Yellow vest movement ireland

EdgeCase

Bannasidhe wrote: »

According to that we had a total of 413,253 non-Nationals seems like a lot but lets break it down.

Of those 368,054 are from E.U. member states.

The Poles and the British combined account for 225,630 of that.

Leaving a total of 142,424 from other EU states such as Germany, Latvia, France, Italy, Romania, Spain etc.

There were 45,199 non-nationals from outside the E.U according to that link - from as diverse areas as Brazil, China, India, and the U.S.

I am struggling to see how that can be called mass migration.

Unless you wish to count E.U, citizens - well, then we are in a whole Brexitty area of scaremongering.

Do we ignore the fact that apparently there were more Irish born living in the UK then UK born living in Ireland - 375,900 of them. If these figures are to be believed than there was only 37,353 less Irish born living in the UK alone than the total number of non-nationals living in Ireland.

Looks like we are the gold star performers when it comes to mass-migrating.

Considering Poland, a country that has to date been very unattractive to migrants and has has mass emigration as recently as a few years ago, has managed to have political arguments about perceived mass immigration, no amount of reality distortion or borrowing political arguments from the far right elsewhere is beyond the realms of political truth stretching.

I'm not trying to dis' Poland in saying that btw. I'm just making a comment on their current batch of very right wing political figures.

mickoneill31

Arthur Daley wrote: »

The population of Ireland grew from 4.2 million in 2006 at the height of the 'boom' to 4.8 million now in 2018. That quite logically is why you have more competition for jobs, housing, transport, health etc. How many ordinary people are remotely aware of this fact? Not that many I'd say, because the politicians and media dare not raise the issue, preferring instead to skirt around it, instead of having an honest open discussion.
Most of this 600,000 people were not new born babies, so that is by most people's reckoning a fair case of mass migration. Projected to grow by a further 1 million in the next 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland

https://www.cso.ie/multiquicktables/quickTables.aspx?id=vsa02_vsa09_vsa18

836101 births since 2006
348896 deaths in the same time.

So without immigration / emigration the population grew by 487000 people.
They didn't mass migrate from the wombs.

So is the remaining 100K over that 11 years still mass migration?

Arthur Daley

The Problem presented is - there is a housing shortage, wages are being driven down or frozen at best for many people, and prices are going up. A principal reason (but not the only reason) for these things, I suggest, is that the population of Ireland has grown significantly since the 2006 'boom' time period. This is clearly driven through mass migration of people. It is as simple as that really.

Arthur Daley

mickoneill31 wrote: »

https://www.cso.ie/multiquicktables/quickTables.aspx?id=vsa02_vsa09_vsa18

836101 births since 2006
348896 deaths in the same time.

So without immigration / emigration the population grew by 487000 people.
They didn't mass migrate from the wombs.

So is the remaining 100K over that 11 years still mass migration?

Ok, so why is there a housing crisis then? Are these 487,000 people all under the age of 13 by the way, driving this? Are they trying to get on the ladder. Something doesn't add up here, and I'm open to suggestions.

AndrewJRenko

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Obviously not because it wasn’t in my list. Why? Because it’s about right.

Because VAT is a very substantial tax and is paid by everybody in the State. It seems to be often left out in these discussions about the 'squeezed middle' probably because it doesn't suit the argument.

Arthur Daley wrote: »

The Problem presented is - there is a housing shortage, wages are being driven down or frozen at best for many people, and prices are going up. A principal reason (but not the only reason) for these things, I suggest, is that the population of Ireland has grown significantly since the 2006 'boom' time period. This is clearly driven through mass migration of people. It is as simple as that really.

And the majority of the mass migration is either returning Irish emigrants or EU migration.



Are you suggesting that we need to reduce or cut off either of these?

mickoneill31

Arthur Daley wrote: »

Ok, so why is there a housing crisis then? Are these 487,000 people all under the age of 13 by the way, driving this?

Do you remember the recession? Do you remember the building companies going to the wall and the amount of properties being built per year going from something like 90,000 (https://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/894-house-and-home/139160-record-number-of-homes-built/) to < 20,000 (https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/number-of-new-homes-built-up-30-cso-figures-show-1.3603079) when we know we need about 35,000 a year. Can you put two and two together?

You were talking about the change in population numbers and saying it was all due to mass migration. I showed you why half a million of those are due to births. Don't blame me if your argument is based on simplistic reasoning.

EdgeCase

At peak 2007 ish boom we were building close to 100,000 new homes per year. The economic mess basically caused an extreme reaction that didn't just slow that output it stopped it completely in a matter of weeks.

In my view of it it was a total overreaction as while there was insane development in remote areas of Ireland that never had demand, there was still a big need for housing in the Dublin, Cork, Galway in particular but in a few other urban areas and commuter belts around Dublin too.

The ramping back up of construction has been painfully cautious and slow. Almost all activities to date have been in the construction of commercial property - office blocks and so on and infrastructure. We have had very little housing development going on.

The banks are still fearful of lending big money to developers to do that kind of construction and there's a tighter of availability of mortgages to consumers too.

All of that has fed into a scenario where the rest of the economy is back at full power and there's very limited housing stock especially in those three cities. So you've jobs and income and nowhere to live.

You've also got difficulty recruiting for construction - our builders and many of those who lived here in the boom times are gone to other property bubbles like Australia and Canada (driven by mineral resources). They aren't going to be rushing back because they have established there and there's no proof that our boom is safe yet. They've had their fingers burnt and there's a risk of Brexit and Trump trade wars etc.

We also don't have the kind of ability to recruit from Eastern EU members anymore because those countries have developed a lot and people don't feel any huge need to rush off anymore.

That's the primary reason for our housing crisis.

And yes the population of the cities has grown but it's not anything scarily huge. The problem is the supply is absolutely not there and the government doesn't seem to be able to stimulate it.

Ireland also suffers from all sorts of procyclical economic policies where we spend into booms and cut during recessions. That's also caused an inability to retain a construction sector.

While I appreciate the previous recession was dire in normal times we should be spending on infrastructure during quieter times and letting the housing and commercial side of the economy absorb those construction resources during peak economic activity.

Instead we do things like build massive hospitals at peak construction boom and slashed all of the infrastructure build like metro and so on during the down turn. So all the unemployed construction sector people : builders, trades, architects, engineers etc are comfortably setup in Sydney, Perth, Vancouver and do on.

Hopefully we never go into a mess like 2008 again but we need to plan and use state resources a lot more intelligently to smooth out smaller future recessions.

So far I'm only seeing vague notions of doing this.

The only thing I would say in a positive way is that Ireland's relatively tiny, so a fairly modest amount of uptick in home construction could have a profound and rapid impact within a few years.

Arthur Daley

mickoneill31 wrote: »

Do you remember the recession? Do you remember the building companies going to the wall and the amount of properties being built per year going from something like 80,000 to 10,000. Can you put two and two together?

You were talking about the change in population numbers and saying it was all due to mass migration. I showed you why half a million of those are due to births. Don't blame me if your argument is based on simplistic reasoning.

I do indeed. And I recall the 300,000 empties that were part of the discussion as recently as 2011/2012, as well as the mothballed estates (many of which were in Leitrim, but many of which were in Dublin commuter belt counties as well). But here we are with a housing shortage within a few short years. The same housing stock, more kids, more returning Irish, but rampaging rents, rampaging house prices, and high numbers of homeless. And a disaffected portion of the country who don a yellow vest because they are not happy with the way things are going.

AndrewJRenko

Arthur Daley wrote: »

And a disaffected portion of the country who don a yellow vest because they are not happy with the way things are going.

Lots of people are disaffected and not happy, with or without yellow vests. And lots of those people don't seem to feel the need to blame immigrants, possibly having seen how that works out for Brexit and Trump.

Franz Von Peppercorn

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Because VAT is a very substantial tax and is paid by everybody in the State. It seems to be often left out in these discussions about the 'squeezed middle' probably because it doesn't suit the argument.

That’s affectively admitting you were arguing a strawman. I was arguing for a tax on capital and you turn it around to an attack on the middle income working class paye worker by arguing a point I didn’t make. I said nothing about the squeezed middle.

Franz Von Peppercorn

EdgeCase wrote: »

Ireland also suffers from all sorts of procyclical economic policies where we spend into booms and cut during recessions. That's also caused an inability to retain a construction sector.

While I appreciate the previous recession was dire in normal times we should be spending on infrastructure during quieter times and letting the housing and commercial side of the economy absorb those construction resources during peak economic activity.

Instead we do things like build massive hospitals at peak construction boom and slashed all of the infrastructure build like metro and so on during the down turn. So all the unemployed construction sector people : builders, trades, architects, engineers etc are comfortably setup in Sydney, Perth, Vancouver and do on.

Even in normal recessionary times the EU would prohibit that kind of counter cyclical spending.

One of the problems with the EU in fact. It’s very much neo liberal on the economics side of things.

PeadarCo

EdgeCase wrote:

Ireland also suffers from all sorts of procyclical economic policies where we spend into booms and cut during recessions. That's also caused an inability to retain a construction sector.

Because this is what people vote for. Even now with the economy booming the government still has a deficit. Look at the resistance to property taxes, water charges and tax increases in general and that's before you start looking at the endless demands there always are on government spending. All this requires difficult choices to be made and for certain people to end up disappointed. Opposition parties(whoever they are at any point in time) deny these choices exist and people unfortunately believe them. The issue with many of these protests is they ignore also ignore the hard choices that have to be made. As Brexit shows ignoring difficult realities don't make them go away.

Bannasidhe

Arthur Daley wrote: »

The Problem presented is - there is a housing shortage, wages are being driven down or frozen at best for many people, and prices are going up. A principal reason (but not the only reason) for these things, I suggest, is that the population of Ireland has grown significantly since the 2006 'boom' time period. This is clearly driven through mass migration of people. It is as simple as that really.

Arthur Daley wrote: »

Ok, so why is there a housing crisis then? Are these 487,000 people all under the age of 13 by the way, driving this? Are they trying to get on the ladder. Something doesn't add up here, and I'm open to suggestions.

There is a crises of affordable housing.

We do not have enough 1/2 bedroom properties available on the market.
We have a dearth of affordable rental properties - and those with some kind of security of tenancy are the stuff of myth and legends.

Our social housing stock was sold off and not replaced. Forcing those who can never afford to buy into the private rental market - which in turn is being subsidised through the HAP scheme which has the effect of setting a guaranteed minimum income by way of a rental benchmark. This increases the amount non-HAP tenants can be expected to pay thereby inflating rental market.

We need to build local authority housing. We managed it when our economy was in the toilet but now apparently housing can only be built by private developers. LA housing would ease the pressure on the rental market by removing many of the HAP recipients which would cut the government subsidies to the private market.

In the rental market we need to bring in legislation so it is treated like the business it is. Make it easier and quicker to evict non-paying tenants (maximum 3 months and you're out) but harder to evict paying tenants. Allow for longer secure leases. Deposits to be held in escrow not by LL. Make it compulsory that a LL works through an agent who is responsible for the management of the property.

Instead of paying millions to "hotel" owners to provide "emergency accommodation" that money would be better spent via Housing Associations building and managing property aimed at those who will never be able to buy but don't qualify for LA housing.

We need less 3/4 bedroom houses at the 350k+ mark built and more 1/2 bedroom apts and houses at the 150k -250k mark built. What exactly is wrong with with building terraced houses? It worked in the past...
We need apt blocks = but people are understandably wary of apts as due to the lack of oversight too many people ended up with expensive fire hazards.

Make it very expensive to own vacant housing by applying a heavy tax penalty - I'm not talking about the holiday cottage- I'm talking about houses and apts that are just sitting there empty all year. Either sell it or rent it out - or pay for the privilege of letting it sit there.

Enable those houses sitting vacant due to being tied up in Fair Deal schemes to be rented out. These could be done as 1 year leases with the understanding that if the owner dies during the lease period the house will be sold once the lease is up - the tenant being given first option to buy (at market value) thereby helping cut down on the whole cost of putting it on the market.

Re- introduce bedsits. They were an affordable option for many many people.

In the Tiger years there was a mania for 4/5 bed bling houses where the en-suite had an en-suite costing 10x people's salaries. That was insanity. No banks should have been lending under those conditions. Now those people (among others) are in neg-equity and can't move as the debt will follow them.
We need to stop that. The money was lent with the house as security for the loan. Reposess the property by all means (after every effort has been made to reach a solution) but then the debt should be wiped out. Give people the option of handing the keys to the bank and walking away - no need for lengthy and expensive legal proceedings.

In the event that a buy-to-let is being repossessed if there are sitting tenants they should be given the opportunity to purchase the property for the amount of outstanding debt to the bank plus say 1-2%.

Improve the public transport system outside Dublin so people can commute via train/tram thereby extending the possibility of living in satellite towns but not having to spend hours in traffic (it would also help cut our carbon emission problem).

Arthur Daley

Bannasidhe wrote: »

In the Tiger years there was a mania for 4/5 bed bling houses where the en-suite had an en-suite costing 10x people's salaries. That was insanity. No banks should have been lending under those conditions. Now those people (among others) are in neg-equity and can't move as the debt will follow them.
We need to stop that. The money was lent with the house as security for the loan. Reposess the property by all means (after every effort has been made to reach a solution) but then the debt should be wiped out. Give people the option of handing the keys to the bank and walking away - no need for lengthy and expensive legal proceedings.

It is becoming very difficult to accept people claiming to be in negative equity at this stage. No doubt there are some examples mainly in rural areas, but honestly it should be in the hundreds at this stage. Unless you spent the last ten years paying absolutely nothing back. Which is inexcusable in such a 'booming' economy, with returning migrants to be homed, and willing to pay their way.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Arthur Daley wrote: »

It is becoming very difficult to accept people claiming to be in negative equity at this stage. No doubt there are some examples mainly in rural areas, but honestly it should be in the hundreds at this stage. Unless you spent the last ten years paying absolutely nothing back. Which is inexcusable in such a 'booming' economy, with returning migrants to be homed, and willing to pay their way.

Well.... people pay down very little capital in the first few years of a mortgage. A calculator tells after 10 years of a 30 year mortgage of 400k at 3.5% you will have paid off 60K capital. Total payments about 120k-130k

Bannasidhe

Arthur Daley wrote: »

It is becoming very difficult to accept people claiming to be in negative equity at this stage. No doubt there are some examples mainly in rural areas, but honestly it should be in the hundreds at this stage. Unless you spent the last ten years paying absolutely nothing back. Which is inexcusable in such a 'booming' economy, with returning migrants to be homed, and willing to pay their way.

One of the "hidden" ways people ended up in neg equity was going back to lenders to release equity at Tiger property inflated prices in order to carry out "improvements" at huge cost. Lots of conservatories, jet baths, attic conversions etc were undertaken but didn't add near as much to the value of the property as expected. Quite the opposite. It increased the amount owed significantly but the overall value minimally.
My own sister did this. She turned a 3 bed semi detached in a commuter town to a 2 bed semi detached with a walk-in closet, blinged bathroom with a giant jet bath, huge shower with water coming from all directions enclosed in 10k worth of tiles. 10k for fecking bathroom tiles. :eek:. She ended up doubling her outstanding mortgage.
And she wasn't alone.
She is still in negative equity because a 2 bed semi in a Cork commuter town is still not worth what she ended up borrowing to improve it.

I know many people who were working in the supply end of building materials like bathrooms and flooring - people were spending crazy amounts that were never going to add significant value to the property all paid for by increasing their mortgage.

However, that doesn't have any baring on whether or not people should be allowed to hand the keys back and walk away should they need to without the debt following them.

Look at all those poor feckers with mortgages on fire hazard apts they can't live in. It's not their fault the proper checks weren't carried out but they will be paying for it for the rest of their lives. Not the lenders who - lets face it, accepted the dodgy property as security. Not the developers. Not the authorities charged with carrying out the checks. The poor fools who trusted the various professionals take the hit. They will never be able to sell. Will spend a great deal of their income paying back the mortgage and will be unlikely to be ever able to buy again so they are stuck in a dysfunctional rental market.
Let them hand back the keys and then let the banks take legal action against those who allowed shoddy property to be sold to unsuspecting people.

Maybe it's just me, but I believe those are the kinds of people government should be focused on protecting.

Arthur Daley

About the only people I have any sympathy for over the last few pages are those who bought the likes of Priory Hall apartments, that should never have been put on sale to the public. After that it sounds like first world problems along the lines of:

I am a returning migrant and housing is very expensive, it was cheap when I migrated
I am English/Polish etc and it's very expensive here
I have had a load of kids and my cost of living has gone up, it is scandalous
I have spent the price of a new car on a wet room because I've watched too many property porn programmes and been taken in by the bling.

So is this the level of wider discontent among the general populace of Ireland in 2018. As Harold McMillan would say, you never had it so good.

AndrewJRenko

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

That’s affectively admitting you were arguing a strawman. I was arguing for a tax on capital and you turn it around to an attack on the middle income working class paye worker by arguing a point I didn’t make. I said nothing about the squeezed middle.

So when you said "Far too much concentration on (middle) income", you weren't playing the tired old 'squeezed middle' card again?

Bannasidhe wrote: »

We need apt blocks = but people are understandably wary of apts as due to the lack of oversight too many people ended up with expensive fire hazards.

The other problem that we had here was that the apartments that we did build weren't designed for family living - few green spaces for kids (and the spaces they did get have 'no ball playing' signs up), no storage for a buggy at ground floor level to avoid having to drag it up and down two or three flights of stairs, nowhere to store a kids bike or indeed an adult bike safely and know it will still be there the next morning.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

One of the "hidden" ways people ended up in neg equity was going back to lenders to release equity at Tiger property inflated prices in order to carry out "improvements" at huge cost. Lots of conservatories, jet baths, attic conversions etc were undertaken but didn't add near as much to the value of the property as expected. Quite the opposite. It increased the amount owed significantly but the overall value minimally.
My own sister did this. She turned a 3 bed semi detached in a commuter town to a 2 bed semi detached with a walk-in closet, blinged bathroom with a giant jet bath, huge shower with water coming from all directions enclosed in 10k worth of tiles. 10k for fecking bathroom tiles. :eek:. She ended up doubling her outstanding mortgage.
And she wasn't alone.
She is still in negative equity because a 2 bed semi in a Cork commuter town is still not worth what she ended up borrowing to improve it.

I haven't heard of many of these cases. I'm not sure it is a very common problem.



But if there are loads of such people in negative equity, then so what? How does the negative equity impact them? If they invested large amounts in their family home, they were presumably planning to live there for the long term. They still live there and they still make the same mortgage repayments that they were making. Their negative or positive equity is a notional figure that doesn't affect their day to day finances. It is only relevant when they come to sell the property.



And if they did these kind of works as an intended investment in their property value, that was a poor investment decision. Any advisor would have told them beforehand that they were unlikely to get their money back.

Bannasidhe

Arthur Daley wrote: »

About the only people I have any sympathy for over the last few pages are those who bought the likes of Priory Hall apartments, that should never have been put on sale to the public. After that it sounds like first world problems described here:

I am a returning migrant and housing is very expensive, it was cheap when I migrated
I am English/Polish etc and it's very expensive here
I have had a load of kids and my cost of living has gone up, it is scandalous
I have spent the price of a new car on a wet room because I've watched too many property porn programmes and been taken in by the bling.

So is this the level of wider discontent among the general populace of Ireland in 2018. As Harold McMillan would say, you never had it so good.

I worked all my life and now I'm in a trolley in a corridor...

I paid my rent every month but the LL's nephew is moving in so I have to get out....

My relationship broke up and I became homeless as I can't find anywhere affordable to rent as I have to pay maintenance for my kids....

My relationship broke up and now I'm living in a hosel, my kids can't stay with me anymore...

I had a serious accident and couldn't meet my full mortgage payments but I was managing to pay the interest...my mortgage was sold to a vulture fund...

My LL wasn't making his mortgage repayments even though I never missed a months rent... the vulture fund is evicting me...

I am disabled with a service dog. My LL evicted me to refurbish. I couldn't find anywhere to rent that was affordable and allowed my service dog. I live on the streets at homeless hostels don't allow any dogs...

I was told I didn't have cancer...

I was a building sub-contractor, main contractor went into NAMA, I never got paid. I employed 5 lads. I had to file for bankruptcy...

I am a devout Roman Catholic and contraception is against my religion. I have 6 children, the youngest has M.S, we can't afford to outfit our house to meet their needs as we bought during the Boom and with medical costs we have been struggling...

I was an idiot. I released equity in my home because everyone said the economy was sound... we just wanted a bit of extra space for the kids...I never thought I would lose my job and now I'm about to turn 60... I'm doing a C.E. Scheme...

I'm a plumber, I bought a few properties as a pension fund back in the day. Work dried up. Bank repossessed the properties but I still have the debt around me neck...

I went to Vancouver for work, I had no choice. Thought I'd do a few years there. Save up. Come home. Looked like things were picking up and the parents are getting on so I came back. Can't find anywhere to live where the jobs in my field are - it's just too expensive. I didn't think I'd need 4 grand just as a deposit to rent!. I'm back living with the parents in the back of nowhere for now. My savings are dwindling. Can't get S.W. as I no longer meet the residency rules. Paid PRSI for 10 years before I left...

I went to NY for work. Sure the craic as mighty and although the cost of living was high I made good money. Then I met a fella from Tipp and we got married. 2 kids later we thought we don't want our children growing up in Trump's America so we came home. Between rent and childcare we are barely surviving on the two wages. We knew we would take a hit on salaries but we didn't realise rent and childcare would take over 60% of our income...

I just retired. Me pension is gone. Wiped out in the crash...

I was in a car crash... uninsured drunk driver went straight into me... broke both my legs...I didn't have health insurance... was on illness benefit but with the delays in payments recently and medical costs I fell behind in the mortgage... bank is writing to me... I can't sleep with the worry...

My husband has dementia, he used to take care of all the financial stuff. Now I am his carer. I don't know who to turn to for help or what kind of help I can get. In our 60 years of marriage he did all that while I looked after the house and kids. I used to work for the Post Office but I had to leave due to the Marriage Ban. I tried to claim the Old Age Pension but they said I don't have enough stamps. I don't know what to do...

My Da bate me Ma all the time so one night she bundled us out the door get away from his roaring. We live in a hotel now. There's me and me little sister and me Ma in the one room. We eat chips every night for dinner. We still go to school but it's 2 bus rides away on the other side of the city. We have been living in hotels 2 Christmasses now. I asked Santy for a house for me Ma and me and me little sister. She's only 3 so she doesn't really remember living in a house....


First World Problems that are happening every day in Ireland.

Bannasidhe

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

So when you said "Far too much concentration on (middle) income", you weren't playing the tired old 'squeezed middle' card again?



The other problem that we had here was that the apartments that we did build weren't designed for family living - few green spaces for kids (and the spaces they did get have 'no ball playing' signs up), no storage for a buggy at ground floor level to avoid having to drag it up and down two or three flights of stairs, nowhere to store a kids bike or indeed an adult bike safely and know it will still be there the next morning.





I haven't heard of many of these cases. I'm not sure it is a very common problem.



But if there are loads of such people in negative equity, then so what? How does the negative equity impact them? If they invested large amounts in their family home, they were presumably planning to live there for the long term. They still live there and they still make the same mortgage repayments that they were making. Their negative or positive equity is a notional figure that doesn't affect their day to day finances. It is only relevant when they come to sell the property.



And if they did these kind of works as an intended investment in their property value, that was a poor investment decision. Any advisor would have told them beforehand that they were unlikely to get their money back.

It's common enough but hidden. Remember how you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a Bling your bathroom/Change your doors and floors home improvement place.

Negative equity means people can't move. It stifles the market. 10 years ago you might have needed 4 bedrooms but now... yet here you are... rattling around in a too big house you can't sell as you won't get what you paid for it.

Still has nothing to do with whether or not keys should be able to be handed back. Which was my main point.

Financial advisors were known for always giving sound advice :P.

But yup =people do make stupid, shortsighted decisions. Like voting for the same 2 parties and expecting anything to change. :pac:

Arthur Daley

Bannasidhe wrote: »

First World Problems that are happening every day in Ireland.

With the exception of the cancer misdiagnosis one, and waiting on a trolley, I think. The government of Ireland or 'de Banks' can do little about these people's problems, over and above existing services offered.


Many seem to be caused by big bad landlords. And you can go to another thread and people will tell you landlords are mad to get out it, as it isn't worth the hassle. Maybe 2 sides to every story.


Anyway with the exception of the cancer misdiagnosis, and the trolleys (which are an issue in other countries as well) I'm not sure what good standing around outside the Customs house is going to do, or what people are asking 'the authorities' to do about these problems.

Bannasidhe

Arthur Daley wrote: »

With the exception of the cancer misdiagnosis one, and waiting on a trolley, I think. The government of Ireland or 'de Banks' can do little about these people's problems, over and above existing services offered.


Many seem to be caused by big bad landlords. And you can go to another thread and people will tell you landlords are mad to get out it, as it isn't worth the hassle. Maybe 2 sides to every story.


Anyway with the exception of the cancer misdiagnosis, and the trolleys (which are an issue in other countries as well) I'm not sure what good standing around outside the Customs house is going to do, or what people are asking 'the authorities' to do about these problems.

Vulture funds were mentioned twice. Are you telling me neither the banks or the authorities have any role in this? Really??

And security of tenancy? Well obviously governments have nothing to do with that because that would require legislation and... oh... hang on...That's impossible because otherwise other countries would be doing that... oh wait... other countries do do it.

Small children spending years in hotel rooms? Oh if only there was some way someone could make it so there was some kind of local authority housing available... actually available... IMPOSSIBLE... except we used to be able to do that before we became enthralled to the Market Gods. FF and FG used to be able to do that. Crazy days.

Pension entitlements of women forcd to leave work when they got married? What on earth could that have to do with government?

Care of the elderly? Surely that is the responsibility of some charity or other... certainly nowt to do with government.


Imagine. I expect a government to govern for the good of the people. Not the developers. Not the banks. Not the multi-nationals. Not their own political party. But to safeguard The People.
But then I am a Loony Lefty.

igCorcaigh

We're a basket case. The whole world is.

I could do with some free cheese now.

hmmm

Bannasidhe wrote: »

It's not the Left that is screwing you. It's the centre-right with their fetish for the free market and love of propping up private operators.

Keep voting for them and nothing will change. Why should it?

FF & FG have agreed for a number of years that any extra government spending will go 2:1 in favour of extra spending over tax cuts. That's not centre right, it's centre left - the last time we had a right wing government was when the PDs were in power.

Going back to the point, social democracy in Europe has largely been gradually increasing taxes and more social services. In many countries, including I think Ireland, this has run out of steam - workers are sick of paying more taxes, which they don't get to benefit from. Instead, most of the benefit seems to be going to groups who have never contributed, but expect to benefit from other peoples work.

The Yellow Vests are calling for a return to old model of increasing taxes on other people, and more government spending - it's not a runner, we're at the end of this particular line.

Arthur Daley

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I had a serious accident and couldn't meet my full mortgage payments but I was managing to pay the interest...my mortgage was sold to a vulture fund...

My LL wasn't making his mortgage repayments even though I never missed a months rent... the vulture fund is evicting me...

First World Problems that are happening every day in Ireland.

Ok, so to deal with the Vulture fund. It is unfortunate that the first case has an accident, but do they now expect that the Government should instruct the vulture fund to write off their mortgage? If they need a house and can only pay a minimal amount (the interest portion) they are best suited to a council house. If they are living in a house over and above a council house, the house should be sold so that the mortgage can be recovered, and they should be allocated a council house. This does not require a new build. The larger private dwelling is made available in the market and so this is recycling existing housing stock.

In the second scenario again it is unfortunate, but what about some consequences for the anti social behaviour by the landlord. Something revenue should be unleashed on, I accept.
After that the owner of the property gets to decide what they do with the property, subject to adequate notice periods. The tenant doesn't get to call the shots on whether the property is sold or not. If they are a good tenant, and paying up all the time, it is hard to see why it is in the vulture funds interests to micro manage and upset the status quo.

EdgeCase

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Even in normal recessionary times the EU would prohibit that kind of counter cyclical spending.

One of the problems with the EU in fact. It’s very much neo liberal on the economics side of things.

I agree with that and within reason, counter cyclical spending should be available and encouraged. The % caps on budget deficits are an incredibly crude tool and aren't even fiscal management.

I would suspect France will break all the rules over the next year or so and the whole thing will have to be reconsidered.

I also think if it doesn't become more sane the Eurozone risks more crises and eventually fracturing. It's a bit like removing the shock absorbers from your car. It's fine if you're on a smooth road. If you hit a bumpy road you may have severe problems.

Ireland's always had procyclical spending though. The major problem we had coming into the 2008 crash was that we had cranked up current expenditure based on boom time tax income from property sales. Then when there was no money available you ended up with grinding internal deflation - austerity and wage cuts.

It was a double whammy of bad domestic policy and inflexible Eurozone policy.

Bannasidhe

hmmm wrote: »

FF & FG have agreed for a number of years that any extra government spending will go 2:1 in favour of extra spending over tax cuts. That's not centre right, it's centre left - the last time we had a right wing government was when the PDs were in power.

Going back to the point, social democracy in Europe has largely been gradually increasing taxes and more social services. In many countries, including I think Ireland, this has run out of steam - workers are sick of paying more taxes, which they don't get to benefit from. Instead, most of the benefit seems to be going to groups who have never contributed, but expect to benefit from other peoples work.

The Yellow Vests are calling for a return to old model of increasing taxes on other people, and more government spending - it's not a runner, we're at the end of this particular line.

Honestly.

Do you even know what Left and Right means?

Or did you think Bertie claiming to be a socialist meant he was a socialist?

Two centre-right parties wedded to the idea of the free market joining with private developers to create increasingly costly projects - where vast profits are made by developers - is not left-wing. It isn't even leftish.

Just because a gov is building does not make it Left. And if you think it does may I interest you in buying some train stations in Italy and a few stretches of autobahn outside Munich.

Nor does extra-spending. It depends on how and where the spending is allocated. Follow the money.

Right-wing governments ain't shy at spending either you know. Nor at taxing people. The difference is who benefits.

People are sick of paying taxes and getting nothing in return. Agreed.
But some one is getting the money.
It ain't the workers.

And it never will be while one of the parties of the two arse cheeks is in power because nothing will change and why should it when one or the other is re-elected?

EdgeCase

Right and left can also mean totally different things as they're very vague and broad terms.

For example you could have called some of Ireland's mid 20th century governments left wing on things like running national industries, being rather protectionist, being quite strong in areas like social housing and so on.

However on social policy issues they were far right and ultra conservative.

You'd struggle to find hard ideological lines in Irish political parties in general. It's a mixed set of policies and the centre also tends to move.

Right now we are probably further to the left on social policies but we are quite far into liberalism and leaning towards Laissez-faire capitalism on many areas of economic policy, especially housing.

PeadarCo

Bannasidhe wrote:

And it never will be while one of the parties of the two arse cheeks is in power because nothing will change and why should it when one or the other is re-elected?

That's democracy if you think you can do better stand for election. If you don't you have to deal with what electorate vote for. One person one vote. If you are not what happy get out join/set up your own party and see if you can persuade people that you or people whom you support can do a better job.

Wheeliebin30

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Honestly.

Do you even know what Left and Right means?

Or did you think Bertie claiming to be a socialist meant he was a socialist?

Two centre-right parties wedded to the idea of the free market joining with private developers to create increasingly costly projects - where vast profits are made by developers - is not left-wing. It isn't even leftish.

Just because a gov is building does not make it Left. And if you think it does may I interest you in buying some train stations in Italy and a few stretches of autobahn outside Munich.

Nor does extra-spending. It depends on how and where the spending is allocated. Follow the money.

Right-wing governments ain't shy at spending either you know. Nor at taxing people. The difference is who benefits.

People are sick of paying taxes and getting nothing in return. Agreed.
But some one is getting the money.
It ain't the workers.

And it never will be while one of the parties of the two arse cheeks is in power because nothing will change and why should it when one or the other is re-elected?

Who do you recommend to vote for?