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LESS THAN A year after its founding, a party has managed to get four candidates elected to a county council.
The 100% Redress Party is determined to get full compensation for homeowners whose houses were built with defective concrete blocks – and are now falling apart.
While Donegal has become the epicentre of the issue, as the defective blocks came from a quarry in the county, Clare, Limerick and Mayo have also been affected.
The 100% Redress Party ran six candidates in Donegal and managed to get four elected.
Joy Beard is one of them. She told The Journal that, after years of campaigning and little return, people like her need a seat at the table.
The mica scandal first made headlines in 2021 and it has since been estimated that around 6,000 homes are affected, not to mention hotels and other businesses.
The government introduced a scheme in November 2021 to support affected homeowners to remediate their home, with the scheme being enhanced last summer.
But Beard says national issues such as the cost of living and housing crises have exacerbated the consequences of mica.
The government’s scheme covers the cost of alternative accommodation – “but there’s nowhere to rent here”.
The council hasn’t built enough houses here in 10 years.
Among the issues the party has with the scheme is the pay-first claim-later stipulation, which campaigners say is simply unaffordable.
“If someone does find alternative accommodation, they have to pay for it up front and then claim the money back,” Beard said.
“Nobody’s got €15,000 in a bank account now to buy a mobile home and then wait for the money to be claimed back.”
Despite its name, Beard asserts that 100% Redress is not single-issue party.
Mica will soon impact tourism – one of the county’s most important industries – as hotels aren’t safe from defective blocks either.
“Are people going to want to visit a countryside with derelict houses and a lack of hotel facilities?”
Tomás Seán Devine, who was elected in Letterkenny, says he’s also worried about the health of those living in sub-par and even dangerous housing.
The State offers a maximum grant of €420,000 to crumbling homes. It’s currently only available in counties Donegal, Limerick, Clare and Mayo, but Sligo is set to be added to the scheme soon.
I’m an ordinary man, not one of these career politicians.
Devine says, with five children, he didn’t have a political career in mind, but ran because he was sick of “shouting from the sidelines”.
Of the government’s compensation scheme, he says: “Once you put a cap on something, it’s not 100%.”
Those who do avail of the scheme cannot transfer eligibility, but they say the process is inaccessible for older people who may not want to go through the “red tape” and upheaval of applying and rebuilding.
“If somebody happens to pass away, the house passes away with them and they have nothing to hand down to the next generation of the family,” Devine added.
It’s an issue that clearly resonated with voters, and as a result the party now has more seats in Donegal than Fine Gael does.
Out canvassing, the response was “unreal”. “Everybody knew somebody who was affected,” Devine says.
“It had been brought up on the doors that people were fed up with other politicians and political parties.”
Local elections can be a good indicator of what’s possible in a general election - which isn’t far away - and the 100% Redress Party isn’t ruling anything out.
“We’ll keep our feet on the ground at council level at the minute and it’s something we will discuss,” says Devine.
100% Redress Party candidates Ali Farren and Denis McGee were elected in Carndonagh and Glenties.
Almost all seats in local elections have now been filled. Check who will represent your constituency with our election tracker.
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Siding with the government in calling concerned citizens racists and bigots when busloads of migrant men are being forced on communities all over Ireland certainly didn’t help their cause. They need to drop the woke nonsense and the Hamas cheerleading to gain some credibility back.
@sean mcnamara: I’m no fan of SF, but they and the government are right to oppose what Israel is doing in Gaza. To call this ‘Hamas cheerleading’ is incorrect and dishonest.
@Comments Section Closed: At least I have only one profile, unlike some people.
@Comments Section Closed: Well, I’ve never seen your profile before, yet you’re obviously not new to the site.
I understand that you probably have indigestion over the far right’s abysmal election showing. I sympathise insincerely.
@Brendan O’Brien: There’s a big difference between opposing what Israel is doing in Gaza and the SF policy of cosying up to the terrorist Hamas organisation as well as their effective chants for the abolishment of Israel as seen at their and fheis.
And there’s a big gap between their housing promises and their support for open borders and uncontrolled immigration.
@Thomas Sheridan: support for open borders and uncontrolled migration? You do spout a load of nonsense
@sean: then how did the govt win while calling ‘concerned citizens’ racists? None of your anti immigrant parties won a seat. Wipeout.
@Thomas Sheridan: doesn’t Simon Harris side with Palestine now lol? No one bought your open border uncontrolled immigration because your anti immigrant parties didn’t win one seat in the locals that has the most seats and easiest to win.
Really hope mary looper stays on she is doing a fantastic job at destroying SF lol
@9QRixo8H: Simon Harris doesn’t side with the Hamastinians or other associated terrorist thugs in the ME
He has called for the implementation of a two state solution – something your Ham Ass friends have rejected.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
@sean mcnamara: As soon as I see the word ‘woke’ I automatically stop reading.
@Thesaltyurchin:
Is this not a term that “woke” folk termed themselves ? As I soon as I see “woke” I just think gullible.
Mary Lou took the party to WOKE if we want FF we can vote FF…..she has been a disaster
@Renshai Renshai: You do know that SF presents itself as a left-wing party? Why would you expect right-wing policies from a left-wing party?
@Renshai Renshai: none of your anti-WOKE (bigoted) parties won a seat. Not one seat. The woke FFG won the election. Even with their failed referenda and apparently “open border” migration policies, they won.
@9QRixo8H: your lovely new immigrant’s are mutilating women at record levels but your probably down with that send them all home, the right isn’t gone anywhere you know
@Paul Hackett: You want to deport the women who are being mutilated?
@Brendan O’Brien: what age are you ,dope
@Paul Hackett: it’s a pity you are still here
@Joe Kelly: I’d say there’s a lot of pity in your life
I assume that many commenters realise that the rise of a political group is a reaction to the attempt to control human behaviour too much, which can be construed as far-right.
The Journal and RTE may take their cues from the academic community operating through social politics, but there is a limit to what people will accept as model behaviour, especially unreasonable hype from the modelling community and their dire predictions passed off as facts.
I hope that politicians regain a sense that they represent the people rather than being driven by models and academic convictions that have no place in a productive and creative society.
People may call me whatever they wish; however, I will call out dehumanisation reactions when I see it.
@Gerald Kelleher: You are so obsessed with the academic community and ‘modelling’ that you apparently ignore the real world completely.
Here, for instance, is what climate change is doing to wine production in Italy:
@Bren:
Prejudice has never been rejected, soundly or otherwise, in Irish society, for although the academic community is unable to hide Victorian natural selection behind eugenics or social darwinism any longer, there is no organisation or group of people willing or able to see terms like racism, racial, biracial, racist as invalid biological language.
Natural selection is about human breeding and not evolution, the concept that some people deserve to thrive at the expense of less favoured ‘races’.
‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ Darwin
Irish people are behaving like Brexiteer politicians, especially the Victorian imitator. there is no left or right politics here, just sordid academic politics
@Brendan O’Brien: I remember in 1983 when climate change modelling started to appear and was eventually weaponised by computer modelling. At that time, some theorists were also seeing the rise of phenomena.
“A Lagrangian [model] is not a physical thing; it is a mathematical thing – a kind of differential equation, to be exact. But physics and maths are so closely connected these days that it is hard to separate the numbers from the things they describe. Nobel Prize winner Burton Richter of Stanford said: ” Mathematics is a language that is used to describe nature” he said “But the theorists are beginning to think it is nature. To them, the Lagrangians/models are the reality ” Discover Magazine,1983
@Brendan O’Brien: the Guardian has become biased. I gave up a subscription to them after nearly 5 years. Every article is doom and gloom and only from one side of the argument. Gerald is correct about the influence of academia on social issues. Not every one ascribes to the far left view of the various NGOs and academics which have too much policy influence. It’s a bit like the Government leaving all policy and governance to Doctors and Modelers during COVID. No political risk in absolving all responsibility to a third party even when the dogs in the street realised it was not the black death after year one . Look how the Greens hobbled nuclear power back in the day causing the Carbon Crisis today .
@Comments Section Closed:
Your dehumanisation comment to O’Brien marks you as compliant in the same way as the SS once were.
It doesn’t offend me as there are many commenters like you out there, to crude to know what cruelty looks like.
@gregory pym: ‘The Guardian has become biased’ is a case of shooting the messenger. Are you going to tell Paola Ferrari that she’s not really losing her grape crop?
@gregory pym:
The direction of travel with COVID-19 is that the experimental community were attempting to make a virus more infectious, so whether it escaped from the lab or not, it was a disaster even before it can be considered an accident where millions died and lives were disrupted.
This is the second serious misadventure with biology, with Victorian natural selection being the first. It was swept under the carpet after WWII as social darwinism despite the original invasion and extermination imperatives.
It is a juncture in European and world history where politicians are asked to represent society rather than being shills for the indulgences of mathematical modellers.
@Comments Section Closed:
Buy yourself an English keyboard.
My voice is cultural, the ability to see where experimental theorists have taken society by using social politics as a conduit. What is seen as far-right is a reaction to this societal imbalance where people wake up every day to hear that by controlling human behaviour, they can control the weather/temperatures from media outlets acting on behalf of academic and social politicians.
Too crude to know what cruelty is, I leave you to your own devices.
@Brendan O’Brien:
You may not see it, but I am certain more considerate commenters will.
“Climate models are systems of differential equations based on the basic laws of physics, fluid motion, and chemistry.” Climate models
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model
I cannot offer to demonstrate what went wrong with any specific group, as I have no financial or reputational gain other than it is highly dangerous for a productive society. It would be helpful to have people involved but academic politics has made certain that it protects itself beginning with its hapless supporters and their noise.
Mary Loo is Fianna Fail lite and does not represent the change she keeps banging on about
It’s a great result for the media.
@087 bed: You poor thing. Thoughts and prayers.
@087 bed: It’s a great result for democracy.
@087 bed: The media report and also comment. The comment part will have plenty to say about mistakes and failures.
Ti them it does not matter whose, except whose will get the most eyeballs on it
The right wing have made gains all over Europe including Ireland and FG and FF are part of that cohort. They have let immigration and refugees be an issue to gain populist support. Its the same all over Europe.
Anti-immigrant bigoted parties didn’t win one seat across the nation. There is zero anti-immigrant momentum.
@9QRixo8H: There is and they won a few seats on councils, mainly Dublin
@Gary Kearney: Dzopers think the ‘hard-right’ is going to stop immigrants taking the jobs they don’t want to do. Beautifully played by the rich, effortlessly chumming poor waters.
There is no comparison between local and general elections which was shown 5 years ago.
@hans vos: You can cling to that if you wish, but SF didn’t run enough candidates in the GE, now their attempt to rectify that has spectacularly blown up in their faces.
SF didn’t do the grunt work on the hustings, and their core support is really between 17 and 20% , the media campaign for this election was amateur and they won’t form or be part of any government.
@Paul O’Mahoney: Not with this result but they still have time to rectify their mistakes before the next GE. So just don’t cling on to your hopes yet.
@hans vos: My hopes? , I don’t have any when it comes to politics I simply don’t care.
Nothing will change and democracy, the style we have, is not designed to help anyone except political parties and the members.
And expecting elections to help those who truly need it by voting is laughable.
There is only one key takeaway and that is immigration. Irish people just want someone to say that We do not mind people coming here to work but we do mind people coming here to sponge off us . We have been taken for a ride regarding immigration . Australia have strict immigration policies but no one calls them far right or racists.
If SF had have proclaimed they are on our side in this , they would have had a landslide . Alas , they did not listen and choose to ignore
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what a tumble from grace lol
@Duffman: OHHHHHH yeah……
To sum up the analysis – SF are going to check the weather vane to see which way the wind is blowing and produce a populist stance.
Anyone notice that SF faired best in the border counties. Is that the result of the last batch of immigrants.
Who was the director of Elections in SF, as that is the buck stops too as well as the General Council.
They got destroyed at the last locals and struggled for candidates for the General election, which they did brilliantly in. This time they over estimated and put in too many candidates. We had four and they had a reasonable chance of two.
Yet the sitting councillor who is a great councillor nothing to do with party support, barley scrapped in. That is bad planning!
@Gary Kearney: Sinn Fein will have to put their thinking balaclavas on after this disaster.
@honey badger: thinking balaclavas! Lol
Singing ooh ahh probably doesn’t help.
It’s all their game plan to win Gaza elections in 2025. They have been so focused on Palestine, it’s obvious. Smart move.
A few points I took from the local count regarding SF were that the vote was more based on individuals rather than parties, the SF candidates were very poor in our area (young with no work done on the ground to build their profiles) and transfers went everywhere, some independents took a lot of the votes that would have went to SF in the past.
@The next small thing: We live in Kildare and as of this morning SF had 1 elected to KCC, this is a county that could have returned 4 TDs in GE had they run 4 candidates.
But it points to another flaw SF have and it’s experience in Government they are going to become under increased scrutiny in the run up to the GE. 300,000 house prices in Dublin type statements will be laughed at, but their economics will also come under the spotlight.
Fine saying ” our budget is full costed” for a year, but governments last 4/5 years and things like wage inflation, national debt interest etc need costing and then any proposals added to see the true figures.
They are Junior C hurlers try to play Senior
@Paul O’Mahoney: They are hurlers on the ditch. The current SF has its roots in the sectarian divide in NI and has no place in Southern politics. What place has an abstentionism MLA to represent the Southern people in the European Parliament. SF has one objective and that’s Irish unity. It doesn’t matter what price we pay for it.
In need of a Reshuffle
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