Leo Varadkar to tackle Ireland's housing crisis 'Covid-style'

Around two years out from an election and he reckons he should start doing something... criminal situation with housing here . The cost is astronomical if you aren't getting a free house. The state needs to reduce building cost or do far more cost rental schemes etc. In fact, it needs to do both...

Where do I sign up the kids to one of these free houses ? Everyone getting free houses these days in the free state. 🤣🤣🤣

Or do we just pay for them ?

😒😒😒

Otherwise I will have to send the kids abroad.

Leo and Co can publish articles in the Irish times about how great Ireland is and they can read about it from some far flung shore.

I’d say they’ll just rewrite the planning laws… be a lot of high rise buildings and apartment blocks.

Leo will BS us with something like “Focus will still be on safety but laws amended to cope with population responsibly”

not surprised at Leo’s comments….which are very deliberate btw…… almost the first attempt at ‘ heads up to ireland and citizens ‘ …. ‘ gotcha, this isn’t really temporary ‘… as I’m on record as saying back at the start that this would happen. Not because of any cryptic insight but Leo ain’t hard to read…

at the onset of covid Leo said…

“I also promised that we would do all that we could do to protect the health of our citizens, to prepare our health service, to support our healthcare staff and to try to cushion the blow to the economy, our businesses and your livelihoods.”

but now that the Ukranian situation developed….that speech is in the bin…. The health and indeed wellbeing of citizens, their livelihoods, financial health, our economy is an afterthought…. This country is now in trouble. Long term trouble.. we’ll be feeling this for years and years.

Supply and demand will dictate cost.. never has there been a greater demand that is about to spiral to get multiple times worse.

The Government is already struggling to meet its current ‘Housing for All’ targets, which were based on a housing need of 33,000 homes annually but Department of Housing records however are showing that, in reality, 42,000 homes are needed annually…. That’s before, this influx..sooooo…we are fûcked, that’s all there is to it… and Leo couldn’t give a rats about that fact or indeed about any Irish citizen.

price of housing going up… wages down or at least stagnant…

soooo.. not a great outlook for Irish citizens….

The government should have capped the number of people arriving…

the EU should have pushed for non EU countries to do more…. A credible ‘international response ‘…Far too much has been put on and expected of the EU member states and their citizens …. The Ukraine hadn’t even applied to join the EU until February 2022, the 28th I think, 4 days after the invasion… 🤪😵‍💫. Convenient eh…what ‘covid style’ approach can Leo take ? Well he’s already started in typical insincere buzzword fashion determining ‘covid style’ which actually tells Irish citizens and taxpayers, nothing….

im playing a match later and our tactics will be ‘ covid style ‘. The fûck ?

that’s not going to fix a crisis and neither will anything Leo and pals, do or say… this will be a decade or more fixing.

the solution will be mobile home parks

watch this space

Leo being Leo is all this is. Spin and soundbites for what he thinks will play well to the public, but no substance at all behind it/him as usual!

If they want to address the housing crisis, step 1 is to stop inviting/allowing all and sundry who turn up at the (air)ports with a sad story immediate entry and supports. Might not be popular for the crusaders, but that's the truth of it. We're a small island nation of 5 million people who can barely support the people we have (long-standing issues in health, infrastructure, urban/rural investment and yes, housing too!) and we absoutely cannot sustain the current free for all championed by Leo and co that is exacerbating all of these issues.

Until we get a politician/party that is prepared to put Ireland's needs, and those of her native and legal citizens first, then all this is more nonsense whose only real intent, as noted above, is to get us all used to the idea that these people are here to stay! (as if that was a surprise to those of us who have even a passing interest in politics in this country).

He mentions the word that is critical to what is to come - "emergency".

He'll be sorry he drew that comparison with Covid. People will expect a response as swift and financially profligate as Covid.

But thats not possible, because we are talking about the delivery of a product, each worth an average of 200k input cost and needing thousands of moving parts to deliver.

Perhaps if he was just honest with people and lifted some of the impediments to both public and private home building alike, it'd be understood by most people as a good start.

absolutely. Wonder why for example, Croatia has taken in less than 20,000 according to the latest numbers I’ve seen, far nearer to the Ukraine than Ireland, a fraction of the distance yet…We have multiples more, tens of thousands more Ukrainians here…That’s undeniable…yet are thousands of kilometres further away…. Interesting… despite a war, the Ukraine folks coming here were doing so with long term planning in mind.

So Leo has quite a job on his hands. Never about protection, more relocation and enabling fresh starts. He knew that, he was attempting to hoodwink us…

It's FG stated policy to artifically increase the population of the country through immigration. Coveney (another big supporter of diluting national borders and identity like his friend the late Peter Suterland) has said that they want to increase the population by a million.

This current situation allows it to be done in the guise of charity and "responsibility", but what would you expect from a party that spent millions on a Spin unit.

Truth, and in the meantime, no practical plan to provide housing or any other critical service to taxpayers and citizens.

Leo has never done anything of note since he became a Minister. This is nothing new from him. Leo is all about Leo and what he thinks will further his future career after politics. More concerned about his Twitter account than doing anything of note that might be unpopular with his followers. Remember, even FG's own grass-root supporters didn't want him as leader.

He and his party and his coalition partners are wholly responsible for this situation, just as they are the annual "crisis" in the HSE over the winter, but I wouldn't hold my breath expecting any actual progress in resolving either or anything else! Might get a few more "feel-good easy-win" referenda though!

You can go with conspiratorial , I’ll go with factual…. Croatia hasn’t taken its share like Hungary, or Serbia….to name three… more too, all quite nearer to Ukraine.

which is all adding to our challenges and inability to house taxpayers and citizens.

Flying kites and talking shite, classic Leo.

Funny how the health system reset back to same old, same old when covid died down.

SF will be no salvation. They will make all of this worse as their only real goal is a United Ireland - something most down here don't really care about beyond romanticism and certainly not when the idea of paying for it comes up, but then as you say given the costs they already face it's not surprising.

Too many of our political class are from political dynasties or married into them, most if not all own their own homes (certainly the main players) and are landlords themselves. There's no accountability, no consequence, no penalities. FFS even in the UK they will normally quit or be forced to if caught out, but not here... here they brazen it out or (like Enda Kenny used to do) disappear for a week or two before declaring "nothing to see here!"

Until we change how politics works in this country, there's little hope of anything else changing.

Can anybody explain the politics going on here?

Sure. There’s no crisis in housing in Ireland. There would be if most people didn’t have a roof over their heads every night, but that’s simply not the case. The politics going on here is that some people are using claims of the existence of a housing crisis where they never gave a shìt before now, in order to argue against Ireland fulfilling it’s legal obligations in accordance with international human rights law to provide for refugees.

One has nothing to do with the other. People seeking accommodation existed in Ireland long before refugees arrived here, and those people were ignored by the vast majority of people because they weren’t affected. They’re still not affected, but that has never stopped a tiny minority of people who are unaffected from trying to whip up a political movement out of nothing by way of purporting to care about people they still regard as being a drain on Irish society.

Leo is just being Leo, he’s always been careful to sense which direction the political winds are blowing before he comes out with some of the stuff he does, like when he came out with stuff like this -

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/leo-varadkar-well-never-apologise-for-standing-up-for-people-who-get-up-early-they-deserve-a-break-36249175.html

Or this, which was just as comical -

https://www.thejournal.ie/fact-check-leo-varadkar-welfare-cheats-3404165-Jun2017/

Leo is a politician, you’d need to be incredibly naive to believe he has any real interest in putting the welfare of other people above his own interests in maintaining his political career.

That’s the politics which are going on here.

People not affected ? So that means they shouldn’t have a view or express that view ?

No, it means people who are not affected. It doesn’t mean that anyone shouldn’t have a view or isn’t entitled to express that view. I specifically referred to the tiny minority of people who aren’t affected who express views as though they are concerned about the people who are affected, and are using said false pretences to argue against Ireland taking in refugees.

The OP asked for an explanation of the politics going on with Leo coming out with his latest effort, and Leo recognises that the vast majority of people in Ireland while they are concerned about housing, are also concerned about providing protection for refugees. The vast majority of Irish people see these as two separate issues which aren’t in conflict with each other. It’s only a tiny number of people who are portraying both issues as though they are in conflict, in accordance with their own political views.

People who are unaffected by these issues, which is the vast majority of people in Ireland, aren’t interested in showing Leo the door while they’re still benefiting from Irish Government policies, which most people are.

‘Snot quite true to say that nobody wants an end to immigration, there are a tiny minority of people who do. Their limit is zero, in accordance with their terms. The vast majority of people in Ireland don’t agree with their terms, as evidenced by their poor showing in elections -

Take in people, but don't put in place any extra housing, health facilities, proper public transport. It's the Irish way.

Btw a hotel is NOT a house. They've gotten it into their heads that shoving people into hotels and shuffling them up and down the country from one sh1t hotel to another sh1t hotel is good enough.