Dermot Desmond doesn't want apartments in D4

Risingshadoo

Apparently D4 will turn into Ballymun. Is he right, or should he feck off?

https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/billionaire-dermot-desmond-slams-plans-18454491.amp

CrankyHaus

Reading his comments is like that storyline from Ross O'Carroll Kelly where they campaign to have Funderland moved out of D4 to the Northside where it belongs.
Hard to believe he's serious

Atlantic Dawn

He rarely loses in any financial battles he goes in to, he would have the €107.5m RTE got from the sale of the land in his left arse pocket.

crossman47

Oh hes serious alright. How dare they build apartments near Ailesbury Road. They're fine for Tallaght or even Terenure. His money will talk too.

CrankyHaus

Yeah but Ireland usually operates on a nod and a wink behind closed doors, where the vested interest gets its way without most people knowing, rather than some tycoon blasting inflammatory challenges to the civil authorities from the rooftops.

Any politician who wants to look good to the rest of the country can just push this while any one supporting him now cannot do so without looking bad.

wizardman

Slums in D4, unlikely with rent probably in excess of €2500 a month.

suicide_circus

CrankyHaus

wizardman wrote: »

Slums in D4, unlikely with rent probably in excess of €2500 a month.

There's at least one Council estate, including blocks of flats, behind the Donnybrook bus depot across the road from RTE.
It's nicer than some private estates in Dublin too.

Jurgen Klopp

Ah the same moral and intellectual superiors who lecture the rest of the country about taking in more and more refugees, how we are wrong to criticize any travellers or social housing residents who cause trouble

But when it's coming to their doorstep how the attitude changes. "Oh yes bring them all in we must be compassionate! What?! No not here! Put them well away with the plebs so we can pontificate if any trouble arises!"

I long for the day some rich one is driving in home in D4 with Decco sitting outside his gate

"Jaysus Fintan what are ya doing working all those hours ya bleedin muppet, ya should go down council for a free gaff! Fancy a can?"

Junkyard Tom

They should put a halting site and methadone treatment clinic on the site and then they'd be glad to get it replaced by apartments.

wizardman

CrankyHaus wrote: »

There's at least one Council estate, including blocks of flats, behind the Donnybrook bus depot across the road from RTE.
It's nicer than some private estates in Dublin too.

Yes worked in them. Used to do a huge amount of work for Dublin City Council. I've seen proper kips and slums. Them new apartments will not be either.

Idbatterim

'Ballymun Towers South Dublin' and 'modern day slums' only risk of that, is the social housing block in the development! And high rise? isnt it 7 floors FFS?

I wonder how many high rise apartments he owns and spends time in abroad?

Darc19

crossman47 wrote: »

Oh hes serious alright. How dare they build apartments near Ailesbury Road. They're fine for Tallaght or even Terenure. His money will talk too.

Plenty of apartments in the area already, even across from the suggested entrance.

Can't see him winning this one

ShamNNspace

Desmond in the independent in March this year

Dermot Desmond would 'borrow €20bn in the morning' to build homes if he was housing minister


Gabija Gataveckaite
March 08 2020 01:13 PM
BILLIONAIRE financier Dermot Desmond said that he would ‘borrow €20bn in the morning” to build homes if he was housing minister.

He was speaking on RTÉ’s Radio One this morning after an article he wrote in the Irish Times about solutions to the housing crisis gained a lot of traction online over the weekend.

In the article, he says that potential home buyers cannot compete with institutions who purchase apartments for the purpose of renting.

He says that this forced them to become “permanent renters” which “permanently destroys” their savings.

Mr Desmond suggests that homes should not be build-to-rent, that the State should control policies for affordable housing and build homes faster in state owned land.


He details that the state is paying “double the necessary price for housing because of poor policy and poor management”.

Speaking with presenter Miriam O’Callaghan this morning, he said that if he was housing minister tomorrow morning, he would borrow €20bn to build homes.

“I’d borrow about €20bn for housing purposes, at [the interest rate of] one tenth of 1pc and deploy carefully and I think the State would benefit by doing so.”

Mr Desmond said that young people are not being given the opportunity to purchase a home.

“Our parents and forefathers left us Ireland a better place and we have the responsibility to do the same thing and leave it a better place for our children and our descendants,” he explained.


“We will not do that with living in rental accommodation, every parent wants to see their child to have a home and a job.

“We’re not giving them the opportunity to have a home. As a very low level clerk in a bank, I was able to buy my first house,” he said.

“How can we say that we have improved as a country in the last 40 years when you can’t buy a house when you’re starting off?”

He said that the State has assets “to deploy”.

“The government and the State and the authorities, they have the assets to deploy. They have the people and they can create competition amongst builders. We can create affordable housing and we can divide policies that will give everybody an opportunity to buy a house.”


“Per year, the state are contributing over a billion to rental accommodation and in all cases, they have no asset to show for it. If they were building social houses, they’ll have the asset to show for it at the end of the period. But they have none.

The article, published yesterday, was received well online by housing activists including Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin O’Broin, who suggested that Mr Desmond’s solutions are similar to that of those in the Sinn Féin manifesto.

“Clearly we have won the argument. Now we need a Govt to act,” he tweeted yesterday.

riclad

It seems if there's apartments being built anywhere on the south side, someone will object to them. Maybe they are afraid of extra traffic noise in the area, or it may effect the value of their home.

nthclare

riclad wrote: »

It seems if there's apartments being built anywhere on the south side, someone will object to them. Maybe they are afraid of extra traffic noise in the area, or it may effect the value of their home.

Hopefully it'll effect the value of their home's so that they can't sell them and relocate to the west of Ireland and have enough money to live off for the rest of their time.

Sure all anyone needs is a roof over their heads, a brick is a brick location inflation...

Muahahaha

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

He rarely loses in any financial battles he goes in to, he would have the €107.5m RTE got from the sale of the land in his left arse pocket.

He's a canny lad alright. He is not even a property developer but a stockbroker by trade but back in the boom he had the single best deal of any of the Irish property developers when he bought London City Airport for £28m in 1996 and then sold it only 10 years later for a whopping £1billion, quite an incredible profit. 18 months after he sold up London prices crashed but Dermot had sailed off into the sunset with his £1bn, not having to pay any capital gains tax on it either because he is a resident of Gibraltar. He's also made hundreds of millions in his early investments on Esat with O'Brien and Baltimore Technologies

Though he did sink around 100 million into Independent News and Media alongside Denis o'Brien. He took a very cold bath on that one, its unknown but likely he lost at least 50 million on that deal and perhaps more. That was a case of emotion getting the better of him and O'Brien, the pair of them spent nearly half a billion over a grudge match with Tony o'Reilly, seized control on INM but ultimately lost most of their investment when it was sold cut price to MediaHaus in 2018.

He famously guards his privacy with zeal and in the past he has sent threatening legal letters to newspapers and their photographers for taking his photo at events. About three years back he sent one to Phoenix magazine who duly published the legal letter in full and then went and published a new photo of him alongside it. The threats were empty but it goes to show he is tough to deal with.

I dont know what his angle is here or if he is going soft in his old age. An investor like him could have made serious money off the vulture/cuckoo fund industry going on with apartments in Dublin but instead he has launched a campaign against them. Strangely enough him and Eoin o'Broin of Sinn Fein are on the same page when it comes to housing policy and they have had at least one phone call discussing what needs to be done.

NasserShammaz

Skum like Desmond d and Ronan would concrete over this country to make money ' f@cking greed mongering cockroaches....as long as it's not in their back garden funnily enough.

Expect a turn on the late late at some stage in the near future and a session of arse kissing fawning from turgidy to the great irish business man....sure Ryan I'm practically running a charity here .........

Kermit.de.frog

The most noisy about homeless; the shinners, lefties etc are all happy to point out the number of homeless in their own constituencies.

They are far less likely to point out their own constituencies need more homes.

A lot of these complete hypocrites object themselves to almost any development of apartments and homes in their own constituencies!

Look at that Labour fella O'Riordan in relation to that disgraceful spectacle in Clontarf holding up 100's of badly needed apartments. It's just out and out NIMBYism and it's rife everywhere.

All selfish hypocrites.

Muahahaha

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The most noisy about homeless; the shinners, lefties etc are all happy to point out the number of homeless in their own constituencies.

They are far less likely to point out their own constituencies need more homes.

A lot of these complete hypocrites object themselves to almost any development of apartments and homes in their own constituencies!

Look at that Labour fella O'Riordan in relation to that disgraceful spectacle in Clontarf holding up 100's of badly needed apartments. It's just out and out NIMBYism and it's rife.

All selfish hypocrites.

They all do it, including Leo himself who objected to apartments in Castleknock while talking out of the other side of his mouth by bleating on in the Dail about solving the housing crisis.

Its a failure of our political system that TDs get involved in local planning issues, they should be excluded from that process because they only object to new houses/apartments in order to garner local votes- no houses being built means the value of locals own houses goes up which is basically what people objecting to new houses want to see happen.

By restricting supply the price goes up, of course its all cloaked in traffic issues or not enough school places but ultimately locals want to see the value of their house rise and the way to do that is ensure nothing else gets built. TDs facilitate this by constantly objecting at the behest of locals so they then vote for them, even though the locals can do it themselves anyway.