I think it will be FF/FG again with god knows who. Hopefully a left wing party
It will be November 15th
Fair enough, I agree the government dropped the ball on tackling vacancy. It’s been far too slow. I do see it as a relatively fringe issue though. I’m also unclear how it makes any real difference whether you build a new unit or bring back a vacant unit. It’s still a unit?
On second hand housing liquidity. How do you see SF increasing this? I’d see heavy increases to LPT as the best mechanism. I think our rate of LPT is disgracefully low and the valuation enforcement similarly….SF want to abolish it altogether!!
100%
Got an average salaried job and looking for a home? Nothing for you here, says SF.
The FFer on Drivetime wants to be allowed 'to learn the lessons' on the mess made on immigration. Did someone mention 'experience' being an asset of the sitting government?
I am concerned by the lack of second hand housing on the market available to buy or rent. It is artificially low, and the number of new builds makes little to no difference to that.
The low rental stock and high rents are evidence of this.
I think it is at best disingenuous to blame lack of investment in new builds for lack of rentals when existing stock in many prime rental areas of Dublin have vacancy rates of over 10%, and in some cases closer to 20%.
That planning bill will speed up delivery! It restricts objections to developments, speeds up approvals and adds resources to the new planning board!
The infrastrucute changes required to enact the SF programme will stop housing completions in its tracks.
How many private developments do you think will be built, when SF pushes out private investment from the industry?
How long do you think it will take SF to create a public home building workforce, capable of delivering the homes we need?
We would see a dearth of new home completions for years if their policy was enacted.
Ff bankrupted the country. Fg have over seen record homelessness and a record housing crisis as well as a record waiting lists and over crowding in hospitals. To me, all that makes it clear that FFG are not fit for government.
Since you're happy to throw out assumptions about me, I thought it would be rude if I didn't follow suit tbh.
Blocking spurious objections will speed things up; plenty of judicial reviews holding up developments that would have built a small city by now, had they been allowed to progress past planning.
If it’s not the lack of housing that’s your concern, then what is it?
From a price perspective we would be at least bottom quartile relative to peers.
Probably the easiest place to actual make a case against FFG would be the lack of availability and price of rentals (which are probably upper quartile). Thats ultimately due to us being too slow to encourage investment funds in to build high density BTL apartments en masse. Some blame does lie with FFG alright.
I really struggle to see SF increasing the necessary investment in BTL apartments!!
There will be positive impact from the planning overhaul, across the 5 year govt term, as you say.
Plus the construction workforce move from commerical to residential will inflate output and enable the record commencements to complete.
If you believe the SF model will produce more homes over the 5 yr term, please let us know your logic.
How will SF maintain construction during their housing policy transition period?
What proof do we have that banks will lend on a SF home?
SF will drive out private investment from the market, yet they rely on private investment to build the MAJORITY of their housing output; how will that work in practice?
How will average salaried workers get a home, when they dont qualify for a SF home, simply because they earn too much?
All that matters in the end; who will build the most homes, FFG or SF.
I just dont see how SF come anywhere close to winning that race. My opinion is their policies are ill thought out, untested and contradictory.
I make no secret of voting No. 1 for the Greens - it will be Roderic O'Gorman in this case - and putting Sinn Fein close to last on the ballot. Because I am so anti-SF, it has me labelled as FFG by the usual suspects.
John Walsh will probably get my number 2, a hard-working local in Labour, so the highest either will get is 3, probably Emer Currie, out of respect I have for her father and again the hard work she puts in. After that, probably Soc Dems and possibly independents before Chambers. Coppinger, Donnelly, Aontu and the far right will have a tussle for my last few preferences.
That still won't stop certain posters going after me personally as they continually do.
If the metric of success is an increasing number of new builds completed then I'd agree the government is successful, and it is hard to argue otherwise.
But I totally disagree that the problems are entirely down to the low number of new builds, and challenging the status quo on vacancy rates is just part of that. The high vacancy rate is just one piece of evidence pointing to other underlying problems, and hence other solutions. The catastrophising helps government mask their unwillingness to tackle problems head on.
The first person to try and steer the vacancy rate discussion away from the findings of the CSO at almost 10% to the current status quo was Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach. The current status quo is little more than political spin.
I'd overwhelmingly disagree that FFG are just clearing up the mess made by others.
I'm angry at FFG because most of the problems in housing today are caused by self interested political decisions by both FF and FG going back over a period of 20 years.
In other words, they're making their own mess worse.
It's not that I think SF's proposals are the answer. It's just that they are the only alternative.
Neither will ever truly be fixed. They’re massive oil tankers, with the ministers merely able to marginally move course by a degree or two. I think the general publics understanding of how much influence a single person can have on entities of that scale is hugely overstated. To loosely quote Warren Buffet - when a good CEO joins a bad business. It is the businesses reputation which will remain in tact.
That’s really interesting on Donnelly and I can actually visualise him being like that (never met him personally). I wouldn’t vote for him ever again had I experienced that too.
Suprised at your level of anger on housing given your always challenging the status quo on vacancy. Goes against the popular catastrophising but It’s very difficult to make a well considered argument that this government has been unsuccessful on housing. I know you’re ideologically opposed to HTB etc. which I can understand but at a high level on the key metrics.
Irelands housing problems started in 2005 and can largely be blamed on the Central Bank of that time (who have since over corrected). This government is only picking up the mess.
Almost every country in the world has had the exact same story on housing that we have, only to a worse degree. It’s too statistically unlikely that every government is just ‘useless’
People are allowed try convince others not to make horrible mistakes
And oh, the irony of you getting bothered about someone advocating an opinion about a political party.
Don't vote for them so. It's not rocket science.
Once again with the assumptions that anyone willing to call out SF supports FFG. Which was my entire point. Not doing a great job denying the rabidness there.
I don't, I won't be voting for them and haven't voted for them. People who don't support FFG can still see the huge, huge problems with SF.
FFG are terrible in Government. SF are terrible in Government, because we can see that in NI and on councils they do/did have dominant control of.
I care about who's in government and the decisions by parties in government. FFG over seen record homelessness, record housing crisis, record rental prices, record hospital waiting lists, recording waiting lists for disability services, record waiting lists for mental health services. The answer to that from FFG supporters is "oh but SF..." or from Simon Harris "oh but the immigrants..." I know exactly how FFG will do in government and it will be more of the same - record homelessness, record rental prices, record waiting lists for the most vulnerable members of society.
As for a FFG talking about SF voters looking rabid online, the irony tbh.
My view on Donnelly is very heavily influenced by a "meet the candidates" event I attended in 2020.
It was in a big conference room, divided up into tables on different issues - eg Health, housing, education etc. Idea was you sat at table which represented issue you cared most about and each candidate moved round the room to each table and fielded questions etc on the subject.
In stark contrast to everybody else, Donnelly came across as an arrogant prick who started to talk down at people as if they were idiots as soon as he sat down, and had no interest in listening to anybody around the table.
This was very frustrating because having been chatting with each other as we waited for the event to start, it was clear to us sitting at the table that there were some very knowledgeable voters who had some very good ideas and feedback on policy etc. Every other candidate except Donnelly at least made the effort to appear to listen to what these people had to say and respond accordingly.
Both Harris and Whitmore came across exceptionally well at this event.
I'm yet to decide for sure how I'll vote this time despite always previously voting FG and fitting the mould of stereotypical FG voter.
My dilemma is my two preferred candidates as representatives for Wicklow are Harris and Whitmore, I think they are excellent constituency TDs.
But I'm extremely angry with FG over housing and I might as well be on a different planet ideologically to the SDs.
FF I am also angry with over housing, and as you'll have realised above, I wouldn't vote for Donnelly in any case.
Greens, I like Matthews and I have a lot of respect for the Green Party sticking to their principles, even though I think they're misguided. I am also cross about them holding up the N11 improvements.
The indos and extremists, both left and right, are a mess.
Which leaves SF. And if you'd asked me four years ago I'd have said I'd couldn't imagine any circumstances which would cause me to vote SF.
Now I am tempted give them a first preference purely because I think we need a fresh approach on housing. But I am hugely conflicted because it is quite a big deal for me to actually tick that box.
I'd actually agree with what you have said about Donnelly, albeit, he's been a really tepid Minister for Health. That dept needs a Haughey type character to go in and fix it, but dare i say it, i think they should be focusing primarily on Housing.
Not possible to fix both during a single tenure of a government, well certainly not this lot of Politicians anyway
Yep, spoke to someone today who met Harris at the dart station.
‘I hate Fine Gael. I wanted to hate Simon Harris…but he’s just too f’in nice to hate’.
I’m on the fence on Donnelly. Part of me respects what he’s done. He could have stayed an independent or Social Democrat. Guaranteed to top the polls for the rest of time. Staying on the fence making absolutely zero difference to anything but collecting his kudos and his paychecks.
Taking on the Minister for Health is brave. It’s almost always going to lead you to being less popular (have you not fixed the HSE yet???). Fact he wants it again despite it almost guaranteeing he will never be elected again afterwards says a lot to me. Probably be 4th on my ballot.
I was expecting an actual answer, not a page of fudging and evading. But what we've got in reply is incredibly predictable, unfortunately.
You might well be right on Harris, he's certainly not forgotten about Greystones' needs since his elevation, far from it! This will stand him in good stead.
In any event, to me it matters little who tops the poll compared to who sneaks in On the final count.
I'd be very happy to be wrong on Harris as long as I'm right on Donnelly!
What were you expecting…'when they burn down a migrant hostel'? My answer is I don't have a singular point, if you can't accept that, that's your issue. Now off you go, thread is not about me and I'm done with this.
My parent's generation were all able to afford houses on 1 income. This would have been late 70s into early 80s.
Was it hard? I'm sure it was. Was it as hard as now? Nope. And that's not to take from the difficulty that people had then.
I've said this already, but if something is hard for you, you should be aiming to make it easier for those who come along after you. Not make it at least equally as hard because it's fairer that way then or whatever the view is. Don't pull the trapdoor up after you like. Drop a ladder down.
The 80s and 90s did not have banks throwing money at people, and housing was still more affordable relative to incomes.
I mentioned the 90s in my original post too but you seem to have ignored that
"I'm going to give you an example of what it's not" isn't an answer.
You never gave an actual answer for me to accept (or not), you fudged and evaded.
You evaded it, as it would reveal that your support is for the party and not its policies;
No I didn't evade anything. Similar to what we see when it's the Shinners on the stand, you just gave the stock
'No, that is not the answer I want' response.
I can't honesty tell you what the watershed point for me would be on immigration but setting up an umbrella ministry to deal with it and having a look at EU registrations is a long way off that point.
Certainly will be very interesting. Only point I’d overwhelmingly disagree with is Harris.
He’s all but guaranteed to top the poll by a country mile. PP have him 1/200. Brady 1/20.
Everything is so different to 2020. SF support has plummeted. Harris is Taoiseach and hugely popular (across the country but particularly in greystones). Who doesn’t want a local Taoiseach! I’m going to venture he’ll get the second highest vote share of any TD after Healy Rae (or if not, top 5)…which coincidentally is a title Donnelly had at one point I think!
This is a forum, not a real-life spoken event; there's no such thing as interjecting.
You never gave an answer, so there's nothing to accept. You evaded it, as it would reveal that your support is for the party and not its policies; not that that needs revealing on here. The facade fell a very, very long time ago.
The OP I was responding to when you interjected - go read his/her post properly. You can't accept the answer, that is on you.
Thread ain't about me.
I think that's very generous by PP and if I was a betting man I'd take a punt on Matthews.
Interesting thing about the constituency is the new boundaries and the fact that all the front runners are from Bray/Greystones. Every thing south and south west of Wicklow town is gone, and I wouldn't class Timmins (Baltinglass) as a front runner.
I don't think Harris topping the poll with a shed load of transfers is a foregone conclusion. He'll get some bounce from being Taoiseach but he only got half of Brady's 2020 first prefs, and he had nothing to spare. He didn't make the quota when all said and done.
He'll probably have something to spare this time sure, but I don't think it will be anywhere near enough to help bring Timmins with him.
Brady has a strong local working class vote in Bray, which I think will largely hold from 2020 despite the drop in SF support. So he'll top poll on first preferences, make the quota, and have a ton of transfers. I think they'll spread disparately, and disproportionately away from the front runners.
Whitmore is safe as she has strong local support from north east middle class vote. She was only candidate other than Brady to make the quota in 2020 and I suspect she'll increase her vote this time.
Shay Cullen resigned from FG and is running as an indo after Timmins was selected despite Cullen getting more votes, so I don't that think will help Timmins - I'd write him off.
So I think the last seat is between Matthews and Donnelly.
Donnelly will get the diehard FF vote, and he'll be helped that he is the only FF candidate this time, but a big chunk of that is gone from the south west of the county. What remains of the constituency heavily skews away from FF ideologically.
On top of that disadvantage he has no personal support whatsoever. The whole Indo>Soc Dems>Fianna Fail fiasco has cost him a huge amount of personal support, and it showed in 2020. And that was before his performance as Health Minister during Covid which is also likely to cost him.
Matthews on the other hand is likely to have increased his personal support despite any national drop in support for Greens, he is well liked, active in constituency, and the population density is heavily skewing toward a latte drinking, Happy Pear munching, dry robing lot etc. i,e considerably more Green than FF!
Matthews might not be particularly transfer from the rag bag of indos eliminated early on, but neither will Donnelly, and when it comes to it, I think Matthew's will get the lions share of O'Brien/Timmins/Whitmore's transfers and that will be enough to keep him ahead of Donnelly for the fourth seat.
My 2 cents! Shall be watching it unfold with great interest!
