Holly Cairns - 'Sinn Fein policies aren't left wing'

Michael Martin hates Cairns because she makes mince meat out of him at every Leaders Questions. She just destroyed him on the housing disaster. He couldn't answer any questions as usual.

Actually she had plenty of ideas. The SDs have produced several papers on housing and made amendments to legislation. She laid them out in Leaders Questions today and outlined the ones that that government had voted down. For example increasing the vacant homes tax from its current meaningless tiny amount. They took in 1.6m in 2024 - an absolute joke of an incentive to sell or take in tenants. Listen back to Leaders Questions today. Just a reminder, the FFG caused the Housing Crisis. They caused it and are not inclined to fix it.

Don't run short of lemons re President Connolly. 😉

Read my post. It was one of many measures. The VHT currently is just a meaningless gesture with zero impact. There are 160,000 vacant properties in Ireland. FFG do not want to tax their voters. The SDs have a full housing policy if you want to read more.

Guess what, the SD aren't in power. They are 10 years old as a party. FFG caused all the housing disaster.

Hold on a sec, it was Leaders Questions. Martin wouldn't answer a single question as per usual and pushed back on Cairns on her ideas for solving the housing disaster. She quickly listed a number including the vacant housing tax (she had a minute of response time). Nobody said anything about full housing except you. Even if we solved 20% of the 160,000+ vacant properties it would be a result but the VHT was set up by FFG to fail. It was a meaningless gesture. All the opposition parties put in amendments at the time which were rejected. It provided zero incentive for landlords. It's far far far too low.

FFG are totally to blame for the housing disaster. And they have never taken it seriously. The new "plan" again talks about sorting out vacant housing but as usual no details, no targets. Martin got angry yesterday when asked about housing targets.

Leaders questions has become Leaders not answering questions.

Quangos you say…

2011 Fine Gael New Politics document

We will cut the number of quangos by at least 150. Fine Gael will also establish strict criteria for the creation of any new quangos and ensure that all such agencies are subject to “sunset clauses”. A Fine Gael Government will substantially reduce the number of quangos (now circa 1,000). We will also require ministers to answer questions from TDs about the functioning of the key quangos in their area of responsibility.

2011 Fine Gael to abolish up to 145 quangos – The Irish Times

2018 Fine Gael ‘broke election pledge’ to axe 145 quangos

2024 John Burns: Whatever happened to the bonfire of the quangos? | Irish Independent

2025 ‘Quango Cull’: Almost as many State agencies now as in aftermath of financial crash – The Irish Times

Most of these quangos are managed by FFG appointees. They wont be culled.

Are you blaming the SDs for Fine Gael's failures? The SDs are 10 years old and have never been in power. They had only 6 seats last year.

Any comment on FFG's proliferation of Quangos?

I said SDs had a full housing policy when the other lad said SDs wouldn't fix the housing disaster by just raising the VHT. I was only using VHT was just one example. They have lots of housing policy ideas but no it doesn't include a policy to have every single vacant house full. That's not workable. Look at the context. You are being pedantic. Full=Comprehensive. You replied on top of that conversation and missed the context. Now how about a reply to the rest of the post?

Looking at it critically (and I'd be in favour of reducing the number of quangos and this is an FG failure, they should have made it part of the program for government when going into coalition):

a) FG have never been in power alone, Labour in the first few years, would have blocked a lot of the abolishment as it would reduce the size of the public sector

b) Left leaning parties tend towards a larger public sector, are SD, Lab, SF also promising to reduce quango sizes and make public sector workers redundant? (or the dreaded redeploy, so we end up with 10 admins in the remaining quango).

i.e. are you attacking FG because they didn't achieve a policy you didn't want them to achieve or do you also want these to be abolished, and then, which party is making this promise for you to support?

A lot of the issues when staying in the centre-right tend to get softened in coalition and the left leaning parties are not going to get that support either because they'll favour larger government.

Irish water has been a success compared to the council led system that came before and not a good example to use.

It also fails to address any of the other issues raised (such as Labours influence, which is absolutely bizarre, that was a straight 1/3 impact to all budgetary measures proposed).

I don't get how the same people consistently misunderstand how a coalition and programme for government is worked out vs. a manifesto.

Back on topic, what policies of SF will be dropped to coalesce with Labour and SD?