Ireland badly needs a new centre-right party - Here's my proposal

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068319#Comment_118068319

Losing many disillusioned voters hands over fist... 

Are they though? I mean obviously FG has lost a lot of votes since 2011 but is there any solid reason to believe many/most of them were disillusion fiscal conservatives? FG may well choose to believe most of those are still voting for them on the 'best of a bad lot' principle.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068337#Comment_118068337

It became apparent to me years ago. How fg were nothing but big spending, decision avoiding liars, magic money trees of their own aplenty when needed. Of course as long as they can lie and have idiots still vote for them on that basis, financial prudence, rewarding the tax payer. They womt change their way. They are lucky the media here is so left leaning and gives them a free ride...

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068363#Comment_118068363

The only thing that will push FG in the direction you favour is the emergence of a serious challenger on the centre right, as per the OP.

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068319#Comment_118068319

UK spends roughly the same per head, just delivers differently,council flat,free travel etc, add to that a lower cost of living,

Shoog

The reality is that SF will dominate politics for at least the next decade, they are already setting the whole policy agenda which is been adopted and aped by the other parties. FG and FF are all but a spent force and it would take an almighty series of mistakes by SF to change that scenario. This may indeed create the perfect environment for a center right type party to emerge, but unless they have socially progressive policies to address the housing and health crisis they will not gain any serious traction in the country. Market led solutions to these problems, the bread and butter of the right, have failed to deliver solutions only making the crisis worse so I do not see much hope of a new center right party offering any serious new solutions.

enricoh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068363#Comment_118068363

I thought the under enda Kenny fg did a good job but iirc they weren't rewarded in the election.

Under Leo fg just spent money like water and now they they are in bed with ff who know how to buy an election or 2. They seem to be spending as much as possible so when Sinn Fein get in next time the cupboards are bare.

Tadhgg

A party similar to the Liberals (FDP) in Germany could be successful, a party based on the principals of individual freedom and human rights. The FDP are in favour of tax cuts and rejects any tax increases. They are also openly pro-immigration, being in favour of a points based system based on the Canadian model for non-EU immigration.

If a party such as this emerged in Ireland and made it clear from the outset that they are pro-immigrant and not socially conservative, they may be able to avoid attracting the far-right types and the accompanied attacks from some sections of the media.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068459#Comment_118068459

I agree with a lot of this. God help ffg if this new party emerges before the next election. Also this gem that's always trotted out, about the " market " having " failed "...

The market is big private business, its aim is profit maximization, like the vast majority of our employers...

It's a smokescreen bullshit lie, thrown out by government to deflect blame etc... government are meant to be there for the good of the people, not businesses....

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118069838#Comment_118069838

Government is the private business, or at least a sizable proportion of the TD's are landlords and have property interests. They are looking out for themselves by favouring their own businesses - which is a failure of government. The crisis is caused by FF+FG and they show no willing to solve it so they will have to step aside to allow a party who is prepared to seriously intervene on behalf of the population to solve the problem - thats unlikely to be a new centre right party though and the reason why SF will dominate politics until they **** things up themselves.

Fred Cryton

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118068459#Comment_118068459

The answer to that is to change peoples expectations around housing. Too many Irish people think they should be able to afford a 4 bed with a garden in the centre of our captial city. There are PLENTY of affordable homes, costing €250-300k, outside our major cities.

Renting is a more difficult one, the market simply cannot deliver homes at a lower rent because the cost of land and construction is so high, so the breakeven rent is high for the owner. Now unless you plan to pay construction workers less money, or are somehow able to reduce the cost of construction materials, then no party is going to make rent cheap. Best thing to do is to create masses of new apartments, flood the market, to dampen down the cost of rent.

Pawwed Rig

Flooding the market will make prices cheaper which will make building uneconomical which will drive prices up and so it continues. The best way to 'solve' the problem is to drive down wages in the building industry by opening our borders to tradesmen and drive down materials cost by increasing supply.

I would guess that neither of these options will be taken by any party and we will be stuck in a scenario where a small extension is nearly twice the annual net pay of someone on the average wage in Ireland.

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118082896#Comment_118082896

Em... you remember the Celtic Tiger building boom? When half the apartments being built were to house Polish builders, because if they were going to work here building houses and apartments, they needed somewhere to live? Our borders are already open to the whole of the EU.

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084020#Comment_118084020

Non EU

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084101#Comment_118084101

How is this plan of bringing in non-EU workers going to work, do you think? Are you talking a GAMA situation, where some Turkish workers were paid €3.00/hour instead of the €12/hour they should have been paid? You'd be suspending pay agreements for the non-EU-nationals, and minimum wage? And presumable - as they'd need somewhere to live and couldn't afford €1,600/month rents - they'd be confined to compounds? And of course you'd make sure they all leave the country when their contract was complete...

Kermit.de.frog

What Ireland needs most is just a party that will look after those that pay for everything first.

In Dublin atm it seems if you are welfare dependent or rich you can live there.

If you are a middle rung worker who pays the taxes you can't.

So something is very wrong at the moment.

Leo said he would look after the majority of people, workers, in this country and that just hasn't happened.

I think those people have every right to be angry.

They see Anto and afternoon pyjama clad Jacinta getting €2,000 p/m apartments in Dundrum while they are told to basically **** off down the country.

Only a matter of time before this blows up

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084398#Comment_118084398

We needed nurses and brought in Indians and Filipinos. Why is this different?

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084513#Comment_118084513

We shouldn't need to bring in unskilled labour, Nurses are skilled, some lad to throw meat in boxes isn't,

Geuze

There are 265,000 people on the Live Register and PUP.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/lr/liveregisterseptember2021/

This figure is falling, which is great.

There are 15,000,000 unemployed across the EU.

And yet there are employers looking to hire Africans and Americans.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/1028/1256331-employment-permit-system/

A political party for workers would discourage non-EU immigration, until the 265,000 people are moved into jobs.

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084607#Comment_118084607

I never mentioned unskilled labour. I was talking about tradesmen

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118084513#Comment_118084513

Seriously? Because you straight out said you wanted to hire them as cheap labour.

But nurses and other healthcare workers need to either qualify here or have equivalent degree-level qualifications from their own countries, and are employed by the HSE, on standard payscales. And they weren't/aren't hired because they'll work for less than Irish staff, they're hired because we've a huge shortage.

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118085063#Comment_118085063

I never said I wanted to hire anyone as cheap labour.

I said the way to make building costs cheaper (cheaper doesn't mean cheap) is to increase supply of labour and materials.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118085288#Comment_118085288

Building costs are cheap enough - the problem is land prices and profit margins.

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118085288#Comment_118085288

Nah, you did.

The best way to 'solve' the problem is to drive down wages in the building industry by opening our borders to tradesmen 

"Driving down wages" == hiring cheap labour.

Pawwed Rig

Huh? Driving down wages means exactly what it says.

It is a leap to go from that to me personally wanting to hire workers in dire conditions.

It is basic supply and demand. More supply means demand is satisfied and upward pressure on wages lessens. Over supply and downward pressure is exerted on salaries.

You are trying to read things into what I wrote that aren't there. I was just expressing a very basic economic concept. I never even hinted that it is an outcome I would be in favour of.

TaurenDruid

Yes, driving down wages means exactly what it says. You do it by hiring people on lower wages than the agreed norms.

You do know the construction sector is still highly unionised, and quite well regulated? Here's an article from as recently as last Tuesday with what will be the rates from next February. So instead of a craftsperson earning €20.52 an hour, you want to somehow flood the market with... /checks notes... skilled craftspeople from outside the EU... who will be willing to work for what, less than an apprentice gets, and will still somehow be able to rent somewhere and feed themselves? And won't disappear off into the black economy once they have their visa?

Pawwed Rig

You're still arguing with something that wasn't said but to reference your point above is your claim that there are no craftsmen earning more than €20.52 an hour? Or are you just highlighting the minimum union rates?

TaurenDruid

Yep, they're the minimum rates.

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086264#Comment_118086264

So you would conceed that salaries can be driven down towards the minimum rates rather than €3 per hour so construction becomes cheaper and no one gets exploited?

Murph85

Labour wont go down in cost. Here is an actual partial solution, the government reduce building taxes, a staggering amount of the cost goes to them...

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086938#Comment_118086938

It did in 2010, 2011, 2012.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086943#Comment_118086943

Rather, what I meant to say is. No chance government will go down that route...

Reduce the tax take on new build. Ban new data centres and perhaps hotels in Dublin, that would free up a lot of capacity for the only thing are are massively short on now... residential...

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086918#Comment_118086918

Just leaving you with the problem of persuading several thousand Turkish (or wherever) workers to move to Ireland for €800/week (before tax), when their rent, in Dublin anyway, will be €1,600/month, minimum. And of course there won't be any trouble with Irish construction workers, or the far-right stirring up "They're coming over here taking our jobs!" bollocks.

Geuze

The way to reduce building costs is not to reduce the wage rates.

The solutions are:

more supply of all builders (this will reduce wage pressures, but I don't imply lower wage rates)

massive cuts in the cost of development sites

large cuts in the costs of finance

de-risk house building, so profit margins can fall

RandomViewer

We already have a Mica scandal now the government follywombles want to get exploited labour to build stuff, what could possibly go wrong,

TaurenDruid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118088005#Comment_118088005

more supply of all builders (this will reduce wage pressures, but I don't imply lower wage rates)

How does that work, exactly? Immigration? Where will they all live?

massive cuts in the cost of development sites

So state intervention in property rights? This does not seem to be a centre-right position...

How about, instead, massive increases in land bank and derelict site taxes, so speculators don't sit on vacant sites for a few years just to sell them on to another speculator who'll do the same, rather than build on the site?

large cuts in the costs of finance

😏 Dude. Seriously? Finance has never been so cheap. How can you not know this?! The banks will jump at the chance to lend to any developer. Can't really take you seriously after

de-risk house building, so profit margins can fal

Not sure what "risk" you're talking about, unless it's FOMO on even higher profits. But is it not a central tenet of capitalism that the rewards are justified because of the risk of the investment?

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089034#Comment_118089034

We need to convince more people here to take up a trade. Having the highest rates of college attendance is great, but not so great when you can't get a plumber or electrician.

We also need to encourage the Irish trades that emigrated after 2009 crash to return. (Yes, housing them is an issues, yes)

I accept that all of my suggestions might not fit neatly into what other people define as "centre-right".

Yes, we need to radically cut the cost of development land. I am open to how that could be done, and you suggest SVT / hoarding taxes, etc., I agree. For example, the former Hickey's warehouse site on Parkgate street, Dublin sold for 30m, meaning any houses built there have to be expensive. I suggest that site should be 3m. Yes, I agree that this might need a constitutional referendum, but the housing crisis is so serious, that radical measures are required.

(if that sounds like a SF policy, I see what you mean, things are so bad in housing now, that centre-right politicians must accept that the market can't or won't solve the problem)

Turning to finance, yes, the ECB rate is low at 0%. But here is what I hear directly from a financial controller of a property developer:

they can't borrow at all from banks for sites/land without planning

with planning, banks will lend 60% (senior debt) at 5% or 6%, way too high

they put up 20% equity themselves

the remaining 20% is borrowed from mezzanine financers, often foreign lenders, at rates over 10%!!!

This results in very high finance costs of 16,716 per house in the GDA in 2020

riclad

Our economy depends on immigrants for retail, cafes, hotel workers, one example in the UK they need 100k drivers , they are giving visas for truck drivers to come to the UK

Young people are moving to the left the present housing system leaves even well paid workers struggling to pay rent or buy a house. I think a right wing party would not get many people voting for it our health system depends to a large part on doctors from abroad

Sinn fein is a socialist party its rising in the polls

Luxembourgo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098547#Comment_118098547

Id say they are a populist party rather than a socialist one

Jinglejangle69

I say SF are calling for 7 billion a year to be spent on social housing.

Whos gunna pay for it?

The already squeezed middle.

riclad

I think the government plan calls for 20k housing units to be built every year whether this happens is hard to say. 35 per cost rise in housing materials, the supply chain crisis will make it more difficult.

I always thought Fianna Fáil were the Conservative and fine Gael were Liberal slightly left wing party

Ireland was one of the first country's to bring in gay marriage most young people are Liberal or slightly left wing

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118030652#Comment_118030652

That wouldn't make them left wing though.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098649#Comment_118098649

I agree. The same people already paying for the obscenely wasteful system...

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098649#Comment_118098649

How much are the current cuckoo leases costing?

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098723#Comment_118098723

There clearing forestry at a high rate up here, how long it takes between felling and market?, a lot of the other stuff is already easing,

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098803#Comment_118098803

No idea.

But I prefer it to spending 7 billion a year handing out free houses.

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098836#Comment_118098836

Not free,and rent will be deducted at source,money returning to the state not some tax haven

Luxembourgo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098891#Comment_118098891

Social housing rents are deducted at source now?

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118099024#Comment_118099024

All parties except FFG have proposed it

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098891#Comment_118098891

Eh.

That's not what happens.

DCC are owed 40 million in social housing rent arrears.

Let us know when you come back down to planet earth.

Mad_maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118098723#Comment_118098723

FF were traditionally more conservative socially than FG but were also more left wing economically , under Garret Fitz , FG were very liberal socially and to the left economically