If the Social Democrats were in Sinn Fein's place

Reality check: Ireland is 7th from bottom in the EU 27 for home ownership rates having been much higher a short couple of decades ago.

The countries below us (Austria / Germany/ Sweden) are countries that don't operate the Anglo-Saxon housing model and will have much stronger protection of tenure for tenancies and much greater stability and security for non-owners. Not owning a property is not an economic live-or-die situation in Germany for instance.

How ownership stats are collated by the CSO is another unflattering hidden reality papered over by home ownership stats. People living with their parents long into adulthood will be lumped into living in an owner-occupied situation for statistical purposes.

We are not in good shape on this front whatsover.

I made no comment either way Mark in that post so don't put words in my mouth. Merely putting some reality around another Gov. cheerleader's misplaced presumptions about home ownership rates relative to Europe.

What I am saying is that Ireland is clearly part of the Anglo-Saxon model of housing provision, which traditionally relies on high home ownership rates as a means of long term housing security - and it's clear that home ownership rates are dropping like a stone due to unaffordability; with very little long term security for tenancies and an ideological aversion making provisions for the same. There are clear social and economic fallouts from that phenomenon, FG in particular has been living in denial about it for a decade and telling us it wasn't happening and had a great deal of difficulty squaring that circle. Still does in fact.

If she chooses to identify as male.

He/she doesn't realise that SF have firmly become the largest party in every age bracket bar the over 60s and have cut deep into the ABC1 middle class voter demographic as well.

Paddy ain't thick. Voters who go out and work for a living realise that FG are a party who have been on neoliberal autopilot for a decade and leaving the economy and critical sectors like housing and health is an extremely dangerous proposition. They are a luxury the country can't afford anymore and are more interested in bribing pensioners and those close to retirement with goodies in an attempt to keep some sort of voter bloc onside. Even the reliable middle class vote is deserting them as they send their kids off to college in Dublin / Cork and are paying 15k a year to have them live somewhere that doesn't have black mould on the walls.

SF may or may not have the answers, and time will tell, but middle Ireland that isn't drawing a pension have definitively decided that FG definitely don't have anything for them anymore and they're not even going to try.