"average Dublin house prices should fall to ‘the €300,000 mark" according to Many Lou McD.

County councils of all parties have been serial objectors to local developments:

https://extra.ie/2019/12/09/property/objection-housing-development-taoiseach

etc

We had €1.52bn unspent last year in the national Department of Housing's last budget. Is that also a disgrace? Do you hold FG and FF responsible for that?

DCC's underspend is also a problem obviously. But that amount still wouldn't have come anywhere near letting them build the thousands of social homes per year that it was suggested is in their capability. Which in reality would require far more national policy assisstance.

You really don't have a clue, do you?

The government don't build houses, local authorities do. The government provide money to local authorities to build housing, decent well-run councils build houses, ones run by Sinn Fein and a mish-mash of lefties sit on their arses and do nothing for five years. There is money unspent in the Department of Housing because councils were unable to spend it.

As for the blocking of housing, some parties (SF) are far worse than others in blocking houses, but only one party (again SF) used their time in control of a local authority to block everything.

The national government releases funds to local authorities to build houses. Local authorities quite literally aren't able to directly raise the billions of euros required to build the "thousands of houses per year" from local taxes. The policy has to be set, and funded, at national level. As discussed in this very thread on the past few pages, with the exact maths given to explain why this is so.

Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal have very little economic resemblance to Ireland in the year 2024. Spain and Italy are over ten times our size. Greece and Portugal are much poorer than us, with completely different economic structures to us.

Denmark and Austria are similar sized EU countries to Ireland, with similar levels of wealth, and a similar economic structure. We should be in or around their peformance on key metrics like housing, healthcare and general quality of life. But we aren't, we're doing much worse. And the only reason for that is down to Irish govermental failures.

What level we were at over 50 years ago is completely irrelevant to holding our current government to account. Leo Varadkar was born in 1979, how much impact did have as a political leader in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s?

Ireland is currently suffering from literally the worst housing crisis in the history of the state. Our healthcare, education, and police services are crumbling because they aren't well funded enough. Homelessness is at an all time high. Quality of life is getting worse year to year for most people in the state. And this is all happening at a time when we're running a multi-billion euro surplus per year. The current dire state of affairs is entirely down to current bad government policy since they were elected in 2020.

You think we have enough houses and flats for people?

Nonsensical rubbish. You can't consider the present without acknowledging the past. Countries like Denmark, Austria, Sweden etc. have centuries upon centuries of wealth built up to draw on - they had empires. We have come a long way, and when you do that, your infrastructure struggles to keep up.

Ireland is not suffering from literally the worst housing crisis in the history of the state - that is overblown hyperbolic hysteria. Things were far worse in the 1930s and 1940s when people lived in slum housing and shacks.

The quality of life for people in this country is getting better every year. More holidays, more nights out, more new cars, more consumption, better education, longer lifespans, by every single measure, life is getting better. Never let the truth get in the way of one of your moans.

We have more demand for houses than we have houses available. Thats evident from the sky high rental and purchase prices, the very low numbers of properties on either market, the huge numbers on social housing lists, and the very high numbers of homeless people. Thats the core of the issue, which does mean there quite literally aren't enough houses for people.

In an ideal world where every house is utilised to the maximum of its potential, where there are zero vacant homes, zero holiday homes, zero airbnbs etc this mightn't be the case. But thats not the case in the real world.

Denmark or Austria are not using "centuries of wealth" to pay for current government spending. Spending to build housing, or pay police, or pay nurses comes from current government revenue. Which Ireland currently has more of per capita than almost any country on Earth, both on a total and surplus per capita basis. But our current government has decided to not spend this money, which is purely ideological. And the results can be seen all around us.

If you think the quality of life for people in this country is getting better every year then you've clearly missed every poll, or statistic, on life in Ireland in recent years. People are drinking less, schools can't get staff, hospital waiting lists are through the roof, and home ownership is at its lowest point in decades. Those are all verifiable, hard, statistics. Opinion polls also completely back this up, as would any common sense - nobody with any contact with the health service, with gardai, with teachers, would tell you they're doing well currently.

By hey, don't take my word for it. Why do you think SF are currently polling as the #1 party by a large margin even with ABC1 voters? The richest, most educated, well to do voters in the state? Do you think its because they've all become Republican Socialists, or is it perhaps bcause current government policy is very obviously failing?

The starting wage for a nurse in Dublin in 2024 is €33k per year. Do you think thats a reasonable starting wage for someone with a college education, working a difficult, essential job?

Do you not think if we perhaps paid them more it would 1) ease our current recruitment/retention crisis, helping everyone in the state and 2) just be morally the right thing to do?

That aside, our overall healthcare spending isn't remotely excessive. We're in the middle of the OECD pack, very much inline with our wealthy peers:

If there is a recruitment crisis in the HSE, how come the headcount of nurses has risen sharply?

The HSE had added 8,000 nurses in four years.

Have new services been rolled out by the HSE? Has the birth rate increased? all those pesky new babies need midwives and nurses in the hospital and and community and public health nurses in the community.