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

That's just not true. Irish banks want to see your repayment capacity, so if you are consistently saving and/or have been paying rent it is considered

You are confusing ireland with the US where repaying credit cards and loans helps build your credit score, so getting into debt is crucial.

You've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. The SF lovers will say O'Broin was great last night but you're spot on, all he said was we need more houses. They may as well have had a 4 year old or a parrot on, would have achieved the same result.

But unfortunately this stupid soundbite of stating the bloody obvious has SF with 1 foot in the door of the next government. In my constituency Denise Mitchell SF got the most votes of any candidate in the last General election and she is firmly on the back bench of SF. Patricia Ryan SF topped the polls in Kildare despite being on holiday for the final week leading up to the GE. SF could have run an actual donkey and it would have been elected.

Granted this is on the back of frustration at FG/FF and the current housing market, but a lot of SF supporters are in for a huge shock when it transpires that saviours Mcdonald, O'Broin et al do not have any answers or solutions to this problem, and will be turfed back out on their ear (hopefully far sooner than the 5 year term they will inevitably be elected to).

When you are explaining, you're losing. Sinn Fein have blocked housing developments as ultimate hypocrites, that is the message the government is selling, and it is a simple message based on facts. If you are trying to excuse away their blocking of development, you are already accepting that they have blocked development and prevented people getting houses. From an individual's point of view, it doesn't matter whether it is the council, a developer or an international investor who builds or owns the houses, it is just that they get built.

I would put money on O'Broin cosying up to every developer and institutional investor in town if he becomes Minister as he will just want houses built and the local Sinn Fein opposition will melt away.

So as you say you hope SF if they are in government then get turfed out as you say before their term is up, who to replace them with back to the good old FF and FG who have created this mess? This is the problem isn't it. People are absolutely sick to the back teeth of the FF and FG and there carry on and lets not forget that it has been those 2 parties that have been in government between them since the beginnings of the state practically. SF are not much better either. It is a sad state of affairs and this blind party loyalty we see it not going to help things either. It is ridiculous, all parties should be held to account and people need to stop this partizan crap because as long as it is there politicians will they can carry on as they have been fleecing the state for the benefit of themselves and their cronys.

@blanch152 wrote

And introducing shortcuts and exemptions from planning, building regulations and immigration visas to be able to say that we're building faster and cheaper than ever.

So by the end of the decade we're back to the same celtic tiger nonsense with issues with substandard housing and pyrite and new communities choked with traffic and energy and waste capacity problems.

The big obvious issue that SF could be leaping on, I've seen brought up elsewhere online. The soundbite of "housing can't be fixed overnight" was first introduced by FG .... a decade ago.

And since then they've managed to make very little headway on it. Now, the dogs on the street know that they were beset by quite a few problems not of their own making. Between squeezed budgets, elections and then a global pandemic, getting things done on that front has been very hard. But for FG to play that poor mouth, is never going to come across well.

Our housing market was actually starting to get back on track in 2019, we were progressing towards meeting demand by about 2023. And then covid kicked us in the bollox. And it's caused a delay not only by 2 years, but however long it takes global supply and labour problems to get back on track.

The labour issue is one of the major cruxes of the problem, FAS had its issues, but back when I was in CIT, the place was thronged with apprentices who were all keen to get out of there as quickly as possible and back on the tools.

I've often wondered if the discouraging of young lads from leaving school after junior cert to pursue trades was a major mistake. It would seem that by giving people more options in terms of education, more of them have decided to opt out of manual trades. This was masked somewhat by the influx of eastern European labour, which has now been exposed by the volume of them who have left in the last few years, just as things were getting going again.

SF are basically pre bailout FF as far as I can see.

Think ill be spoiling my vote next time, all much the same and none appeal to me, and I am not going to either of the extreme nut job ends.

I hope SF get turfed out after they get exposed for their blatant lies. This Oprah Winfrey style you get a house and you get a house nonsense that is going to get them elected is pure nonsense. Their fantasy think they're going to be handed keys to a nice 3 bed home once SF get into power. Complete fallacy.

FG and FF are no better, they've caused this mess. I probably will be spoling my vote similar to another poster who said the same as I don't believe any of them are going to fix this issue immediately, but least of all SF.

There needs to be a Slaintecare approach to this. Lock the housing spokesperson for watch party into a room for a weekend and don't let them out til they've agreed and signed off on a plan to tackle the housing issue in this country.

funnily enough, you ll find, they ll be in government next, so yea, people are considering them to be the answer!

"low margin"?

Lending banks expect property developers to show a 15% margin on estates.

On a selling price of 340k, or 300k less VAT, that is 45,000 per house.

I would not call that low margin.

On a development of 50 houses, that's over 2 million profit for the developer.

the political left have always had a major communication problem, as can be seen with o'broin, hes a smart chap, and is well informed, but.... but im not sure the electorate give a sh1t at this stage, particularly those that are getting screwed by all of this, its a vote of anything buy ffg, at this stage, and sf is effectively the only choice now....

All that example really proves is how much the government is creaming off the top with taxes for doing nothing!