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

Thats what happens when you've never had a real job and spend your spare cash self-publishing your books to appear clever

That was classed as a debate? The biggest critical issue we have, and what, 15 minutes on the national station? Rte presenter couldn't handle them. Let them dodge questions. Then again it's probably a great result for rte, they don't want to hurt their paymaster, current or future.

That was absolutely diabolical. That needed about 2 hours, to try and pin the fuckers down and get an answer out of them. Basically they were both running the clock down from the start. They only had to not **** up for 15 minutes. And rte are hyping this all week? Ah lads. Go home, rte you are an embarrassment.

I really expected O'Brion to have answers seeing as he was the one calling for the debate and up to tonight he sounded like he knew what he was talking about and had a plan.

My take away was that O'Broin will concentrate on social housing and take all the resources away from developments for FTB's as he couldn't explain how more housing could be built. Surely he knew he was going to be asked that question and had a few answers prepared.

What really took the biscuit was not being able to answer how he would deal with institutional investors and after a bit of waffling says that he would get the council to buy them... nearly fell of my seat because surely he realises that he has alienated all the FTB's by reducing the supply to buy.

An absolute charlatan, and he's top 4 in SF.

We as a nation are screwed. Reduce the number of politicians and increase the pay. We might attract talent to the job

It was like Dumb and Dumber. We need 40,000 extra houses a year........that’s 110 houses per day being released to market........who’s going to build them? Err no one.......every builder and tradesman in the country will be on the mica gravy trail in Donegal.

So out of touch those two. Saying things like we won’t put money in developers pockets….. vulture funds will be kept out….. well easy to see they don’t understand economics. Construction is a high cost low margin industry. Who is making the money? The tradesmen who are in short supply and earning more than either of those 2 clowns. I don’t blame them though, they got fudged the last recession. I seriously think they need to change the rules for FTB, renting should be seen as ability to pay, smaller deposits and 2 generation mortgages. Why not? If your family don’t want to pay for the house when you’re gone they sell it. It’s already available in other countries. Time for us as a country to explore other options than the usual ould rabble rousing popular sound bites that help no one but a career politician.

What are O'Broin's new and exciting ideas? Because every time the presenter asked him how he would fix the issue he just smiled and talked garbage before saying we need more houses.

He completely deflected the fact that a Sinn Fein controlled Dublin City Council have blocked development at Oscar Traynor Road and O Devaney Gardens.

Sinn Fein are the emperors new clothes and we are going to find that out the hard way in a couple of years time.

Ah that was refreshing.

Hopefully more of these debates to expose SF for what they are.

Blackrock college privately educated, 6K a year.

Him and Mary Lou also privately educated , the great saviours of the working poor.

Just like first year college dropout (and ironically now Minister for Higher Education) Simon Harris for example?

I'd be careful relying on real world experience to try discrediting politicians you don't like considering the level of "quality" among the FF and FG parties these days.

We have an incredibly weak and ineffective set of politicians in Government. From the likes of Helen McEntee who seems to be more concerned with hand-waving away illegal immigration for the social media kudos, to Leo who has managed to base his entire political career on his public image and social media profile than any actual results, to Micheal Martin who his own party admit can't make a decision without a dozen reports and is only in power because there's no clear successor in FF, or how about Eamon Ryan who may be well intentioned but clearly has no notion of life in the real world.

The bottom line is that I don't think there is even ONE current TD that you could see as effective and who consistently delivers, never mind one who you could see the country getting behind as leader of the Government.

Our minister for education has no third level education, dropped out of college in 1st year. How on earth did that alone not put him out of the running? The Covid-18 howler makes sense now .

The issue about the likes of Mary Lou, Murphy and O'Broin and others is their claim to be an ordinary citizen. There's nothing wrong with their privileged education but they should own it. Not sure what the Harris thing is supposed to suggest, apart from an assumption that it produces smarter people. In my experience, that education is wasted on an awful lot of them.

Government TDs, bad and all as they might be, it gets markedly worse on the other side.

Your dead right on one thing here. I have been renting for 15 years and never once had a problem with making rent payments of up to £800 a month.

But if I go look for a mortgage the bank will tell me they can't trust me to make monthly payments because I was so good with my money I never needed a massively overdrawn credit card or loan off them.

O'Broin has been held up by the Shinnerbots as some kind of prodigy when it comes to housing, but it's become very clear that he's an absolute spoofer without a clue.

Remember, if the housing issue was easy to fix, they would all be doing it. Housing is absolutely crucifying the government in the polls. The idea that the government are deliberately keeping the housing market as dysfunctional as it is because <insert cartoon villainy here> is one step removed from Illumanti/Bilderberg nonsense.

Politicians want to get elected. To get elected, they want to do things that please as many people as possible. Fixing housing would do that. If it was as simple as O'Broin has been banging on about for years, they would be doing it already.

Anyone who claims there are easy answers to complex issues is a spoofer and a populist. This is what O'Broin is.

I dont usually tune in for these type of things, but a few points stand out,

The SF guys answer to everything, was that we need more availability of affordable homes. while hes exactly right, its like dying of thirst in the middle of the desert and being told that the answer is to drink some water. Not an scratch on how it could be achieved, given the current labour shortage and materials crisis, and also very dodgy to his answer as to why SF opposed the 100% social and affordable housing development mentioned by the FF guy.

Whilst not covering himself in glory, At least the FF guy acknowledged that this isn't a problem that can be solved overnight, and that the process of turnign it around is going to be a long one.