Housing Crisis Worsens!
April 22, 2023
The Land League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_National_Land_League
“The Irish National Land League (Irish: Conradh na Talún) was an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League’s agitation is known as the Land War. Historian R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League “reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism.”[1] Foster adds that about a third of the activists were Catholic priests, and Archbishop Thomas Croke was one of its most influential champions.[2]“
Nineteenth century Ireland too often saw sudden and sporadic and intense conflict between landlords and tenants. This finally ended with the tenants with financial backing from the government, becoming owner occupiers of their small farms. Records show combined official records of evictions suggest that at least “100,000 families –or approximately half a million people –were put out on the road during the Famine years.”
“Households who received eviction notices prior to the eviction ban, combined with those who received Notices of Termination during this period means 7,348 households now face eviction.
In 58 per cent of cases, the reason for issuing the notice to quit was because the landlord intends to sell the property, while a further 16 per cent said that the landlord or a family member intends on moving into the property.
Almost half of the notices were issued in Dublin (43.2 per cent), while 10.9 per cent were issued in Cork, 6.7 per cent in Galway and 4.7 per cent in Limerick.”
34 households were served eviction notices tenants of Tathony House in Dublin 8. 15 of these households say they have no intentionof leaving on Jun 2. This will probably develop into a mass movement of people refusing to be evicted causing intense embarrassment to the government. Its unlikely the government will agree to purchase all these tenant homes giving permanency of tenure to these tenants.
The last ‘mass movement in Ireland’ was the campaign led by those objecting to water charges. Its true that ‘eviction’ has the potential to become far more acrimonious as its consequences are immeasurably dire for tenants who suffer this indignity and lack of respect for the human condition.
But we’ll have to wait and see what emerges from this nightmare foisted on Irish people by its truly, embarrassing to say, so-called ‘Irish government’.
It will be quite a quandary for an Irish government to defend itself against charges of neglect and abandonment of so many thousands of its citizens in need of help. For government apparently this is not a money issue. Arguably we are being drenched in money flowing into government coffers from approx 10 multinationals who should be paying tax in the lands where sales are made by their products; not as benefit in kind of a ‘corporation tax’ that helps them avoid their responsibilities internationally yielding vast inflows of money we don’t deserve.
So what are the arguments that prevent government acting to end our housing crisis? Simplest of all to understand is the obstacle provided by reliance on the private sector to supply the building and construction needs of our population. The private sector is not big enough to respond to these needs, the cost of construction is dominated by rising costs of materials, shortages of labour, government taxes all yielding houses that are too costly to build and unaffordable for the vast majority of buyers.
Government made the mistake not made by any other European country of shutting down the construction industry possible the easiest industry to operate Covid preventive, safety measures, these were signalled by the Construction Federation of Ireland well within their capacity to implement. Its unknown the total damage caused by this government policy upwards to 5-10,000 social, affordable homes were not built. Who knows how many construction workers and ancillary tradespeople forced to leave Ireland.
Bureacratisation is another argument against the development and construction of homes in Ireland. Huge delays in Planning and development with added layers of micro management caused by the great mistake of centralising Planning and Development around government’s Land Delopment Agency able only to secure a trickle of development since its inception over 5 yrs ago.
Many of the arguments against joining the EU that caused UK citizens to vote in favour of Brexit have come home to roost in Ireland. Both in Health and in Housing led by vast amounts of civil servants at EU level with growing complexity of committees, meetings and layers of bureaucracy the Housing and Health sectors both bulge with buraucracies that stifle innovation and enterprise preventing development.
Government is apparently led by an inner gang of 4 all surrounding and tinkering with a car that fails to start. They sit atop a vacant plutocracy and oligarchy controlling large numbers of civil servants stifling progress spawning nothing more than meetings, committees, dithering and spawning reports ad infinitum. Nothing gets done. We see this in an ever growing and worsening Housing and Health debacle.
We need houses and extra hospital beds. It should be simple to provide these needs.
Perhaps a sneak preview into this world has been given by top civil servant Dept Health Robert Watt
Embroiled in the over priced Childrens Hospital debacle, the lack of hospital beds in our state, his role in the ‘fitting up’ of the Chief Medical Officer creating a cushy number for him in Trinity, his own opinion above the opinion of the Oireachtas.
Mishandling and abuse of his role as a public servant in the involvement of Tony Holohan in selecting a cushy job for him. Indifferent to protocol with an arrogance and disdain for the real needs of the people unelected and answerable to no one.
Why has he not been fired?
Such questions erstwhile Taoiseach Micheál Martin currently Tanaiste should answer. There are growing similarities between the government of Putin in Russia run by oligarchs and the growing centralised and bureacratic world emerging in Ireland. A new omniscient viewpoint that ignores the will of the people hell bent on the preservation of an elite oligarchy of corporations, the rich list, their personal fiefdom of power.
That said while I’d like to congratulate Lisa Chambers on her engagement of some months past, I have to admit I do enjoy the dogged support of Fianna Fáil Senator Lisa Chambers support of Ireland’s growing indifference to its housing crisisi, who took over as Leader of the Upper House when the Seanad resumed for the new year last January, her consumate, insistent dogged allegiance and belief in the cynical ‘Housing for All’ strategy of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and The Greens housing stragegies of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, are beyond belief.
Reliance on the private sector alone to solve our housing crisis has proven to be a failure. Why make this failure worse as numbers of homeless increase. Why not support a state sponsored public housing strategy mandated to supply and build a state housing construction company led by County Councils empowered and financed to train workers, import workers, build on state serviced land with emergency planning to fast track local development? Why support a stifling bureaucracy that fails to deliver and further cripples the private sector?
Its fun to listen to her extolling meaningless statistics that compare Ireland of the past when we had 3 million people living here to where we are today with a Health and Housing crisis and construction numbers that don’t match our needs. There again, she does insist we are ‘heading in the right direction’. But I suppose that is also meaningless as building one house is arguably heading in the right direction.
Micheál Martin on the other hand echoes similar meaningless statistics in between bitter attacks on Sinn Fein. He’s not going to fast track a design for a 2, 3 or 4 bed house. Get it approved in Planning in 2 months. Ask each County Council to build 2 thousand homes on serviced land fast tracked in 6 months. Give an affordable cost for each one. Provide the funding for a fast emergency build. Bring teams of workers here from Africa, Europe, South America and Asia..
Nah more likely he’s touring the country looking for victims to join his Shared Equity Scheme even the Central Bank have concerns about and selling other tricks that impoverish house buyers, pushing up house prices, so even Irish construction companies won’t build them as they know the vast majority of Irish House Buyers find them unaffordable.
Where are those evicted going to live? Time to defend those people with a new Land League. However, in the shameful vote of politicians in favour of lifting the eviction ban, I’m glad its not my vote that cast them onto the street! Tenants rights afforded to tenants in other European countries are not given to tenants in Ireland with its largely unregulated policies of support for landlords over the inclusion of rights for tenants.
Our civil servants led by the likes of Robert Watt provide a bureaucracy in Health and Housing and Education stifling enterprising development with an arrogant disdain of the democratic will of the people. They represent a new centralised politburo with a long line of politicians dancing to their tune. Their song is to attack as lefties those who point out their arrogance and ill gotten gains of unelected power.
An uncritical chorus of gombeen politicians dance to their tune as homelessness increases with eviction notices that disgrace a country who fought for so long in the nineteenth century against similar eviction notices. Its clear we need a new Land League fit for purpose in 2023 that will be even more effective than our recent campaign against water charges, a Land League providing housing for our young people. Not a ‘Housiing for All’ strategy for failure with a backbone of homelessness with a Skid Row tent city of homelessness brought to every town and village in Ireland.
We deserve more than shanty town politics spawning a divide between rich and poor with a disappearing middle class and a favella slum for all but the super rich who can only afford housing in a new dystopian future smothered in bureaucracy and evictions for all !
Currently An Bord Pleanala are about to activate its new board of 15 members. Planning delays put up to 70000 homes at risk of refusal and further delays. An Bord Pleanala in this ’emergency’ are suffering from shortages of staff with positions not due to be filled until the end of this year.
We really do live in a land of gombeens and leprechauns:-) Clearly Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has not a clue how to do his job all you need do to verify this is to look at the bureaucratic mess created by An Bord Pleanala never mind the even bigger mess created by his Land Development Agency.
till again
1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.55.4.729
2. https://www.socialistparty.ie/2019/06/mass-movement-defeated-water-charges-will-defeat/
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