The eviction ban

I was trying to convince my wife to stay in the business too as we were actually making a profit and had no issues, well no major ones anyway, but she won and when the eviction ban was announced that was us out. Its a slippery slope from here and noone will be able to climb back up it. Time to get out.

You better hope the next legislation change doesnt prevent your part 4 ending.

Ending the ban meant that thousands would potentially become homeless. That is 100% something the government should have prepared for and something they should have tried to prevent.

No problem then. No-one will be homeless. It's all grand. The people who are being evicted and can't find anywhere are just idiots. They'll waltz into another place. It's all just being exaggerated. I don't know why I, or anyone else was worried about them or expected the government to plan for it. maybe we should have more evictions. That would make it better according to your logic?

And yes, that was sarcasm.

People are going to be evicted into a rental market that can't accommodate them. This has been building up since the pandemic started. In that time the government could have put pressure on councils to buy more social housing. They could have done anything to help create a rental system that isn't about price gouging. And every single measure that they introduced since the ban was lifted should have been brought in months before that.

Kermit just did it.

I could add the way he has allowed executives in the poverty industry enrich themselves with six-figure salaries running "charities".

There's another reason why building hasn't started.

There are permissions for apartments in Dublin, but the builders won't build them, because the landlords won't buy them anymore because of the howling and screaming. Businessmen don't look just at what has happened but what is to come, and they figure that there will be some influence on a future government from the current opposition and don't like what they see.

The tiny germ of truth in your post is contained in the sentence that the government could have put pressure on councils to buy more social housing. The government did put such pressure, the money is available. However, two factors intervene. Firstly, there is the general incompetence of councils. They just about manage to look after libraries and parks, but little else. Secondly, all of the Dublin councils have opposition majorities are not going to get off their holes to do anything to help the government.

Ok boys and girls, time to re-tell this fairytale for those who missed it, already posted before and in other threads:

Once upon a time, in the far away continent of Europeland, there was a nation called GoodButNotPerfect, or GBNP for short. This was a fair and prosperous land, with one the most equal societies in whole wide world. It had a benign, temperate climate, and was safe from most of the natural disasters that befell other nations, like earthquakes, volcano eruptions, life-threatening wildfires and floods. It had a much envied proportional election system for government and a progressive taxation system. It did have a violent and and poverty-ridden recent past, mainly because of their greedy, oppressive neighbour, Great Brainless (GB for short), which it had successfully overcome. All in all, it was one of the best nations in the whole wide world for quality of life. It aspired to someday change it's name from GoodButNotPerfect to AbsolutelyPerfect, something no nation had ever done in the history of the whole world.

However, it did face some significant problems, like every other nation in the whole wide world. Firstly, there was a shortage of one of the basic essentials, called Units. These Units were expensive items, of various fixed sizes, in a fixed location, but they were a requirement for the people of GBNP to have a happy life. Not everyone could afford to buy one, but there were other options: you could share with your family who owned one or you could rent one from someone. Some people had more than one Unit, they bought a second one as a pension or maybe inherited one from family. A lot of people borrowed money to buy them, from the moneylenders in GBNP. However, GBNP's population increased very quickly in a short space of time, a lot of it due to immigration. This was because it was a prosperous land and people were returning to their homeland or seeking their fortune, but also because of refugees from wars and conflicts in other lands. It was very difficult to produce units quickly enough for everyone, as they were costly and time consuming to make, and subject to a lot of regulation. So, a shortage of Units was the result. It became particularly hard for the people who rented Units to find any, something which we will return to.

The second problem was a group of people in the nations population called The Freeloaders, who expected the nations government to supply them with everything for free, including Units of their preferred size and location, and to run their lives for them so that they had no personal responsibility. This group also reproduced rapidly, in order to avail of more of the nations generous welfare.

The third problem was the opposition parties to the nations government were very cunning and cynical in their drive to obtain power. The main opposition party was called So Farcical (SF for short). Whenever there were plans to produce more Units, they objected and prevented them being produced as they knew this would make the problem worse and make more people angry that the government had not solved the problem. They promised that they would do what no-one else in the world could do, and solve the Unit problem immediately and once and for all. They claimed to have a Magical Money Tree that would assist them. The Pea Brained People party (PBP for short) also always objected to everything without having anything sensible to say. These opposition parties were heavily supported by the Freeloaders.

This tale is about the private citizens of GBNP who owned Units and rented them to people who didn't own any. Most of these owners were good but a small number were bad, and most renters were good but a small number were bad. The bad ones made life extremely difficult and stressful for the other good party, and it was tricky to figure out if you were engaging with a good one or bad one beforehand. The owners who rented paid a large amount of tax every year to the nations government on the revenue they received, sometimes more than their net income, but did so to keep their Unit for sale, or to give to a family member, in future years.

Due to constant and increasing criticism and pressure from the Freeloaders and the opposition parties, the nations government made some very foolish, short-sighted and ill-advised decisions in their effort to solve the Units rental problem, over a number of years. They forbid the owners to raise the price of the rental, no matter how much the input cost rose, the demand rose or the market developed. They created a special committee, the Ruining Things Brigade (RTB for short) which made it difficult for owners to get their Units back in good condition and made their life more difficult in general. They passed legislation which made the renting process more confusing, more difficult, and gave them and their Units less protection from the bad renters. Finally, they closed down a large part of the Unit rental market by forbidding owners from taking possession of their Units for a long period of time, even if they needed to use them. You ask: in the face of all these overwhelming obstacles, why would the owners not stop renting their Units and sell them to people who wanted to buy them? Well, that is exactly what happened. All the owners sold their Units. The people who had enough money to buy Units were very happy, but the people who didn't have enough money to buy and rented instead were very, very unhappy. Now they had to share a Unit with their family or friends. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the opposition parties and their supporters, the Freeloaders, who complained that there was now no supply of Units for the people who didn't have enough money to buy them. Sensible people tried to point out that this was the result of all the policies that the opposition had insisted on, and the Freeloaders had wanted. In fact SF and PBP and others like them had said they would go even further with these policies, as they didn't believe the owners should have any rights to their Units, they should be made surrender them to the Freeloaders. However, the opposition and the Freeloaders wouldn't listen, they were too busy wailing and moaning and blaming everyone else in the nation of GBNP.

I wish I could say there was a Happy Every After to this fairytale, but there isn't...

Now, luckily this is just a fairytale, as obviously nothing this stupid or crazy could happen in the real world inhabited by intelligent humans. So I don't want any comments pointing out things people disagree with, it's not real, it's just a simple story!

Even in the councils where the gov parties have a majority, they did nothing.

There was one interview I saw where a gov spokesperson was saying it's the councils fault and the interviewer at least had the balls to ask them if their party was in any councils. So their party was to blame either way.