FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3 - Threadbanned User List in OP

The Irish citizens will be the ones suffering, meanwhile Leo will be off joining the International Politicians circuit. He already knows he's dead to the voting public here and forcing through such freedom of speech legislation is 100% an abuse of power.

The new hate speech legislation might bring one unintended benefit for us plebs in that it may bring a halt to the frequent pictures of Leo picking his nose at public events. At least today he was not wearing shorts, ROFL!!

The policy would be the same no matter whom from FFG was in the role. O'Gorman is being told precisely what to do and is the perfect messenger for Modern Ireland. You even look sideways at him and it's hate speech ;-)

I watched The Week in Politics today & only when it was mentioned there that I was aware there was a new poll out. I googled it then but latest I got was last weekends.

So it’s hard to mention views here when the media aren’t broadcasting the poll themselves.

Looking at these results, I’d say FG are in deep sh*t. But I wonder where that 3% increase came from for Ff? Actually on reflection there are some strange pluses & minuses here.

Labour increase. I wonder why?

I don’t have the RTE app & as I write this post, I still cannot find a mention of it on the Journal who are usually quick off the mark when it comes to polls.

Labour is background noise at this stage and movements within the Margin of Error don't really mean much. Like most fringe parties, Labour is at a disadvantage in national polls because its support is geographically concentrated.

Regards...jmcc

Could the government not have sent a TD on the tonight show for the story of this 78 year old on potentially becoming homeless...no a senator will do

The myth of the 1940s to 1970s keeps getting presented as some kind of idyll in Ireland. We didn't even count homelessness then because we didn't care enough. Vast numbers emigrated every year and the population actually decreased from 1951 to 1961 (No wonder we could build houses, no pressure of increasing population). Poverty and joblessness were endemic and real suffering was felt by ordinary people.

How can things get worse?

Unemployment is at incredibly low rates. Anyone who wants a job has one. This is unprecedented in our history. Give Sinn Fein six months and unemployment could double. Now that would bring real suffering.

Government finances have never been healthier. On the housing issue, it is actually incredible that we have taken in so many from Ukraine and elsewhere in the last two years, without the place collapsing. This is to the credit of the government.

In 1975 the Irish state built 8,794 social housing units. That was at a time when the population of the state was 3.2mn and we were one of the poorest countries in Europe.

In 2022 the Irish state built 7,433 social housing units (and thats the official government figure which is contested - its arguably too high). This was for a population of 5mn, when we're now one of the richest countries on the planet. The state literally has billions of euros sitting in accounts it isn't spending, including even in the department of housing.

Theres no excuse for this tiny number of builds, we could and should be building 20,000+ social housing units a year. The only reasons we aren't are either deliberate ideological choice from FF&FG, or gross incompetence. Or both.

The state instead of building social housing has been wasting €1bn a year of tax payers money on HAP. That would build 4000 2bed apartments a year, which would actually leave the state holding long term assets, and would take low income people out of the private rental sector cooling it down for everyone else. But our FF&FG government many years ago decided against this, and focused on HAP instead, which we're now seeing the results of.

CM

Add Labour to the list You mentioned in Your last sentence. After gilmore’s burton, Kelly shenanigans they certainly cannot be trusted ever again.

The vacancy rate for offices in Dublin in 2019 was 5.1%. Its been increasing every year since as huge numbers of office projects come online, and is projected to hit 15% in 2023. Enough office space to accommodate 30,000 office workers is being completed per year in Ireland currently. Perhaps some of the huge number of construction workers working on these unneeded office blocks could be better put to use solving the house emergency?

2,200 new hotel bedrooms were constructed in 2022 in Dublin alone. Do you think the construction workers building these hotels might have been able to build apartments instead if we were you know, in a housing emergency that needed prioritising?

Thats not even getting into more creative ways. The state imports 15,000 largely Eastern European seasonal agricultural workers to do fruit picking and other farm work every summer. Perhaps over the other 75% of the year we could do the same with construction workers from the region using the same already existing accommodation?

Or we could get even more creative and build modular homes for large numbers of imported construction workers to use while they help to resolve the crisis, the way we're now doing for refugees. But that apparently wasn't, and isn't, an option for construction workers...

The issue isn't a lack of workers, thats solvable. Its a decade of deliberate political decision making to not build housing units.

These td’s must really take us mere mortals as eejits:

https://www.thejournal.ie/new-allowance-for-td-security-6064041-May2023/