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Prime Time housing debate: Eoin O Broin vs Darragh O'Brien

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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 1,389 ✭✭✭Finty Lemon


    Yes I agree, just like Harris, Eoin O Broin is a lightweight bluffer who folds under scrutiny. The difference is that Harris is now more peripheral in FG whereas OBroin carries the responsibility of making SF credible. He just isn't what he is pretending to be and I think he knows it too.

    As for government ministers delivering, Norma Foley has been exceptional under huge pressure, Donnelly delivered the best vaccination programme in the world, Charlie McConologue is making steady progress (3rd time lucky!), Pascal Donohoe is hugely credible in Finance when you look at how the country is booming, Michael McGrath made great decisions during lockdown that delivered civil peace through support of workers, Darragh OBrien is impressing now, Simon Coveney has been steady on Brexit (and deserves a toast for UN work) and Michael Martin has kept it all together under immense strain with quiet leadership style. Agreed Varadkar is a big disappointment given his insistence on playing destabilising games in the early days of the coalition. Martin has taught him a lesson or two.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,389 ✭✭✭Finty Lemon


    A significant plank of SF housing policy is purchase and renovation of derelict houses, according to Eoin OBroin. Sounds good alright.

    This apparently will radically reduce the cost of housing units. Is that a valid assumption?

    Site acquisition costs - these will rise if private owners know the government is buying. Unless there is a CPO policy hidden somewhere in SF policy, which is a move toward abolition of property rights.

    Site surveying and assessment costs? That will cost the new government tens of millions in the aggregate. Who will select the potential units, council staff? Will they secure the best option for the taxpayers?

    Heat and energy retrofitting to current regs in derelict buildings? More expensive than on new builds.

    Economies of scale with a large number of micro construction sites? Costs per unit could be uncompetitive

    Finally, and fundamentally, deciding to target derelict houses will have no net benefit to materials unit costs or labour availability. In fact, private sub contractors will charge heavily for the uncertainty factor associated with renovations. And don't make me laugh saying direct council employees will provide the labour and project management to control costs- they don't exist and even if they did the costs would be a multiple of a private contractor.

    All told, it sounds just like what you would expect from the boy who never grew up.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,261 ✭✭✭Gant21


    We need to stop building free houses. It shouldn’t be accepted.

    People need to stop having children just to tick a box to get a free house.



  • Registered Users Posts: 12,992 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    Where did you get the 70k figure for the top 10%?


    In 2020, the average within the top decile was as follows: (This is at the household level, not the person level)

    Employee income = 2,637 per week

    Total market income = 4,129 per week, so 215k per annum

    Disposable income = 2,716 per week, so 141k disposable pa


    The entry point to the top decile is 1,793 per week disposable income, so 93,236 disposable income per household is the entry point to the top decile

    See the SILC 2020:

    https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-silc/surveyonincomeandlivingconditionssilc2020/income/



  • Registered Users Posts: 345 ✭✭orecir


    **** hell is this sarcasm.


    LOL at Foley being exceptional.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 23,370 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    ...



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,799 ✭✭✭✭DrumSteve


    Are you trying to say EOB looks like noted Nazi Heinrich Himmler?

    This place has gone to the dogs.



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,799 ✭✭✭✭DrumSteve




  • Registered Users Posts: 23,370 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog




  • Registered Users Posts: 1,389 ✭✭✭Finty Lemon




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  • Posts: 1,010 ✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    He looks more Emperor Hirohito with the glasses. Assume the look is a ploy to appear similar to the early vangaurds of socialism, like Trotsky. However he does look more like Reichsheini



  • Posts: 1,263 ✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    It would make you wonder, alright. Not that people from prosperous backgrounds can't be genuine, but still.

    Maybe politics is just a theatrical form of gang warfare for those with very staid and predictable social climbing aspirations. I drink fine wine, but I'm really, really kind...



  • Registered Users Posts: 544 ✭✭✭agoodpunt


    dcc is developing derelicts in the city but at a cost 3 times private ones, place near me I was watching with amazement one contractor underpining foundation for weeks, a private nearby similar build took 1 week spent 1/3 and finished 6 months more of the same would be a waste of money.

    Job went on for 2 years no urgency, over manned and finished with no expence spared as some of the contractor said it a city council job taxpayer funded blank cheque

    The DCC building is complete and vacant for the last 6months



  • Registered Users Posts: 28,703 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    its fcuking disturbing to see the attempts of ridiculing sf on this thread, sorry to break it to you folks, but sf arent bringing back socialism, and its clearly obvious the ffg approach has catastrophically failed, so grow up!



  • Registered Users Posts: 613 ✭✭✭J_1980


    In hindsight a lot more people should have just bought 2bed apartments to save rent in the last 4y and then moved up the ladder later to a house.

    instead of saving for a 3bed semi and insisting on only buying this. Stamp and estate agent fees are the lowest in Europe, so easy to move.



  • Registered Users Posts: 28,703 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    ...another element of why this situation is the way it is, this the ladder thing, is only a relatively new phenomenon, this approach only truly benefits certain elements in society, mostly related to the fire sectors, the whole idea is to indebt citizens, as indebted people are easier to control....



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,172 ✭✭✭Jinglejangle69




  • Registered Users Posts: 613 ✭✭✭J_1980


    What nonsense.

    construction costs are 250-350k per unit/house.

    how are you supposed to pay for it? All cash?



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,389 ✭✭✭Finty Lemon


    Nope. Schools open, Leaving cert on the way, unions quiet, parents happy.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,658 ✭✭✭downtheroad


    Our "reduced" rate VAT of 13.5% is 1.5% below the lowest allowed standard VAT per EU rules. Obviously VAT is a huge contributor to the state's coffers but 23% standard rate (which applies to so many items) is far higher than it could and should be.

    20% standard and 10% reduced vat rates would be a good compromise. However I wouldn't trust retailers and suppliers to actually lower their prices, instead many would just pocket the difference.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 8,355 ✭✭✭Cluedo Monopoly


    I have just watched this debate. I will admit that I only watched 5 mins the other night and could not listen to the minister anymore.

    Now I can see that neither FFG or SF are going to deliver here. They are both talking through their holes. This problem is a legacy of the boom/bust and Covid certainly did not help. The inflation issue will make it worse again and targets will be missed and missed badly. Huge money will be thrown at this but very inefficiently (what's new?)

    SF will get many votes at the next election because people will need hope but they will also fail to deliver. They will get the reality check.

    The housing crisis might take 10+ years to resolve and many people will emigrate to escape it (including construction workers).

    SF trusting local authorities is very naive. The real winners are the big investment houses.

    What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,118 ✭✭✭Melanchthon


    I have plenty of issues with SF but they always get a high preference from me.

    One thing that I think is important about SF, they aren't really as much a part of the establishment Ireland/ professional cartels/legal/ finance influence groups, some of their leading politicians are but their base is sensitive to this. They might be less afraid to inflicting pain on these groups than FF/FG

    They are aware that the south isn't the north, this is their time but they will have to deliver or another party like the soc dems will start eating into their new support



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,389 ✭✭✭Finty Lemon


    OBroin has council renovation of derelict housing as one of his big ideas to save costs. Come off it... the man clearly has never set foot on a building site, or paid a contractor for work done, if he believes that.

    Hubristic naivety or missplaced populism, I can't tell which.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,505 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    Didn't see the programme but o Broin ( who I always knew was a Marxist waffler) must really have been awful if Dara o Brien beat him , o Brien is himself a mediocrity



  • Registered Users Posts: 28,703 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    great thanks, hows yourself?

    nothing nonsense about it, just look round the world, heavily indebting people is a perfect way of maintaining control, and its worked, people are less likely to strike and fight back, while trying to service these debts....

    not at all, we have to embrace growing public debt, the over reliance on credit, for our needs, has failed...



  • Registered Users Posts: 613 ✭✭✭J_1980


    Well then name the country that runs huge public debt with zero private debt successfully?

    can only think of Italy, Greece and Argentina, all are or are very close to being failed states.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,570 ✭✭✭vriesmays


    No mention on 2 /3 social rents are in arrears.



  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    The council leave their own properties lying empty for months/years at a time before renovating or renting them back out, not sure how he will get them to suddenly become so productive!



  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭[Deleted User]


    If the state actually own properties, the fact that some are in arrears isn't much of a big deal really, it's arrears, it isn't debt written off as such.

    for example, the state own 200 houses in one estate, 120 houses are in arrears, the state still own 200 houses and they may receive those arrears.

    if the state pay HAP for 200 households to live in private landlord properties, then they pay out hundreds of thousands a year in rents, with absolutely nothing for themself, no assets for the state, just money thrown away.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,570 ✭✭✭vriesmays


    So build lots more social housing and don't bother if the rents get paid.



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