General Irish politics discussion thread

The examples you list are all within walking distance of either the DART, the Luas or the N11 bus corridor. Some are close to areas of high employment like Sandyford.

The ratio of new build to rent apartment developments vs new housing from my casual observations in those same areas is easily at a 5:1 ratio. We need more of everything but all we are getting seemingly is build to rent apartments which is simply squashing the middle of the market into rental and screwing the bottom by not allowing any effective movement up the property ladder into realistic family home ownership..

Build to rent are only an issue if it stops other types of housing being built. As has already been pointed out Build to rent attracts a different type of builder/investor/buyer. If institutional investors invest in build to rent accommodation its great news for the country. Its money that doesn't need to lent by Irish banks or spent by the government increasing the amount of money available for housing and other things. Remember their is only so much that Irish banks can lend to the property market(remember the last crash) and the government also has limits due to increasing interest rates that will feed into government borrowing over time.

You need to show that these build to rent harms the housing market/stops housing getting built otherwise you are just complaining about companies/people spending money on housing in the middle of a housing crisis.

Certain areas of Dublin and the country in general are going to attract more build to rent because they are flat out more attractive for renting. Many of the places you mention in previous posts are ideal. At this stage places like Sandyford,Dundrum and anywhere pretty much inside the M50 is inner city for housing purposes. It's not the 60s/70s, the days they were suburbs of the edge of the city are long gone and the residents of those areas need to accept that. They are also ideal for high density housing as you don't have the architectural issues that the historic city centre has and still have great transport links.

While the rents are relatively high that's a function of the lack/decreasing amount of rental accommodation available. The country needs institutional investors to replace the large number of small landlords that are leaving the rental market. Get a new rental anywhere in a half decent in Dublin you will face relatively high rent regardless of the landlord/lessor and quality of accommodation.

Excellent contribution. Says it all really about the institutional buy-to-rent multi stories.

Watching the debate on the confidence motion would not make you think the Government has the reasonable majority for the motion that it almost definitely has.

Eamon Ryan is stumbling and battering on about environmental achievements; various FFG backbenchers making an Enoch, sorry, scene to get noticed on camera as if they are posturing for an election.

FG ministers all have scripts written by the same person/team - "the opposition have no monopoly on compassion" and "I have great respect for the Labour Party" have turned up in every single speech as far as I can tell

Holly Cairns isn't a great Dail performer. Don't think that really matters anymore.

Catherine Martin also talking about other Green Party measures as her main thing, not the actual motion - she's actually run out of time without mentioning housing at all!

Hourigan, MacSharry and a smaller than I expected number of Independents voted for the Government so they had a very healthy margin. Really makes the borderline rattled state they were in even odder.

I know but one should absolutely affect the other to some degree or at least more than those you posted. It seems to me that the pension obligation and GNI projections are completely ignoring our worker to retiree projections. While the former is basically just educated guesswork the latter is not as we know how many children have been born vs how many many people will be hitting X age already.

As Vin points out, the dependency ratio depends on future migration patterns. And the pension obligation/GNI* ratio isn't just "educated guesswork"; we know how many people are in the active workforce now and what pension entitlements they have already accrued and will accrue between now and the age they reach 65. so we can model pension obligations up to 40 years out quite accurately.

Sure, the changing dependency ratio is an issue we need to confront, but nothing about the changing dependency ratio suggests the the modelling of the pension liability is wrong. The signficance of the dependency ration is not, how does it affect the size of the pension liability? (It doesn't affect it at all; my accrued pension entitlement will be the same whether I have one child or ten, and the same is true for every other worker.) The dependency ratio affects how well-positioned we will be to pay the pension liability.

The Supreme Court has found that the non-implementation of the 7th Amendment - extending the Seanad University franchise to all Irish graduates - is unconstitutional and it must be fixed by the next Seanad election

My English degree is probably still going to be worthless, but I'll have an Irish one by the summer, assuming I actually get some stuff submitted in time this weekend and don't get distracted by politics :pac:

So... They took 34 years to notice this little detail? Need someone to fill me in on the history..

More that it took 34 years for someone with the standing (you'd need to be a disenfranchised grad to challenge it) and resources (some lawyers/barristers deciding that this was something worth making a name for themselves on) to do it really.

I know plenty of people with two votes due to a degree in NUI and a postgrad in Trinity or v/v. Also know a Councillor with that so they get 7! (the 5 other panels)

Most young people in the Republic don't have strong views either way on the Troubles. Why is Mary Lou not putting distance between Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA?

Because if she did she would be accused of whitewashing.

The IRA is indeliably linked with SF, why would they distance themselves?

They committed to an 'exclusively peaceful path' as Gerry Adams called for in 1998 and the final report of the International Monitoring Commission in 2015 had this to say

I.E. They did what they were asked to do, involve themselves in democratic politics.