Baby Budget!
October 17, 2021
A Budget Unfit For Adults!
We’ve just had the latest in a long line of budgets each one contributing to our woes, worsening our Public Health Crisis, deepening our property crisis guaranteeing unaffordability and higher prices. This one is no different.
As we drift towards darker clouds such as a major loss in Corporation tax compounded by Brexit, Covid 19 and the consequences of the pandemic and global slowdown, there is no comfort to be sought from our membership of the EU. There is no renegotiation of our sell out of our fisheries.
We got our share not on the basis of territorial waters and our rights to same, but on the basis of quota, our fishing fleet was small and inshore, Europeans such as the Spanish and French fleets were modern and industrial harvesters with quota to match. We gave it all away just as today without compensation, our Corporation tax is taking a hike back to Europe.
The Tánaiste Leo Varadkar perhaps in homage to those resigning from Sláinte Care must have demanded a red line over the budget’s commitment to extend free Healthcare to children aged up to 10 years.
Seasoned parents aware they themselves through inexperience may have been encouraged to visit the doctor’s doorstep more often than they should have if such visits were free, questioned whether doctors already overwhelmed with work, should be asked to deliver such a service with resources better spent on more urgent need.
Young parents were also targeted on the childcare issue with costs frozen to prevent further rises in childcare costs for young people. Not much of a saving there where costs are already unaffordable.
Rising inflation with rises in the cost of electricity, petrol and household goods, was backdrop to a budget that at best sugar coated a pill the public have been forced to swallow on a annual basis.
Rather than curing the ills faced by all by a dysfunctional property market and a health service coming apart at the seams, the sugar coated pill is meant to paralyse dissent and to satiate those taking their pound of flesh from our property market. Institutional investment funds didn’t bat an eyelid maintaining their rising share prices for cuckoo fund investors.
There are those in society benefiting from the way the status quo works and they are not only landlords. Politicians who need to stay in power cultivate indifference and contempt for change often mass self delusion.
It takes an adult to recognise the real needs of people.
Sugar coated pills with avoidance of real change and a perpetual subservience to a toxic status quo destroying lives through homelessness and lack of proper health care, that’s the domain of an arrogant and immature identity mainstay of our political culture at this time.
The politics of appeasement with problems swept under the carpet and ignored. It’s a Housing for All Strategy that is threadbare in effective action. A failure to deal with supply and affordability/
One may question the absurd retro fitting homes to cope with climate change when a) that money needs to be spent on building new homes for people who have no homes b) people do not have resources to spend on such excess c) the resources of manpower etc in a housing emergency need to be spent in building homes.
Sorry to tell you our current lot of politicians care not a whit about the public good or real needs of society. If you havn’t guessed from reading the baby budget pipe dream for the naive.
The sugar coating of the budget give aways is meant to keep things the way they are. Not so much robbing Peter to pay Paul but rather robbing Peter to pay Peter and Paul.The way things are they are bound to get worse. Expect more property price frenzy, housing shortages, nó accommodation for students or for swathes of our population, a collapsing health service, lack of infrastructure, water, electricity, gas. There is now a high likelihood of power shortages while hospital waiting list climb towards a million.
We’ve a giant mess in the making.
Continuing to act in the same way having failed to adapt to changed circumstances is a recipe for disaster.
A mature reflection on our budget might lead our way out of the EU, restore our fishing rights, join with NI in a new Ireland partnership with UK, new Trade Agreements, a true All Ireland free of the shackles of the EU; instead, we have this relentless marching towards further
enslavement of our young people by ruthless financial forces working to remove the right to own property, decrease spending on infrastructure and health care and education, the imposition of a democratic deficit by direct rule through incompetent policies whose ravaging of society grows by the day.
Baby budgets increase our compliance and obedience to the dictats of Europe not so much cause of the poor vision of the current Taoiseach, enamoured by the powers vested in him by Europe, but by the self delusion that what has failed miserably in the past can be a fitting pill for the present if sugar coated enough and promoted with mindless vigour and smiles for the press.
But who is laughing? One day soon we may even see the Greens developing our forests to raise us from being one of the lowest per Hector countries in the EU. So far bureaucratic entanglements in that sector has hoovered up any resources spent on it. It’s difficult for farmers to get a license to plant never mind harvest timber.
Meanwhile “https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/zew-economic-sentiment-index
“The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany dropped another 4.2 points from the previous month to 22.3 in October 2021, the lowest level since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe’s largest economy, sending investor morale sharply lower. The reading came in also below market expectations of 24.0 and moved further away from an over 21-year high of 84.4 hit in May, suggesting the outlook for the economic development in the next six months deteriorated sharply due to the persisting supply bottlenecks for raw materials and intermediate products. Investors now expect profits to go down, especially in export-oriented sectors such as vehicle manufacturing and chemicals/pharmaceuticals. The assessment of the economic situation in Germany also declined more than expected in October, falling by 10.3 points to 21.6.”
This budget will hasten the decline for many more of the citizens of this country than any previous budget combined.
Sterling is beginning to surge against the euro. Were we told it would collapse?
Till again…
Scammed and spammed by the Government!
October 1, 2021
Its ironic both the French and Germans oppose the deregulation of financial markets that have become increasingly out of control over the past five years.
https://euobserver.com/political/26814
But that was way back in 2008 with:
“Both France and Germany on Thursday (25 September, 2008) said the current financial crisis would leave important marks on the world economy, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy declaring that the under-regulated system we once knew is now “finished,” and German finance minister Peer Steinbruck saying the crisis marks the beginning of a multi-polar world, where the US is no longer a superpower.”
Laissez faire remains the policy of choice of the Irish government instigating the Irish move to vagrancy and homelessness resulting from the worst excesses of dysfunctionality in our property market over the past decade.
Its ironic that Europe does not oppose the laissez faire out of control and dysfunctional health service and property market in Ireland.
But many in government would argue with 700,000 on waiting lists and 700 consultants looked for to fill vacancies, its not out of control. Putting it under control might see their salaries in the public sector cut from nearly €700k to less than half that.
Varadkar with such a policy has recently along with fellow ministers begun to not even list property on their list of priorities.
Certainly the issue is not to the fore of policy for the Greens with their green agenda. Its a curious thing that Ireland depends on importing lumber to feed its dysfunctional forestry program.
We’ve one of the lowest per hectar forestry footprint in the EU in spite of billions spent mostly wasted on administrative nightmares preventing farmers both selling and planting their lands. Not a word from the Greens neither have they offered me a tree to plant or anyone else for that matter.
MEanwhile our dysfunctional public service has become an inefficient overpaid trough compensating gratuitous waste on a grand scale including that of salaries in all upper management levels. Breath-taking levels of incompetence and waste in the recent Children’s Hospital controversy with the hospital sited at location guaranteed to maximise its build costs currently already out of control at €2bn plus.
Varadkar likes to criticise opponents of laissez faire as populists.The term is meant to conjure up some vision of a hard working, professional, expert governance controlling our destiny in every way leading to a better outcome and better destiny for all as opposed to those critical of the system. The idiom is that the market should regulate itself and government should stay out of the way.The reality is a cock and bull cock-eyed mess growing in every direction we look and its great that some populists oppose the mess.
The fact is they don’t even believe in their own spoofing anymore.They’ve no wish to rush to the media joyfully proclaiming their Housing Strategy for All it has all the hall marks of a reluctant exercise they’d all like to hide under the carpet and forget. Its a recipe for fiddling at the problem while Rome burns.
There has been another high profile resignation from Slainte Care indicating government reform of Health Service to make a public health service accessible to all sometimes called Universal Health Care, is dead as a dodo.
Prof O’Connor’s resignation comes just over three weeks after Prof Tom Keane and Ms Magahy stepped down on September 8.
Do we see a pattern here? There’s a problem in housing, get a bin, put a bunch of policies into it most of which have already failed and made things worse, give it a fancy name, Slainte Care or Housing for All. Put plans to make more plans, to look at this, fiddle with that the more fudge the better!
After much delay and prevarication government creates an agency tasked with implementing change. Its as if real change is put into a bin and recycled as something else such as climate change.
Micheal Martin speech at the UN was on climate change not on homelessness https://www.gov.ie/en/speech/ccc26-speech-by-by-taoiseach-micheal-martin-at-the-un-security-council/
We then find the agency is filled with plans to implement change and time passes as more plans emerge, more committees tasked with coming up with further plans are pencillled into the future. Those who oppose this are stigmatised with allegations of pettiness and silliness and are treated with contempt.
Committee members and leaders within the organisation tasked with change begin to realise they’ve been fooled as they observe the goalposts for change being moved and put further into the future. The penny drops, perhaps regretting they’ve been taken on a fools errand by government, they resign.
One wonders why more members of government do not resign as they witness inaction on the housing front and in health. Waiting lists are well on their way to a million at approx 700,000. About 700 vacant consultant jobs unfilled. We are forced to reach the inevitable conclusion our politicians are over paid, under worked and their loyalty lies only to the maintenance of the status quo stability meaning they keep drawing their salaries. Those who are landlords will reap the rising tide of profits.
More valuable people in the health service considering emigration to escape deplorable conditions. A marketing campaign to attract doctors from the third world to replace excellent Irish doctors educated at tax payers expense because conditions so bad doctors from Ireland, UK, Europe, US, Australia, New Zealand, would not consider working here our health service in such a mess.
The pattern exists in housing as well. After many years of delay and denial regarding our housing emergency including the decision by Micheal Martin to suspend construction during Covid in spite of the assurances of industry leaders they are well capable of managing Covid with testing and self regulation and other controls, in spite of our so-called housing emergency, Martin shut them down. This year 8 social housing homes will be built?
The pattern emerges of putative change that will address and fix the housing sector emergency put into a bin or any type of storage container and government closes ranks, job done! Except nothing gets done.
The real plan is not to change the status quo but to create a pill that will sweeten the problem and make it acceptable pretending change is afoot.
So what is the status quo being protected by government. On the one side there are salaries such as that paid to Paul Reid , “Paul Reid is one of 20 people in the HSE who earn more than €410,000 while one earned €650,000.”
There are many in the upper tiers of the HSE and in government doing very well out of the system as it currently operates. Philip Ryan, Amy Molloy and Fionnan Sheahan, Irish Independent, Sep 25, the wealth €181ml of the country’s most powerful politicians is described:
Micheal Martin owns four properties and when staying in Dublin he lives in an apartment owned by his wife ” in one of the capital’s most sought after areas” “The Dail’s biggest landlord, Michael Healy-Rae. with an estimated value of €6m, is the third richest. The majority of his wealth comes from his 16 rental properties and land worth about €4.7m”
It seems the above have done themselves a great public service. With every new penny Michael Healy-Rae earned from his latest rental he must spent a lot of time lobbying his bank manager to get a further loan to finance his next rental property. No doubt he was able to outbid any locals trying to put a roof over their heads leading a family on one salary! We wasn’t lobbying for a rent freeze.
“Laissez-faire is an economic theory from the 18th century that opposed any government intervention in business affairs. The driving principle behind laissez-faire, a French term that translates to “leave alone” (literally, “let you do”), is that the less the government is involved in the economy, the better off business will be, and by extension, society as a whole. Laissez-faire economics is a key part of free-market capitalism. ”
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laissezfaire.asp
Except society as a whole in Ireland is not better for such a system where the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer and homeless.
The children of the middle class in Ireland are no longer able to find homes to build a family.
The penny has dropped for members of Slainte Care and those observing the vacuous nature of government’s housing policy propping up the landlords and the private sector. Private property as in the right to a home is becoming a thing of the past.
Laisser Faire means the government won’t build its own construction company mandated to build homes to superior standards.
Laisser Faire means the government instead will support landlords and the private sector and developers including for profit and maximum gain cuckoo funds in extortionate exploitation of the public for private gain through our housing market.
So-called “Housing for All” becomes a mask to incentivise consumers facing unaffordability issues with grants for purchasers and sellers to maintain the market at high rates filling the pockets of landlords.
Its a pyramid scheme guaranteed to fleece the market place long term with the certainty it will create the type of dysfunctionality we witness today.
Instead of punctilious waffle remonstrating critics with the argument that opposition to developments on planning maters is the root of housing ills, Micheal Martin should get a state car and RTE camera team to take us on a grand tour of the housing developments both planned and under construction at this very moment, by which we can measure the success of his policies. Actually, no point in wasting the petrol or giving him more airtime, we know the answer already.
There’s very little being built at the moment. What is being built is often an objectionable travesty opposed by members of even the FF party itself.
While government is responsible for rent to buy schemes building shoe boxes I suppose its fair game if local politicians object even if their party is responsible.
But voters may have other ideas about that scenario next time around.
This drift towards totalitarianism and Orwell’s Big Brother dictatorship is accelerating. George Orwell in Animal Farm forecast the emergence of a slave based society controlled by Big Brother and fed with propaganda that could change the meaning of black to white.
Varadkar likes to fling about the word ‘populism’ a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. He mocks the notion the public good is not the concern of those who run our dysfunctional health service and property market.
Clearly dysfunctional means dysfunctional and failure is failure whether its Slainte Care, our housing strategy, lack of regulation in the building industry leading to the mica scandal of €3bn worth of homes built with blocks that turn to dust when water and cold temps are added.
Or the scandal of Irish Water and its failure to address the deficits in infrastructure required for this country.
Efforts to privatise Irish Water in recent years more evidence if required of government reluctance to serve the needs of the public rather than the needs of uncontrolled private investment funds.
Housing for All is evidence of a poorly led and incompetent government whose only loyalty is the maintenance of a status quo ruining this island with an arrogance and contempt for real change. And getting well paid and rewarded for it.
Government needs to build homes with its own construction company whose setting up and mangement can be the remit of local councils already tasked with infrastructue development and maintenance. Aided by changes in Planning Laws and regulated to the highest standards for the materials even the concrete blocks it uses.
More resignations are needed from the government hell-bent on filling its own pockets. They’ve become the land lord class with rent only solutions for greedy politicians and foreign investment funds.
“Dublin City Council rezoned the old Chivers factory site on Coolock Drive after the landowners presented plans to councillors for roughly 350 homes, which they said would be affordable and built quickly.
The land costing 2.5ml was rezoned and is now valued at 10 times as much 25ml with no houses built on it!
Such are the profits availed of by developers with government policy supporting private developers over public ownership. Public ownership involves supporting the people by fixing a dysfunctional housing market and fixing the toxic lesions such as in above example.
Another example of the looting of the peoples purse is that of student accommodation.
“In the last five years Dublin has seen a proliferation of a type of accommodation common in other parts of the world but previously largely unseen in Ireland: privately-owned purpose-build student accommodation (PBSAs).
These developments were facilitated by guidelines in the Dublin City Development Plan in 2016 that allowed for a form of student co-living with private bedrooms but shared kitchens and other amenities. Far from the bedsits and shared houses of old, these are often pitched as luxurious facilities with support staff onsite and pool tables and cinema rooms.”
Once again the private sector was chosen to provide a solution to student housing problems over a solution to allow universities and colleges to build their own accommodation according to their needs and the needs of students.
This was another disastrous planning mistake leading to luxury accommodation for students unwanted and unaffordable and unsuitable accommodation. Many of these units selling at rental costs far above €1000/month.
With the pandemic the bottom fell through this market and now planners are being lobbied to redesignate student accommodation as private accommodation for rent outside the student market. The looting and pillaging and exploitation of renters students or families or singles of all ages continues the spectre of homelessness looming over all.
The recently published Housing Strategy For All https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/ee5a9-government-launches-housing-for-all-a-new-housing-plan-for-ireland/
Continues this policy of support for the private sector over the option to directly build housing by the state for its own citizens.
Its a mix of financial incentives for the private market to build housing that’s allegedly affordable through the subvention of the market with grants for both developers and those seeking property ownership. Its a failure on many levels mostly through its lack of action in the areas of reform of planning laws and lack of direct build to build homes across Ireland.
It provides a carrot for developers to take profits subvented by government grants and lured into the market by further grants for those seeking homes.
Its a complete waste of taxpayers money poured into the pockets of developers slowly turning away from a property market saturated with unaffordability. It worsens the market place contributing further to rising house prices.
A keynote to government action was revealed a short while after the publication of the above. Government ministers such as Varadkar, Coveney and Micheal Martin suddenly fell silent on housing issues now replaced with so-called concerns about the environment.
It was as if the matter had been dealt with in the Housing Strategy and it was time to move on to calmer times such as Climate Change. Not that this country by its actions has shown any leadership role in this area, quite the contrary.
We look forward to more promises of lower taxation and a further mess guaranteed by changes in property taxation while we wonder who will pay for climate change..
As Rory Hearne writing in The Journal.ie Sept 25 noted: “It’s simple – the Government favours landlords and investors over renters”
“The government allowed rents to rise year after year. They ignored calls to freeze them., the RPZ rent caps have had minimal impact, and properties new to the rental market and refurbished are exempt from any caps.”
This bonus is a perk to td’s controlling up to €180m in property assets along with their salaries. They should be required to declare their property assets at the very least…
Taxpayers need to look at the massive waste of taxes used by Government to prop up our dysfunctional health care system and property market.
So far and increasingly so since our joining of the EU, Government has shown itself to be instead of a net contributor to the development of Ireland, instead its proven itself to be a massive net liability and a waste of tax payers money!
till again…
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