 Billion or other such nonesense.

Here's as basic as I can make it.
The more we invest in building, the less we need spend on buying or leasing.

Great, so where will be get the extra funds needs for this capital spending?

James Brown

markodaly wrote: »

And the government is doing this no? Providing money to build social houses.

So you've gone from throwing obstacles in front of the idea to saying its already happening. Piecemeal.

You tell me. Social housing use to mean state building. Only buying one or two at a time for emergency cases.
Now it's more buying, leasing and renting than ever before. We should be working towards less leasing or buying.

markodaly wrote: »

All money spent is either tax money raised or money borrowed.
The 15 million is the savings one would have building those 1,100 houses rather than buying them on the market.

A paltry 15 million is it? How many more houses could we build with that? Every saving helps. We can't go on leasing, theres no magic money tree.
Is your argument that we save money but not enough? So we spend more...that's the solution?

markodaly wrote: »

The point, the savings echoed by you are no where near the big headline figures you pronounce of 1.2 Billion or other such nonesense

You are misrepresenting the article and my comments on it. 1.2 billion was spent on buying houses to use as social. I was showing there was money to spend and for example that 1.2 billion could have gone on building.
The article went on to show how building was cheaper than buying and gave the savings.
You are twisting it to sound like we didn't spend 1.2 billion on buying. We did. We could have spent 1.2 billion on building and got more houses for the money than we did. That's the point you are side stepping.

I quoted numbers from articles and a government source on the amount spent on HAP, buying and rent subsidies. You keep inferring I'm wrong or making it up. I posted links. Took you a few times to catch that.
Again, you asked were money would come from. Again, I never claimed these figures would cover the entire cost. Again, we dont know the cost until we decide how many to build.

markodaly wrote: »

Great, so where will be get the extra funds needs for this capital spending?

Same place we get the money for 25 year leases, buying off market and subsidising private rentals I'd imagine. Also, 'extra'? Building is cheaper. Kinda my point.

Yeah buying a house in the middle of nowhere might be cheaper than building....etc. Be great if we could find as many as we needed and move them around to where we needed them.

Yurt2

blanch152 wrote: »

No, of course you don't, you give them a free forever home beside Mammy with a back garden and a trampoline.

Oh ffs. This is the level of debate from the do nothing right.

There's some genuine ideas being explored here and blanch is back to this scrot.

You're actually a silly human blanch.

Bishop of hope

efanton wrote: »

Sorry but we have heard this argument before in this country, and its just as much boloney now as it was then.

We are part of the EU, where there are open borders and free movement of workers.

In the early 90's we heard that contractors could not get labour for love nor money.
Yet just a few years later there was a building boom going full swing, and there was absolutely no shortage of labour jobs in the building industry. In fact workers were travelling from across Europe to work here.

If the work is there, at reasonable pay, those jobs will be filled.

But none of that changes the cost of providing these houses overall.
You can flood the market with builders and, trades people for sure, but that in itself pushes up demand for housing as well.

Wanderer78

Bishop of hope wrote:

But none of that changes the cost of providing these houses overall. You can flood the market with builders and, trades people for sure, but that in itself pushes up demand for housing as well.

Demand for housing has nearly always been there, as we still have kids, and we haven't figured out how to stop the aging process, our current housing needs were recognised during the previous crash, but we decided it was best to stop building

Bishop of hope

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Demand for housing has nearly always been there, as we still have kids, and we haven't figured out how to stop the aging process, our current housing needs were recognised during the previous crash, but we decided it was best to stop building

The O Devaney Gardens project to progress.
Gives an idea of the cost of builds.
https://www.thejournal.ie/two-housing-bodies-appointed-as-odevaney-gardens-redevelopment-set-to-progress-further-next-week-5156590-Jul2020/

Wanderer78

Bishop of hope wrote: »

The O Devaney Gardens project to progress.
Gives an idea of the cost of builds.
https://www.thejournal.ie/two-housing-bodies-appointed-as-odevaney-gardens-redevelopment-set-to-progress-further-next-week-5156590-Jul2020/

... and you ll find, one of the main reasons for the inflation of property prices has been the rapid increase of the availability of credit, hence why its now a train wreck

Bishop of hope

Wanderer78 wrote: »

... and you ll find, one of the main reasons for the inflation of property prices has been the rapid increase of the availability of credit, hence why its now a train wreck

I'd agree with that to a large extent.
Easy money led to the crash for sure and caused the spike in house prices.
There's no cheap fix to housing anymore.

Wanderer78

Bishop of hope wrote: »

I'd agree with that to a large extent.
Easy money led to the crash for sure and caused the spike in house prices.
There's no cheap fix to housing anymore.

no theres not, its a serious mess, and i dont think anybody really knows what to do next about it, its deeply concerning

Yurt2

Bishop of hope wrote: »

The O Devaney Gardens project to progress.
Gives an idea of the cost of builds.
https://www.thejournal.ie/two-housing-bodies-appointed-as-odevaney-gardens-redevelopment-set-to-progress-further-next-week-5156590-Jul2020/

It doesn't tell us a lot really, and there is the distinct chance the developer will play silly buggers with the cost of unit construction when selling on to the housing body. For instance will they bundle the developer levies and cost of land in the sale price? Essentially, as I understand it, the council and it's agent in the housing body will be buying back part of the 'construction cost' (i.e the land and its use) which they previously owned at a premium from the developer. If people use this as a yardstick of cost of construction, I think they'll be getting a very distorted picture. Murphy and the council stuffed this one up I'd argue. The developers led them in a merry dance.

The ODevaney gardens boogaloo is a complex one that is shrouded in secrecy when you get down to the granular details.

This article captures the goings on in detail. Good luck making sense of it.

https://www.dublininquirer.com/2019/11/27/a-closer-look-at-the-costs-of-the-o-devaney-gardens-deal

Bannasidhe

markodaly wrote: »

It is and was core policy, it was part of their manifesto in the last election.
FG as government launched the plan and started implementing it, in small parts granted, but the ball was moving.

Again, a certain thing called Covid-19 has kinda changed things a bit and the government is a little bit pre-occupied.
Now if you are seriously suggesting that the government should be completely reforming the health system in the middle of a Global and national pandemic then I feel you are being totally unrealistic and unfair in your criticism.

You are again ignoring that it took from 2017 to 2019 before they could even get a plan published for this 'core policy'.
Covid is a convenient excuse to mask 3 years of foot dragging.

Underground

I see Ms McHugh left the Greens, apparently a big news item this morning, although I'm a bit confused as to why that is.

She's in the news regularly and was seemingly the voice of the extreme (for want of a better term) wing of the Green Party, but from what I can see she has failed (I) to get in as an MEP, (ii) to get into the Dail and (iii) to get into the Seanad. I'm a little confused as to why she seems to have the profile she does, is it because she got Peter Casey with a few zingers in a debate once?

Wanderer78

Underground wrote: »

I see Ms McHugh left the Greens, apparently a big news item this morning, although I'm a bit confused as to why that is.

She's in the news regularly and was seemingly the voice of the extreme (for want of a better term) wing of the Green Party, but from what I can see she has failed (I) to get in as an MEP, (ii) to get into the Dail and (iii) to get into the Seanad. I'm a little confused as to why she seems to have the profile she does, is it because she got Peter Casey with a few zingers in a debate once?

not the sharpest of tools in my opinion, very utopic

Elmo

Underground wrote: »

I see Ms McHugh left the Greens, apparently a big news item this morning, although I'm a bit confused as to why that is.

She's in the news regularly and was seemingly the voice of the extreme (for want of a better term) wing of the Green Party, but from what I can see she has failed (I) to get in as an MEP, (ii) to get into the Dail and (iii) to get into the Seanad. I'm a little confused as to why she seems to have the profile she does, is it because she got Peter Casey with a few zingers in a debate once?

Big news for all of those reasons. She's young and AFAIK wasn't far of getting into those positions. She a high profile candidate from of the 4th biggest party in the country and a government party.

You'd have the same coverage if any unelected high profile rep from FG, FF, SF was to resign from their respective parties.

Labour: you'd hear nothing because it would look bad and sure we wouldn't want that.

November Golf

5000th post :-)

Calahonda52

Underground wrote: »

I see Ms McHugh left the Greens, apparently a big news item this morning, although I'm a bit confused as to why that is.

She's in the news regularly and was seemingly the voice of the extreme (for want of a better term) wing of the Green Party, but from what I can see she has failed (I) to get in as an MEP, (ii) to get into the Dail and (iii) to get into the Seanad. I'm a little confused as to why she seems to have the profile she does, is it because she got Peter Casey with a few zingers in a debate once?

Have you any failings you would like to list here since you, and others are pretty handy at pi$$ing in on people who try to make a difference, especially women?

Have you stood for public office?
Have you any idea what it takes?

Answers: no and no.

Underground

Calahonda52 wrote: »

Have you any failings you would like to list here since you, and others are pretty handy at pi$$ing in on people who try to make a difference, especially women?

Have you stood for public office?
Have you any idea what it takes?

Answers: no and no.

No failings I'd like to list because unlike Ms Mchugh, I'm not asking for your or anyone's vote.

As for your reference to gender, I've spent as much time on Boards slating Alan Farrell, Richard Boyd Barrett and Paul Murphy as I've spent criticising female politicians, so you might want to leave the gender wars debates to the US based forums where it belongs.

KyussB

McHugh was one of the more vocal critics of the Programme for Government - specifically due to the likelihood that it will lead to austerity, due to agreeing budget balancing in as little as 2 years (at which time we're likely to still be far away from recovery).

Fair play to her for having actual principles - it would be good to see the entire youth wing split from the Green Party, and form a Progressive Green Party - as the current lot are just a carbon copy of FG.

BonnieSituation

KyussB wrote: »

McHugh was one of the more vocal critics of the Programme for Government - specifically due to the likelihood that it will lead to austerity, due to agreeing budget balancing in as little as 2 years (at which time we're likely to still be far away from recovery).

Fair play to her for having actual principles - it would be good to see the entire youth wing split from the Green Party, and form a Progressive Green Party - as the current lot are just a carbon copy of FG.

"Stickies" is taken, so we could call them the "Carrot-ies"

efanton

BonnieSituation wrote: »

"Stickies" is taken, so we could call them the "Carrot-ies"

Snotties would be far more appropriate

Snot another word for a greenie,

Snotty dictionary definition
having or showing a superior or conceited attitude.

James Brown

Three kinds of politician talk against the party line, the principled ones which are rare, the more common out for themselves, looking to raise their profile and the hard done by who's nose is out of joint.

Truthvader

KyussB wrote: »

McHugh was one of the more vocal critics of the Programme for Government - specifically due to the likelihood that it will lead to austerity, due to agreeing budget balancing in as little as 2 years (at which time we're likely to still be far away from recovery).

Fair play to her for having actual principles - it would be good to see the entire youth wing split from the Green Party, and form a Progressive Green Party - as the current lot are just a carbon copy of FG.

"actual principles" rooted in dreamy dreamy faraway happy land are no use to anyone - even herself

James Brown

Truthvader wrote: »

"actual principles" rooted in dreamy dreamy faraway happy land are no use to anyone - even herself

Knowing what you are or are not voting for is good information to have.

Loafing Oaf

Underground wrote: »

I'm a little confused as to why she seems to have the profile she does, is it because she got Peter Casey with a few zingers in a debate once?

That and she was once pictured stark naked in The Guardian:D

James Brown

The Minister for Transport and Tourism Tánaiste was speaking out of school on Green listed countries the other day, now today we've The Minister for Education Tánaiste speaking on schools....

'No reason' schools shouldn't reopen in August - Tánaiste'
The Tánaiste has said there is no reason why Ireland should be the only country in Europe that does not reopen its schools at the end of August.
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2020/0723/1155117-politics-education/

Do we have a Minister for health?