Who are you giving your #1 vote to on Friday?

I posted proof that house prices gone up less than inflation

So yes once you take inflation into account house prices have been going down

Almost two decades after us having too many homes not only prices not kept up with inflation, for those who viewed their homes as in investment that turned out to be a **** investment

In a similar position, I really like our local Labour reps but Ivana Bacik is a detestable sexist with a proven track-record of lying to, and misrepresenting her electorate (albeit in Student Politics, it's still a clear demonstration of her lack of integrity). I'll probably give SD's the number 1 but will be holding the nose where Labour are concerned and giving them a high preference while hoping Bacik loses her seat and the leadership.

Apologies, here is a more recent report where Ireland is ranked 3rd in the world, so we have got safer since 2020:

Top 10 Safest Countries in the World 2024 (geeksforgeeks.org)

out of interest, why did you think Ireland had got less safe since 2020?

I would consider the most vulnerable in society those on SW.

No absolutely, i get that working families are feeling the pressure as im part of that cohort, 3 kids and myself and the wife working.

However i have seen a reduction:

in childcare

in Energy costs

in free GP for kids

i have seen an increase in double payments for child benefit

However, profits by pivate companies are too high imo, ie CRH etc which is driving high prices in construction.

Of course we need more houses but i know for a fact that there aren't any idle builders in the country, therefore we need to import more builders and qualified tradesmen to build more houses.

No government is gonna be able to address this.

No government is gonna be able to nationalise CRH or the likes to control the costs of materials- unless Paul Murphy becomes taoiseach 😀

The strange thing about the Irish housing market over the last 25 years is that the greater the supply, the greater the price.

If the economy is doing well and wages are very high relative to other regions within a huge economic bloc and there is the potential for half a billion people within such a bloc, to move and work here without any restrictions - you're going to suffer from all of the problems of a hot economy with creaking services and everything feeling very expensive.

Donald Trump may try his best to put some ice on our economy. Things could be very different soon.

Not sure exactly what our politicians can do about this. We're a small country and need to have respectable diplomatic politicians who can get on well with EU / UK and US. We're prisoners of geography.

If only we had some sort of election this week where all those going on about housing as their main concern could vote for a party that

1. Build too many homes in past hence illustrating track record
2. Drove the prices of all houses into the ground, where those prices still haven’t recovered when accounting for inflation 17 years later

🤣

Most of the points you raise here i have already dealt with in my previous posts.

You are correct regarding the debt, but we also have yearly surplus on our budget which pay for the SW, and infrastructure we have and are building.

We are increasing the houses we are building per year, but the ceiling on the amount we can build is the amount of builders we have which is currently fully utilised.

Health needs to be addressed but has done for decades. We pump billions into it every year. its actually a massive issue but im not sure what party is offering an alternative?

Ireland’s health system is one of the lowest performing in the northern hemisphere – The Irish Times

Again ill point out that we are the 3rd safest country in the world.

Bus connects, metrolink, dart+ all making there way through planning to name a few.

What EU countries are better than Ireland to live in?

An awful lot of the talk around how much better other places are to live that I have heard are made with the assumption of having an Irish income in a lower CoL country, or from people who have no actual lived experience with the country they're talking about outside perhaps a holiday.

I've plenty of criticism for FG and FF, but anyone who thinks anything about life in modern Ireland can be described as, 'Third World' can pretty much be disregarded as entirely unreasonable.

And grumpy r women,plenty of them about.

One thing that people need to be educated on is government debt is not like personal debt and fatuous comparisons using a per head calculation are worse than useless. The key thing is is the debt serviceable not how must of it is there. The worst thing we could do for the country is reduce the debt. Just keep refinancing every few years and it gets inflated away as economy grows enabling future borrowing to invest in future infrastructure.