Karl. ..isn’t it great to be entitled?

Enough of the drivel please Karl. The housing crisis is the result of 30+ years of government policy where the state moved away from the provision of social housing. Instead successive governments of all hues have followed neo liberal market dogma and allowed the private sector to largely determine where, when and in what quantities homes will be built. What we are experiencing now is the catastrophic failure of the “free” market to meet the housing needs of the people.

We can now see the disastrous results when housing is treated as a profit center for the rentier elite and assorted vested interests in banking, law, auctioneering etc. As long as this continues, we will suffer as a society as demonstrated in the property bubble, inevitable crash, family home evictions, and the current soaring rack rents and homelessness crisis. This is no surprise however as the market’s sole objective is profit accumulation and so exploitation and misery is inevitable.

There would be no scarcity of accommodation in Ireland if the government would play it’s proper role in ensuring the people had access to decent and affordable housing both rented and bought.
This would require modifying the taxation and legal systems to encourage owner occupier home purchase and strongly discourage property speculation.

In parallel the state needs to construct the necessary volumes of social housing and fundamentally reform the private rental sector with an immediate rent freeze and progressive rent reductions to affordable levels, banning economic evictions and ensuring security of tenure.

You might as well say that the housing crisis is caused by so many one parent families or people having kids they couldn’t afford.

The ‘State’ as you put it is the taxpayers collectively and most taxpayers by definition work and therefore would prefer to pay lower tax than have their money spent on buying houses for other people. If there was sufficient taxpayers willing to pay more tax over the last thirty years then these houses would have been built but obviously that didn’t happen

Well done John, for completely ignoring the many bad decisions taken by finance ministers over the last 30 years, and for completely forgetting about the enormous spending power of the government during the boom, for completely ignoring the deliberate lack of regulation and oversight, for deliberately ignoring that the simple fact is, even if everyone in the country was working and paying tax, the majority of those that can’t afford to buy a house now still couldnt no matter if they were employed or otherwise.
Everyone can’t have a degree in software engineering, everyone can’t have €60k+ salary, houses are not affordable on even double the minimum wage, do you suggest these people should all be homeless given that rents too are becoming increasingly out of the range of those on lower pay?

Eh, not really John. Working people also live in council houses and pay rent in order to do. In addition, every resident of the country pays or will pay tax in one form or another. So the taxpayer’s aren’t buying houses for other people as you claim.

The reality is that social housing is not in the interests of capital owning elites as it reduces their profit gouging opportunities in extortionate house prices and rack rents as we’re seeing currently. Our FF and FG led governments have always largely served the interests of capital over the welfare the majority working class and so have taken the ideological decision to scale back on social housing since the 1990s as explained. Instead following the Thatcherite model, the market has been allowed to dictate where, when and how many home will be built with the sole objective accumulating profit with predictably disastrous results. And all ordinary taxpayers are paying the price of that catastrophic failure.

Do people not realise that politicians have these drivers, business class flights, and expense account to enable them to be more productive. This politician with no education or experience is worthless to me in Government.

@De Wit

You are not getting my central point.
The Taxpayers ARE the state, The Taxpayers vote in politicians, The politicians WOULD build all these houses if there was pressure on them to do so, but there isn’t. When you say bad decisions were taken over 30 years then they were taken on our behalf and with our complicity ergo we have what we deserve.

There are 55000 kids leaving school this year but in 12 years time there will be 75000 a year leaving, we know this NOW but nobody is planning on building more universities or hospitals or houses because politics is a 5 year cycle. What are YOU going to do about it?

I’m going to give out about it online…

John,
Well you’re partially correct with your last point at least. The establishment political class will always protect the interests of capital over the welfare of the majority who elect them unless they are pressurized by that majority to do otherwise.

We’ve seen this clearly with the mass boycott of the water charges where the state was determined to impose another hated banker tax on the people until they were driven in retreat through mass working class solidarity.

But the taxpayers and the state are not one and the same as you seem to think. The state acts in the interests of private capital, not in the interests of the majority as starkly demonstrated during the catastrophic bank bailout.

And to claim that we are complicit in and deserve this exploitation by our political class is incorrect. To be complicit in something, you need to be aware of it. And we’re presented with an illusion of democracy by the establishment political, corporate, professional, educational and media elites whose role is to preserve the status quo which serves them so well. The objective is to keep the majority working class grossly misinformed as to the fundamental class divide in our socioeconomic system and the opposing interests of capital and labour.

The state has more than enough resources available to plan for and provide those 75,000 school leavers with the necessary education, healthcare and housing but to do so would interfere with the profit gouging opportunities of private capital.

Talking about affordable housing. Public housing that tennants pay reasonable rents. No instead the powers that be would rather hand massive amounts paying for grossly over inflated rental prices.

Well then why don’t AAA look to form a left wing government made up of FF/SF/AAA-PBP/Labour/SocDem? Not ideal of course but far better than an a government led by FG. A multiparty coalition as described would require real political courage and leadership. The easy option for the left is to call for a FG/FF coalition.

This country is divided into people who wanted one affordable home, and those that gambled on three houses, with other peoples money, hoping to get the first one for free.

“free market” how ironic waddler. he who pays the piper calls the tune!
I hate this us and them mentality which has surfaced again in this country.

Ciaran (with a capital C),

You need to understand that at macro government/central bank level, the availability of money is never an issue. The only concern is the availability of resources and Ireland clearly has all of the necessary resources (land, building material, skilled labour etc) to provide affordable housing for all of our population. So you see the misery of the housing shortage, rack rents and homeless epidemic is in fact a political and ideological choice which vastly enriches a small elite at the expense of the many.

(If you want to know about Deputy Coppinger’s teaching post, you should submit a question to her Dail office)

That’s what I’ll do so,but the silence from yourself,coppinger & the AAA,pretty much says it all,champagne socialists!!!!!

So the AAA solution is not to encourage the “free market” to build more houses to try change things but for the government to build the houses (with a budget that is already stretched) but that’s ok because your going to increase the tax on those that already pay the most.

I had to work to pay for my house, so technically I couldn’t afford a house either… Because I pay for my house I cannot afford other things…. Should I not get my house free??

@Wally Even your over simplified economics 101 doesn’t make sense. “Oh they can get money and have resources” so they must just not building houses for ideological reasons to keep their rich friends richer….

Exactly Graham. You’re beginning to get the picture.

Ireland has been encouraging the private sector for decades now and we’ve had a housing bubble, inevitable collapse resulting in a monstrous bank bailout which has crippled us economically and now a homeless epidemic. The market exists only to accumulate profit and so misery and exploitation are inevitable. That’s quite enough “encouragement” of a manifestly failed model don’t you think?

Governments which issue a fiat floating currency, that is most nations such as the U.K, New Zealand, Sweden etc don’t have any budget constraint. They spend their own currency into existence at will and then tax it back out in a continuous flow. Those nations can always afford to build social housing if they choose to, the only constraint is real resource (e.g. skilled labour) availability.

Ireland of course has a damaging budget constraint imposed on us by our Euro membership, a trap which our establishment political class led us into. The Fiscal treaty rammed down our necks a few years ago in fact makes it illegal for Ireland to run the necessary budget deficits in order for the build the social housing which is needed to address the housing shortage crisis. The E.U. also worships the free market god and it’s always the working class who they sacrifice on the altar.

current gov’t policy is to leave it to the free market while public housing has been steadily scaled down under successive governments which has got us into the current mess with over a hundred thousand on the waiting list. It should be obvious that leaving housing in the hands of corrupt profiteers like Bernard McNamara is only exacerbating the crisis.

@wally – Isn’t communism great!

Your 100 years too late with your socialist ranting across multiple posts.

Just for clarity. Council houses are not free they pay rent

So rather than build social housing, which then they would get rent back from, the government instead plans on paying massive amounts of Rent Allowance to cover overpriced private rents, or spending 100′s of thousands on ‘modular’ housing.

As far as not having money to build housing, how the hell did we manage to do it in the 50′s when we really didn’t have any money in the state.

Don’t worry dave he won’t need to deal with them as he won’t have any power in government.. He is well aware of that too…he will complain and talk about justice for all so he gets elected again.. he like boyd Barrett are just trying to build careers for the same pensions the others have… Being in power is the last thing they would ever want

Not really Mark. Refusing to prop up right wing governments who are ideologically opposed to the interests of the majority working class does not mean that the AAA-PBP does not want to be in government.

You may also have noticed recently that the AAA-PBP have used our elected representatives to lead the call for the boycott of the water charge, a movement of mass working class solidarity which now looks likely to decisively defeat the state in its attempts to impose another hated banker tax on the people. So it’s not necessary to be in government to effect real change.

Oh and the objective of the AAA-PBP TD’s is not to “build careers” but to represent the interests of ordinary people. This is why our elected representatives only take the average industrial wage from their TDs salaries. The remainder of their salaries and allowances are used to fund our respective parties and fund the various campaigns and battles of the working class which we support nationally and internationally including the current Water charges campaign.

@Geoff – Lenin was a “..hard working guy…” also.

John Lennon, Dude? I am the Walrus!

Caught the bus to the Dail, big deal. Does he want a medal?
He’s not the first to catch the bus, remember Joan on the first day of the 31st Dail?
Most people who work in the city centre catch the bus everyday and cannot claim the bus fare back on expenses like he can.

If there was a time now would be perfect. Support a minority grouping of lefties, see how long it last if people aren’t happy just vote no confidence and trigger a reelection.

Right wingers who got a good boot in election results now look at the numbers and think holy shite another 5 years of implementing cuts and serving the rich breakfast lunch and dinner may finish us off . Now insist the hated left should form a government even though they dont have the numbers or the will of the people yet. Finally as they morph into one another the great charade of choice they used to trick the disinterested public for decades will be gone them exposed and a real opposition to challenge them gets stronger. Right wingers looking for a patsy for their division policies in government want another Labour party but they wont get it. The best election yet for real change just happened the pressure is on the right wingers partys of hard choices now. Sit back and watch what they do you will see no difference, Checkmate

Duncan, ‘compared to the rest of Europe’ is nonsense. I think you mean ‘compared to a private institution in the Netherlands’. In Germany for example the university fees are about €500 per year max, with no hidden fees. We have it better here than in the UK certainly but don’t talk out your hole to make a point

Ha ha good man Darren

His support of Luas drivers is outrageous and a sign of things to come.