The 1990s is a long time ago

dxhound2005 · 13-03-2022 11:43pm

No housing crisis in 1999? Nobody told Alan Dukes.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1999-02-02/12/?highlight%5B0%5D=amendment&highlight%5B1%5D=2&highlight%5B2%5D=fifth&highlight%5B3%5D=public&highlight%5B4%5D=bills&highlight%5B5%5D=bill&highlight%5B6%5D=public

I move:

That Dáil Éireann condemns the failure of the current Government to respond effectively to the crisis in the Irish housing market; notes that:

there has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of applications for local authority housing since the last housing assessment in 1996; couples on average incomes can no longer afford to purchase a typical starter home as house prices have increased dramatically; rents in the private rented sector have spiralled; the number of homeless persons continues to increase; and calls on the Government to:

abolish stamp duty on second-hand houses for first time buyers; increase the first-time buyer's grant; establish a national housing commission; establish a cabinet sub-committee on housing, chaired by the Taoiseach and consisting of the Ministers for the Environment and Local Government, Health and Children, Finance and Social, Community and Family Affairs; transfer the administration of the rental subsidy scheme and the mortgage supplement scheme to local authorities; dramatically increase the provision of capital assistance to local authorities to allow 10,000 housing starts each year for the next four years and to substantially increase the capital assistance scheme for the voluntary housing sector; bring forward a comprehensive national strategy to deal with the issue of homelessness with the Department of the Environment and Local Government taking overall control for the direction of policy in this area; review the 1992 Housing Act so as to increase the rights of tenants and to provide incentives for the private rented sector to develop longer term leases; increase housing density, particularly in areas close to transport corridors, and to ensure a mechanism of enforcement by the Department of the Environment and Local Government on appropriate local authorities; introduce legislation ring-fencing development levies for the use of community projects in new developments; complete as a matter of priority an audit of all State-owned lands so as to increase the availability of such lands for social housing; introduce legislation to ban the practice of gazumping.

JupiterKid · 14-03-2022 1:39am

The seeds of the current crisis in our housing system were actually sown back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the slashing of social/local authority housing construction, a major change in the way social housing was funded and an abrupt change in general social housing policy in 1991.

The three Bacon Reports of 1998, 1999 and 2000 all recognised a growing problem of housing affordability in Dublin and to a lesser extent, the regional cities and made a series of important policy recommendations, some of which were implemented but some of which were not - largely for political reasons. It’s a very complex issue that is way beyond the scope of this thread.

riclad · 14-03-2022 4:30pm

We were a more fair society less materialist in the 80s, maybe people were poor, but if you had a big TV, and a VHS player you were happy. Now people spend 1000s of euros on phones, working class people can't buy a house, in the 80s 1000s of social housing houses were built . Cost of living and rents were lower in the 90s. Vulture funds are buying up houses making the situation worse for people who want to buy a house and have children. Of course we are now a multicultural secular country the Catholic Church has little influence on anyone under the age of 50 apart from the church being a place to get married . Young people are all using dating apps social media and smartphones in the 90s tech was a minority hobby apart from pc gaming

Sleepy · 14-03-2022 6:28pm

I turned 18 in 1998. My entire teenage years marked an era where Ireland was rapidly becoming a much better place to my eyes. I think it's actually really begun to affect me as I've reached my 40's. The optimism of my formative years has been replaced with a deep cynicism. I grew up thinking that the utopian ideals we watched in the Star Trek serials of the era (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nice and Voyager) might actually be achievable if not in my lifetime but surely by my that of my own offspring...

Ireland transformed from a backwater that exported it's youth en masse whilst allowing the Catholic Church to dominate our culture and legal system to a place where an 18 year old could get a university degree with no help from their parents (topping the grant up with a part-time job and having to live frugally alright but my friends in that situation could all still afford a night out or two a week). Things weren't perfect: if that 18 year old happened to be gay they likely still feared coming out to their parents, would have had to be careful about kissing or holding their partners hand in public and certainly still faced plenty of discrimination from some quarters but the vast majority of their peers in college would have been accepting and supportive.

During that decade we decriminalised homosexuality, legalised divorce, abandoned Catholic teachings about contraception and "living in sin" etc. The emergence of the internet was hugely exciting. Life just seemed to be getting better and better. My parents stories of the 60's and 70's and what the 80's had really been like (my views of it being a child being limited to how great the cartoons and shows like The A Team / Knightrider were) just reinforced that view: both had come from poor backgrounds and working hard in school had landed them good pensionable careers (which my Mother was able to give up to raise us) throughout the 90's the second hand cars my Dad bought were newer and better (and we even got a second car by the late 90s!), summer holidays became an annual thing and increasingly involved getting to go abroad.

It set certain expectations of life: that working hard in school would get you a job, getting a degree would get you a better one and once you put in the hours, the 5 bed semi in the suburbs with a decent car in the drive and a fortnight on the continent every summer would follow and by the time you hit 65 you'd retire with a decent pension you could spoil any future grandchildren with between frequent holidays.

Then the new century hit us like a freight train: 9/11, a global recession, the near total erosion of the "job for life" and emergence of the gig economy, the toxic nature of social media, the revelation of the scale of corruption and incompetence of Fianna Fail and the emergence of world leaders that make them look like children caught with their hands in the sweetie jar. The political left disappearing up it's own arse and becoming more concerned with gender identity politics and virtue signalling than rapidly escalating inequality leading to a global resurgence of nationalism, populist morons like Trump and Johnson holding high office and ultimately as we're seeing at the moment war in Europe and the planet once again on the brink of a World War.

No wonder we're all so nostalgic for the 80s and 90s! A dystopian future was something exciting in a Ridley Scott movie, not the boring version of it we're living through now.

Girly Gal · 14-03-2022 6:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118784068#Comment_118784068

People now are spending way more on leisure activities and on luxuries like the latest smartphone, TVs, etc, going on holidays 2 or 3 times a year, all fine if you can afford it, but, a lot of people who can't still do and they are the very people who complain about the cost of living, it is high but a lot of people seem to have lost the concept of living by your means, back in the 90's people by and large only spent what they could afford and borrowed only what they knew they could pay back.

Whatdoesitmatter · 14-03-2022 6:49pm

The 90's were great for me. Reacharounds left right and centre

silliussoddius · 14-03-2022 8:03pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118784682#Comment_118784682

Did they enjoy it?

15-03-2022 9:10am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758303#Comment_118758303

For me that was 2000. There was a lot of dire boyband / sugary pop music dominating the charts. Westlife, S Club 7 etc.

However on the plus side there was also the renaissance of Dr. Dre and the rise of the greatest ever rapper Eminem which made that year special. But it most certainly was not 1969 or 1977 as years go.

15-03-2022 9:22am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118781283#Comment_118781283

I was thinking about our 4 bedroom house in 80's and 90's. At one stage there was 7 of us living in it and it honestly never felt crowded.

When I go back now to visit my parents the house feels tiny with just 3 of us in the house! Perception is a strange thing.

15-03-2022 9:27am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118784624#Comment_118784624

It's old-fashioned but timeless - don't spend what you don't have.

I do think the structure of the economy is different nowadays however. Now it's normal to spend up to half of your salary on accommodation (rent/mortgage only), I don't think that was the case years ago. It seems like everyone is squeezed financially, and because of the mass consumer culture there seems to be more pressure to keep up with the Joneses. So what little disposable income people have will get sucked away very easily by the amount of temptations available. I learned a simple rule from the Dad of Ross/Monica in Friends - save 10% of your income for a rainy day. It's never steered me wrong.

Ash.J.Williams · 15-03-2022 10:02am

gerry ryan was becoming an irish howard stern

Badly Drunk Boy · 15-03-2022 12:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118786775#Comment_118786775

Same here, the parents and 5 kids. I live in the house I grew up in because I bought it when the family moved, but even alone in the house, it seems a lot smaller than back then. Even individual rooms. (A declutter of all the material things that capitalism and disposable income have foisted upon me might help.) 😉

15-03-2022 12:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118786891#Comment_118786891

Two wastes of space.

monseiur · 15-03-2022 1:21pm

The 1990's were indeed a golden age especially if you were a solicitor, barrister etc. involved in the many tribunals e.g. the Moriarty Tribunal, Mahon Tribunal, Morris Tribunal etc. etc. The state squandered millons, probably close to a billion of our money....it became a runaway gravy train for all the legal eagles and their associates. If you're reading this and lucky enough to be too young to remember just Google it - you'll be flabbergasted.

Jim2007 · 15-03-2022 2:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118787844#Comment_118787844

So you would have been happier if it was not investigated, issues highlighted, changes made, people called out on their behaviour etc..... Given what came afterwards and the opportunities it would have presented to these people and their like minded friends I'm glad it was done. Like every other democracy, ours is based not the assumption that power corrupts and is designed to catch it. The only time you should be worried is when you are hearing nothing. It does not mean that there is no corruption, it just means we are not catching it.

dalyboy · 15-03-2022 2:43pm

1990s had the best music and best pub craic . I got my 1st mobile phone in 1996. The Motorola startac. Still remember people looking at me like I was an alien using a phone on the Dart such was the emerging novelty.

Jim2007 · 15-03-2022 2:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118786775#Comment_118786775

It also helps if everyone else is in the same boat, it makes it seem normal. I went to college in Dublin in the 80s and like everyone I knew I was on a grant and there were very few casual jobs to be had. So eight of us shared a four bedroom house, spent most of our time in the house in sleeping bags because we could not afford the heating and eat a diet of beans, tuna, toast and spaghetti. Some evenings we'd go to moor st. and buy some cheap veg and make a stew. It was a veg stew with double the number of OXO cubes to convenient us we had meat....

Sleepy · 15-03-2022 3:10pm

At least ye had the odd bit of veg, no word of a lie a friend of a friend of mine spent an entire year of college living almost entirely on koka noodles and Dutch Gold: he was apparently the first case of scurvy seen in Beaumount for years!

monseiur · 15-03-2022 4:21pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118788213#Comment_118788213

I was all in favour of the investigations, it was the deliberate manner in which the lawyers elongated, stretched, extended, prolonged the whole thing that is sickening....they were been paid by the day, some senior barristers were paid up to €5,000 per day and they ensured that the days turned into weeks and weeks into years....one tribunal took 15 years !

silliussoddius · 15-03-2022 4:23pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118788524#Comment_118788524

Are you sure he didn't circumnavigate the globe on an old clipper in between?

riclad · 16-03-2022 12:57am

The 90s were the peak time for rock bands rock music as a genre and electronic music became more popular with advances in technology digital recording. In the 90s the music industry decided rock music was old fashioned and switched over to promoting rap hop hop . Rock music hardly exists anymore apart from old bands like the rolling stones U2 who can still earn big money touring

Jim2007 · 16-03-2022 2:53am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118789010#Comment_118789010

So limited justice…. It is not up to the lawyers nor the judiciary to decide how much justice you should get. Do you really think a system in which you are told you have three days to prove you are innocent otherwise you are guilty or vice versa would have credibility? Or that telling people, we’ll give you the rookie because he has no experience he really cheap will be acceptable.

Hurrache · 16-03-2022 3:31pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118779538#Comment_118779538

My first broken bone happened around 1991, went to A&E that evening, didn't get home until about 4 the next morning. Hospitals weren't any better then.

silliussoddius · 16-03-2022 4:36pm

I seem to remember it taking ages to get a phone line set up in your house, is it much better these days?

iamstop · 16-03-2022 6:42pm

Ah the 90s. I was a born in 1980 so was 10 to 20 for the 90s.

The 90s brought some great music advancements. The 80s was mostly pretty sterile musically. The 90s brought back the soul of the 60s and 70s. I still have a special place in my heart for 90s underground dance, rave and even some of the poppier hits from then.

The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Air to name some of the bigger names that lived on. About 94-96 is considered the golden age of Hip Hop.

Teenage discos - Bective and Wesley's rugby club. First drinks. Was a cider drinker then. 6 Scrumpy Jack for a 5er

There was scumbags around but they seemed to stick to designated areas and were not all over town causing trouble.

Went on my first trips abroad with the lads. Tenerife and Crete.

Here is a 90s mix:

https://www.mixcloud.com/iamstop/this-is-a-journey-back-to-your-innocent-summers/

animalinside · 17-03-2022 4:51am

Remember Donal Skehan, that cooking lad that used to be on de telly?

This is him now:

Feel old yet?!

jj880 · 18-03-2022 2:10am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118769248#Comment_118769248

I will concede this. You ever watched that Roxy Music scene from Flashbacks Of A Fool? One of the few times I felt nostalgic for a time I wasn't alive. Hypnotic.

https://youtu.be/au8cCvGk9eU

Me2U2 · 18-03-2022 2:22am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118794255#Comment_118794255

I remember many parents going through long phone bills line by line in the mid 90s! When I was in college around 1996 there were only two people I knew with mobile phones. I seem to remember people being suspicious as if it was only drug dealers that had mobile phones, legit business people had carphones.