The Sinking of the HSE
February 16, 2024
Part 1
Last remaining hospital in Rafah attacked by Israel:
“Four Gaza patients dead as oxygen cut off during Israel raid on Nasser hospital, doctors say – latest
Rafah in southern Gaza was also hit by Israeli airstrikes ahead of a planned ground invasion into the city…”
Cover pretext was they wanted to locate remains of dead hostages? Why would a hospital rank with infection unable to disinfect surgeries of blood because of lack of cleaning agents, keep dead bodies?
The real reason for the attack on this hospital is to designate no area safe in Southern Gaza including Rafah. They want it destroyed and made unlivable. Their main aim is to herd the population onto a small coastal strip unfit for living Al Yamas https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinians-aid-groups-say-israel-designated-safe-zone-in-gaza-offers-little-relief/
From there they want the Palestinians evacuated elsewhere in the humanitarian catastrophe that will ensue.
Israel is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest.
How far these countries are willing to disengaage from the conflict is being tested currently by Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_peace_treaty
It is noted ” “The Egypt–Israel peace treaty[1] was signed in Washington, D.C., United States, on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords. The Egypt–Israel treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, and witnessed by Jimmy Carter, President of the United States.[2]“
“The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed 16 months after Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in 1977, after intense negotiations. The main features of the treaty were mutual recognition, cessation of the state of war that had existed since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, normalization of relations and the withdrawal by Israel of its armed forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. Egypt agreed to leave the Sinai Peninsula demilitarized. The agreement provided for free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal, and recognition of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways, which had been blockaded by Egypt in 1967. The agreement also called for an end to Israeli military rule over the Israeli-occupied territories and the establishment of full autonomy for the Palestinian inhabitants of the territories, terms that were not implemented but which became the basis for the Oslo Accords.
The agreement notably made Egypt the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel,[2] although it has been described as a “cold peace””
The war in Gaza is in breach of the above agreement, Israeli military rule now occupying Gaza, full autonomy of the Palestinian occupants of the territories now apparently replaced with annexation of these territories. Egypt has reinforced its border with tanks prepared to defend its territory.
The question is if Israel moves against Rafah will Egypt and surrounding countries move to defend the Palestinians and their own territory against the Israeli army. This will likely lead to full scale war in the Middle East with Israel having the most to lose. The Suez canal and international waterways will not be capable of defense by Israel, the US and the UK.
Part 11
The HSE has just announced its budget.
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0214/1432338-hse-warns-it-will-need-extra-funding-this-year/
“The HSE recruitment freeze is delaying the handling of complaints about child disability assessments and leading to several new High Court challenges each week.
Ms Justice Niamh Hyland was told there are insufficient staffing levels to deal with the volume of complaints coming through to the National Disability Complaints Office under section 14 of the 2005 Disability Act.
Under the 2005 Act, a qualifying child can apply for an assessment, to be completed within six months, of their health and education needs arising from their disability. They are also entitled to an assessment report and a statement of support services they will receive.
They can complain via a statutory mechanism if they are unhappy with any part of this process.
Last November, an existing embargo preventing hiring managerial and administrative staff was extended to nearly all roles, save for consultants, doctors in training and 2023 graduate nurses and midwives.”
I agree with the embargo. The HSE is a bloated management structure where administrative staff and managers far outnumber the number of frontline staff, be they doctors, nurses or other professionals. Essential staff to deal with complaints made against the HSE should be made an exception to the embargo alongside the provision of other frontline staff.
In an ideal world, half the management jobs in the HSE should be cut and those managerial staff retrained as doctors and nurses. The numbers of hospital beds need to be doubled. Stephen Donnelly Minister for Health interviewed on RTE on the news that University Hospital Limerick had reached unprecedented numbers of those on trolleys, 150; some on trolleys from between 8hrs and 17hrs, he was haplessly pointing to the increased funding of the hospital over the previous year. That staffing levels had been increased.
Throughout the interview he haplessly mentioned the word “Reforms”. I wasn’t sure if he was asking a question as to why “Reforms” had led to this situation, or that “Reforms” were on the way. The interview did not pursue the matter.
The solution to the crisis in Limerick is very simple, more hospital beds!
If there are only 50 hospital beds, it doesn’t matter how many staff there are, or what increased funding staff are given, only 50 patients can occupy those beds, the rest go on trolleys.
Funding of the HSE disappears into a Black hole. A root and branch investigation into the management structure required. There are too many overly paid managers duplicating each others work slowing down the real work that needs to be done.
In Tallaght Hospital as if it were the 1950’s, staff carry around bundles of patient notes in folders. a proper computer system can make bureaucracy efficient and less reliant on useless duplication and wasteful resourcing.
Hospital beds, professional, frontline staff be they doctors, nurses or other medically trained staff, are needed, not an inefficient, broken and sinking HSE weighed down with a management structure unfit for purpose.
The HSE bureaucracy and incompetence of the Minister for Health unable to address the shortcomings of the bureacuratic mess that is the current HSE, will likely see the HSE sink further into failure morass/sinkhole unable to address the needs of the Irish population.
Trolley numbers are likely to exceed past records, waiting lists will increase.
Meanwhile,
“
National Children’s Hospital cost has risen to more than €2.2bn, Donnelly confirms
Varadkar says Government will not be putting any more funding towards the project
“
Well, tendering for the project was so incompetent, they agreed on a vague proposal and approximate cost, then gave a credit card to the developer, that allowed changes to be made on the go, costs added to the card, as changes were made. This ‘make it up as you go approach’ has led to the project having the distinction already of being the most expensive Hospital built in the world to date.
Its unlikely they will stop adding to the credit card additional changes.
The hospital was built in the wrong place. It’ll be difficult for both staff and patients to get there. It’ll be impossible for staff to find close by accommodation.
No provision has yet been made for the cost of the provision of staff and their accommodation.
The present government has not a good record in serving this country with the numbers of doctors and nurses required to service current needs, never mind the specialised needs for a bureaucracy and staffing levels required, to open a new hospital!
Perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the staffing and running of this hospital before it opens!
till again……..
No Fiscal Space For The Homeless!
July 12, 2023
Delivering on Housing in Ireland
Drivetime Friday 7 July 2023
Sarah McInerney and Cormac O hEadhra brings you all the latest news and stories of the day from around the country and beyond
Buried in the programme 2:29:30 minutes long, you’ll have to wait until 1:40:20.
You wouldn’t believe there’s a Housing Emergency in Ireland.
But RTE is preoccupied or corrupted depending on your point of view, with ubiquitous coverage of the RTE Scandal, about which RTE has egg on its face. Tubridy I believe innocent of all charges levelled against both him and his agent both acting under instructions from RTE seeking to obtain best deal for themselves in a rotten system. They can’t be blamed for the system being rotten.
The real problem lies in a management structure wed to the private sector. This is ‘Public Service’ broadcasting, there should be a cap on salaries commensurate with ‘Public Service’.
Just another instance of government incompetence, Michael Martin stating he is against capping salaries!
The real scandal in RTE is its treatment and coverage of Ireland’s Housing Crisis, coverage being little more than the offer of an echo chamber for government and opposition spokespeople to air their well-rehearsed chorus of views. But propaganda is often not about twisting the truth that’s told to people, it’s often more about concealing the truth, covering it up. Easy enough to do if you simply leave out news that matters and substitute it with light netertainment stories!
They cover the crisis better even in Europe apparently see this report!
https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/06/irelands-housing-crisis-millennials-a-generation-sacrificed
If RTE starved real investigative journalism of investment in personnel or resources, now we know where the money went, Tubridy and Musical lossmaker extraordinaire.
Where I live, I know of at least 3 abandoned housing developments, each one I could do with some investigative news on why they are abandoned, real stories that would give depth to how housing policy, is not working in Ireland.
If they were train wrecks, RTE would send a news team and cameras to report on them.
On my way to Wicklow, driving through Baltinglass, the village is full of derelict abandoned buildings, ripe for renewal and development, as housing sorely needed. So it is throughout Ireland. No way from the amount of renewal, redevelopment, refurbishment, new builds, could anything approaching the consciousness of a housing emergency, be felt.
I often reflect on how it is with an Open Goal namely, homelessness, lack of supply and affordability, government is getting away with it, with not one punch from RTE being landed on any of the government political representatives, charged with responsibility and accountability.
Invariably, government representatives will quote from the nonsense contained in ‘Housing For All’ (it should be renamed, ‘Housing Affordable Only by the Rich’)
Click to access 238681_7b958e84-bb18-4650-ab90-87c8dd511ec8.pdf
Nonsense such as this quote, “Extension of Project Tosaigh:
Following
indications from the market that a number of
Build to Rent and Build to Sell schemes may
not be proceeding, the LDA is engaging with
relevant developers to identify projects that
may be suitable for Cost Rental, affordable
housing or social housing. Market engagement
will support current housing delivery and
targets in the relevant local authority areas.“
See this report on Euronews https://video.euronews.com/mp4/med/EN/WT/SU/23/07/06/en/230706_WTSU_52236930_52236933_600000_120643_en.mp4
The intervention by the Irish Planning Institute (IPI), which represents more than 1,000 private and public sector planners, has called into question sweeping new laws which are supposed to accelerate building in the face of the worsening housing crisis.
With the delivery of thousands of new homes on hold because of planning and court delays, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien published draft laws in January in a bid to streamline the system.
The legislation includes contentious measures to bar residents’ associations from taking judicial review cases in the High Court against planning decisions. It will also introduce fines for breaches of new mandatory planning deadlines.”
https://www.housingeurope.eu/section-40/brussels-team
11 problems identified in report including
1. Affordability
2. Supply
3. Young people
4. Unmet need carried forward from rebuilding Ireland
Report is Series of Recommendations that flow from a review of member states and what they are doing to tackle housing crisis in their countries.
Challenges around interest rates, inflation, ukrainian population that have come to EU, also shortages of labour throughout construction sector.
Barry Andrews MEP “Ireland failing to access big pots of money from the EU to develop social housing…don’t think report says Ireland is failing to..report says ireland could do better on particularly some of the new funds that are emerging…eg new social climate fund related to the energy performance of buildings directive which will come into effect next year!!
What I’m trying to correct is the narrative out there that the European union really does not have anything to do with housing…it’s really a matter of national state competence…not only are there major pots there for local authorities, for central government and for approved housing bodies, there’s a massive range of ideas on how we could deliver on issues around affordability and supply, look at Section 4, 19 policy recommendations.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41177782.html
Unfortunately, we have to live with a state of national incompetence in dealing with our homelessness crisis, shortage of supply, price increases. Helped by RTE, homelessness and problems in our health care system eg ‘waiting lists’, ‘lack of beds’, are increasingly sanitised and normalised, mostly through concealment of the real stories, behind headlines.
Till again……
About
The Failure of Political Leadership in Ireland
January 27, 2023
The Health Service Executive’s head of digital transformation, Prof Martin Curley, has resigned, comparing the job to scaling Mount Everest.
“Speaking following his resignation, Prof Curley said the HSE was not fit for purpose, and that there was significant resistance to change.”
Over a year ago we were treated to the following:
“Former HSE chief Tony O’Brien said the “significant” resignation of two key members of the management team of Sláintecare was an indicator of fundamental problems with the proposed reform of the health care system.
..In a letter outlining the reasons for his resignation as chairman of the Sláintecare Implementation Advisory Committee, Prof Tom Keane said: “Sadly, I have come to conclude that the requirements for implementing this unprecedented programme for change are seriously lacking.”
There is a long list of similar resignations occurring over the past few years.
Though we’ve had significant change at the top including successive Ministers for Health there is a significant rift between the ‘eager beaver’ changes announced on a regular basis by erstwhile Min for Health Stephen Donnelly following on from similar changes announced by previous ministers and the deadlocking story unfolding in the messaging provided by these resignations.
What is going on?
The answer is in Prof Curley’s remark that the HSE is not fit for purpose, and that there is significant resistance to change. We all know HSE is not fit for purpose as it struggles with waiting lists and trolley numbers. There is little media coverage of what lies behind the remark ‘significant resistance to change’
Before addressing that issue, lets solve the crisis in the HSE.
“In its 2021 study entitled Mirror, Mirror 2021 – Reflecting Poorly: Health Care in the U.S. Compared to Other High-Income Countries, the Commonwealth Fund examined the performance of health systems in 11 countries using indicators from five domains. Their objective? To evaluate the US healthcare performance by comparing it to other healthcare systems. The USA came out last in the ranking resulting from this study:
- Norway
- The Netherlands
- Australia
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- New Zealand
- Sweden
- France
- Switzerland
- Canada
- United States of America”
We need a task force say seven members taken from the above list to audit and analyse the HSE using their own international knowledge base as a lens.
Show us how to dismantle and build again a new HSE with a new name representing its commitment to supply the people of Ireland with a health service commensurate with its needs that will compete with the best.
Its not hard to improve on the donkey race that is the state of the HSE at this time with its waiting lists lasting years, lack of hospital beds, trolley crisis.
Its an absolute guarantee that minister Donnelly with eager beaver resolve to improve the HSE with his intended goal of obtaining report upon report from within the HSE on how to do this, will not succeed.
It will only get worse because the largest resistors to change, those largely responsible for its current debacle, are the very ones tasked with determining the narrative of what goes into those reports.
They’ve succeeded in brainwashing politicians with provided sound bites and useless reforms that have brought us to where we are now.
We need independent watch dogs from abroad to be set loose across our health service to let us know how things are the way they are and to make them be what we want them to be.
Part 11
Meanwhile its ironic Pascal Donohoe our previous Finance Minister responsible for the Standards in Public Office Commission SIPO , has himself run foul of its regulations. This may partly explain his reluctance to reform SIPO and give it further powers. A debacle showing how political patronage is associated with appointments to state organisations in his relationship with businessman Michael Stone. Michael Stone has had the grace to resign from Land Development Agency and the North Inner City Taskforce.
Its possible at the level of super salaries often beyond equivalent in the private sector that those appointed to CEO level and higher levels of the HSE do not have a background in medical matters nor have the vision that goes with such a background, but are purely motivated by political and business interests. I’ll leave that to an independent task force to decide.
But this does raise a question in the case, for example, of the Land Development Agency created by government to streamline the provision of housing, by creating an extra level of quango bureaucracy, taking powers away from local communities and councils, that its leadership in LDA along with its critical partnership with An Bord Pleanala, is more business and political motivated; than acting on improving the provision of housing in Ireland. Certainly the results of LDA so far have been abysmal. An Bord Pleanala has been shown to be falling far short of the standards required for such a state agency.
Both in the case of the LDA and An Bord Pleanala and the HSE debacle there has been a failure in political leadership in meeting the challenges (‘challenges’ being the political word for ‘failure’).
Government policy has been to favour developers and private business people with incentive schemes to aid people in the purchases of housing, these policies have added to growing unaffordability along with absence of supply.
We according to “Unpublished research by the Housing Commission says Ireland may need up to 62,000 homes built per year until 2050 to meet demand – almost double the annual target in the Government’s master plan for this decade.” Its plain to be seen Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien is clearly out of touch with Ireland’s Housing needs coming in at 50% of what our real needs are.
In regard to housing further questions need to be asked re how verifiable and authentic O’Brien’s math is. For example, he uses throughout the word ‘homes’. I’ve yet to understand what the word means, is this a single bed apartment for rent at unaffordable rent levels? Or is this a ‘home’ a young family can live in and raise a family.
Insufficient analysis and reporting from RTE will not take you to charts detailing where the ‘homes’ are. Whenever the Minister is asked what the shortfall is between the provisioning his plans for ‘Social’ housing and actual numbers built, he invariably deflects with audited results unavailable until a later time in the year?
All the above is explained if we examine governments relationship with developers and private builders and cuckoo funds they rely on to get us out of the mess.
Unfortunately, these are the very relationships that have informed policy and got us into the mess. Only political incompetence can explain the continuing reliance on the cause of our great mess to be the solution to the bigger mess that grows before our eyes.
Perhaps political leadership can no longer solve our problems. The ‘invisible hand’ of the EU is behind the stoic indifference to change in our political establishment no longer run from Dail Eireann but from Brussels.
Meanwhile Ireland continues secretly to become the richest country in the world. Most of its resources siphoned off to be golden eggs for its low tax rapidly increasing number of millionaires and billionaires.
Per capita ratio of decent public services to private wealth grow in ways more akin to a banana Republic rather than into a modern developed economy.
till again…
(1)https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/hses-head-of-digital-transformation-resigns-and-compares-job-to-scaling-everest-1419441.html
(2)https://fr.april-international.com/en/healthcare-expatriates/which-countries-have-best-healthcare-systems
(3)https://www.sipo.ie/about/
(4)https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2023/01/26/ireland-needs-almost-double-amount-of-new-builds-in-housing-targets-research-finds/
Orwell’s HSE
January 8, 2023
According to a survey most are terrified if forced to attend a hospital. The public have lost confidence in the safety of the hospitals in crisis. Incidents causing harm to patients attending A&E according to Sunday Indo, 08/01/2023, p1, have been on the increase. The media is filled with stories of hospital staff overburdened, overworked and stressed out unable to do more.
“The HSE has said there is an entire system response under way to deal with what is a current “patient safety risk” in relation to the numbers attending emergency departments, and waiting on trolleys.”(1)
“Speaking during a briefing this afternoon, HSE Chief Executive Stephen Mulvany said there would be clinical decision makers on site and weekends in the short-term.
He said measures like that were not sustainable, but were necessary at this stage and were being done on a patient safety basis.”
“The average wait in emergency departments is currently 8.3 hours, which rises to 13.8 hours for patients who are admitted.”
“Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One, Dr Henry said that more hospital beds are needed.
“Let me be clear, we do need more hospital beds. We’ve added almost 1,000 beds since the beginning of the pandemic and about 55 critical care beds, but we need more.”
The solution is simple, WE NEED MORE HOSPITAL BEDS.
The problem is we do not have an executive of the HSE and a government able to deliver more beds. They have consistently failed to address this basic need.
If you listen to Stephen Donnelly Minister for Health you would think that government have ramped up staff numbers and created more hospital beds in the past few years than has ever been done before in such a short time.
Its a bit like praising a football team for losing every match because in the last few matches they managed to score a couple of goals though they still met with defeat!
Lets examine some possible explanations for this debacle.
- One explanation is that we don’t punish failure in Ireland and as such we’ve got no accountability. In the UK Liz Truss gets fired along with most of her cabinet and Richi Sunak appoints a new cabinet. Whatever your views are of Sunak at least some measure of accountability has taken place.
- Another explanation might be in the way Ireland’s finances are controlled through the EU. Following our financial crash following 2008 the Troika imposed severe measures including bailout on our economy. Through measures such as “Fiscal Space” austerity limits on state spending have been imposed on Ireland with consequent reduction in resources available for capital projects whether in Health and Education, more recently in attempts to privatise Irish Water. Compliance and obedience to dictats of austerity rules from Brussels are now par for the course for any Irish government in office. The Invisible Hand is rarely spoken of.
- Government policy decisions provide a strong headwind to any radical development of our Health service. For example, our Corporation Tax receipts from last year have led to a €5bn surplus. Varadkar has decided rather than invest this money in Health or elsewhere in our economy, he’s decided to use this money to pay off the national debt and to build up cash reserves. The irony is with growing inflation unless you spend this money now it gets eroded and loses value. Whatever about reducing the national debt to avoid interest rate increases, its pure incompetence in the face of our health crisis, not to spend to relieve the crisis.
- Another explanation is “Denial”. Stephen Donnelly Minister for Health he is of the view the HSE has been subject to unprecedented spending increases over the past few years including expansion of the numbers of hospital beds and staffing increases, but more needs to be done. He states due to the pandemic and the flu epidemic across Europe every country’s health service is similarly under increased pressure. Overall, we are doing quite well. He would therefore ignore counter arguments that our hospitals would be in crisis even without the pandemic creating a perfect storm, hospital waiting lists now extending into years rather than months.
- Another explanation might be in the definition of the term “BLACKWHITE” part of the NEWSPEAK language described in George Orwell’s novel 1984: “Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.” One also wonders if there’s also a Hitler Bunker mindset developing that refuses to accept the reality of the disaster our health service is currently struggling with.
Its simple, we need more hospital beds and thousands of them. We need more houses and thousands of them. It would appear FG/FF are doomed to continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Our membership of the EU has come back to haunt us as authoritarian and totalitarian policies increasingly are anti democratic and ignore the needs of our people while before us our country is ruined in plain sight our young forced to flee for better lives elsewhere.
till again….
(1)https://www.rte.ie/news/health/2023/0105/1344950-health-system/
Micheál Martin Mess Grows!
June 30, 2022
The only properties being built at present in Dublin are apartments for rent built by cuckoo funds. These are fast tracked bypassing the local planning process which often has refused a previous application now sent to An Bord Pleanala. ABP overturns the refusal and gives permission for the development.
I saw another Planning Notice locally recently and yesterday pinned to railing nearby was a notice asking for support to the objection to the 6 storey development unsuited to the area and objected to by local residents.
This one https://irishbusinessfocus.ie/construction/approved-590-new-homes-in-knocklyon/ ignored objections from local residents and community groups. It claims “The 5.4 hectare scheme will also include large provisions of open greens and play areas.” and its advert posted on the above site shows only the entrance road that leads onto the already traffic compromised main road to the M50 subject to traffic congestion at rush hour times.
Large apartment blocks confined into a small space without provision of open greens and play areas is a feature of that development. So only about a quarter of the development with a photo taken to hide the apartment blocks as much as possible is visible see link above. We are swamped with propaganda in a similar vein from government with anything from the sublime to the absurd.
Government strategy to fast-track housing developments is proving a total disaster. The policy goes back to legislation passed in 2017 https://www.pleanala.ie/en-ie/strategic-housing-development-(shd)-overview
“Planning applications for housing developments of more than 100 residential units and 200 plus student bed spaces can now be made directly to An Bord Pleanála. New legislation which allows for this type of application was enacted on 19th December 2016 and the associated regulations come in to effect on 3rd July 2017.
This new type of application has been introduced as part of Rebuilding Ireland to speed up the planning application process and accelerate delivery of larger housing and student accommodation proposals.
The types of housing applications which can be made direct to An Bord Pleanála are referred to as Strategic Housing Development (SHD) and are defined as follows:
- the development of 100 or more houses on land zoned for residential use or for a mixture of residential and other uses,
- the development of student accommodation units which, when combined, contain 200 or more bed spaces, on land the zoning of which facilitates the provision of student accommodation or a mixture of student accommodation and other uses thereon,
- …”
Allegations of conflict of interest have been made followed by resignation of Paul Hyde Deputy Chairperson An Bord Pleanala https://www.pleanala.ie/en-ie/meet-the-board/paul-hyde
Piggy backing on regulations governing the provision of student accommodation in private developments has seen the growth of student accommodation unfit for purpose, overly expensive and cleary designated ready for repurpose to be rented out to those willing to pay higher rent than students can afford.
An Bord Pleanala has become an undemocratic fiefdom corrupted by political and professional sectional interests and is clearly not able to respond to the democratic needs of housing supply of the public in general. Its application process is choking at the seams and failing its remit to fast track housing development in the worst and most abject way possible.
Its current state is an affront to democracy itself given that ABP was set up to defend the interests of the general public protecting them from poor planning and eg pillaging vulture funds.
We cant blame poor planning on Darragh O’ Brien’s strategy to house the upwards of 30,000 Ukrainian refugees arriving on our shores. He doesn’t have a plan but he does get annoyed when he is asked if he does have a plan.
““However, I am convinced that if we do not find some way of exploring in a grown-up, pragmatic and constructive way the links between unsustainable levels of inward migration or asylum into this State and housing, then we will never find a meaningful solution to an already overwhelming crisis.” That was a reasonable question being asked by Independent TD Carol Nolan in the Dail https://bit.ly/3I4N1ru
He tried to bully her into silence by stating government would not put a cap on the number of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland. Maybe he has secret plans to put them into Direct Provision type Butlin’s camps. He won’t let us know what his dictats might be?
An external inquiry needs to be established to investigate any allegations as to where ABP is not fulfilling a democratic mandate if necessary its powers urgently repurposed if not curtailed .
Not only are questions being asked of the ABP but the centralisation of planning developments in the Land Develpment Agency will also lead to the pillaging and corruption of public land resources. This land is intended for handing over to private developers is an ongoing scandal worthy of a banana republic unworthy of the term ‘modern state’. Its a reminder of the cold war era run by Putin’s predecessors who gave us those eponymous and anonymous apartment blocks on the periphery of cities in communist states.
LDA has been described as “another NAMA scandal waiting to happen..” We won’t mention the NAMA scandal itself unable to supply the needs of public housing..”
Under the Bill councils are required to transfer State lands to the Land Development Agency (LDA) without a vote from councillors to put the agency on a statutory footing.
The LDA was established as a State agency under secondary legislation in September 2018 to build 150,000 new homes over the next 20 years, as part Project Ireland 2040.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-40227848.html
We are copying what used to be the previous USSR trademark of building unwanted apartments in the wrong places denying local democracy with a new housing policy that smacks of dictatorship.
This is a new violation of Planning Law alleged democratic mandate designed to protect the interests of the people. Its the realisation of what Brexiteers warned us of: increasing bureaucracy and centralisation in Europe.
The Council is upgrading sewage works in one South West Dublin location. The expensive upgrade is to facilitate a cuckoo funded set of Apartment block choking a small, ill equipped space towering over suburban houses located in the same area.
That’s just one example.
Its unlikely Micheál Martin will bring us suburb to suburb in his chaufered limo to show us on a case by case basis or suburb by suburb basis what his “Housing for All Strategy” is actually achieving. Real needs of the public and especially its younger generation are not being met either by incompetence or government’s even more ludicrous ‘Housing For All’ strategy.
If you havn’t guessed, its not ‘Housing For All’.
The whole topic of government housing policy is mired in propaganda designed to conceal what is actually happening.
On the face of it, the country is doing quite well taxes are up thanks mostly to Corporation Tax receipts and extraordinary contribution of government tax take from energy products mainly oil and gas.
How long this can last is anyone’s guess but you’d be correct to predict large headwinds ahead due to inflation, global shortages due to Ukrainian crisis and massive mismanagement of the local economy.
The tourism sector has been badly hit by Covid, unsustainable price gouging, shortages of accommodation and lack of car rental supply. It hasn’t been helped by images getting onto the world media of queues out of Dublin airport and stories of thousands missing flights due to bad planning and mismangement by the DAA (Dublin Airport Authority).
Everywhere you look the mess grows: https://www.flac.ie/news/2022/06/27/flac-annual-report-indicates-access-to-justice-cri/
“Throughout 2021, the combined ongoing impact of the pandemic and increased financial pressure on individuals and households added to what CE of FLAC Eilis Barry is describing as ‘an ongoing crisis of unmet legal need in this country’.”
Housing Minister Darragh O Brien continues to defy logic with his efforts to drive up housing prices instead of drive them down
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/housing-minister-darragh-obrien-slammed-23600763
Its madness to support house prices unaffordable by the majority with subventions making up the difference between what they can afford and what is being asked. It only makes housing more unaffordable and arguably is a waste of taxpayers money and is miserably incompetent.
We need to do a cost benefit analysis of all the public money spent that has ended up driving up rents and the cost of housing. Has the effect of the HAP Scheme been to support the pockets of landlords many of whom are Dail deputies, or drive down rental costs?
One could argue government policy is being driven to drive up rents and the costs of housing.
http://hap.ie/landlords/whyhap/
There are almost no homes being built in Dublin the majority of build to rent apartments that have failed local planning laws unfit for family living.
It makes no sense to build outside the periphery of Dublin with an energy crisis the cost in time and provision of transport services of no benefit to consumers saddled with housing solutions adding further stress to their lives. Meanwhile the mess grows in the HSE that has just barely stumbled through the Pandemic though one could argue strongly this was not the case.
Paul Cullen writing in The Times
“391: number of visa applications granted last year to Irish doctors to work in Australia
837: number of consultant posts not filled on permanent basis
0: number of applications receieved for highly remunerated consultant posts that were advertised last year
4,787: the number of older people left without a carer due to chronic staff shortages”
Situation is far worse on the ground and often is bedlam on trollies.
Its pure mismanagement, lack of provision, planning. Nothing appears under discussion to increase numbers educated for the posts with requirements eg that taxpayer money be rewarded with requirements to spend at least 5 yrs working at home..
Housing is an abject mess. A report in Sunday Independent Business 19 June told us “An Bord Pleanala hit with fines as 5,500 houses now delayed” The SHD planning system is supposed to fast-track planning applications or pay applicants €10,000 but 21 major developments “- each containing hundreds of houses, apartments or student units – are now overdue for decision”
Its just been announced Paul Reid CEO of HSE has resigned, Tony Holohan CMO stepped down not so long ago. It seems the old guard are leaving without a plan or any meaningful change left in their wake. It would appear they are leaving a sinking ship.
270 children with autism are without school placements for next September
It would appear the lethal mix of young people leaving and older staff retiring is a deadly mixfor the HSE that would have been addressed by now. Instead this problem continues to worsen.
Incompetence in the Navan A&E scandal is mind blowing:
https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2022/06/13/hse-to-announce-closure-of-navan-hospital-ed/
“Emergency patients will be directed to other hospitals in Meath and Dublin instead, the HSE has announced.” No provision of extra services and staff in those hospitals to cope with the new needs; patients put at risk though long journeys and lack of provision for stroke victims.
Long waiting lists extending into years ..the list goes on.
A common thread to the above is the efforts by FF/FG to centralise control of housing development in Ireland alongside efforts in Health under successive government ministers to reduce the number of hospital beds with imposition of severe austerity measures.
It has failed to enact legislation that is workable, effective, efficient and professional; massive incompetence and failure to address the housing needs of the public.
Clearly with the massive failure of FF ‘Housing for All Strategy’ touting a ludicrous tilting at windmills with strategies that implement the above poliicies, clearly out of its depth in everything but soundbite propaganda.
The major effort is to persuade us, government is doing its job, ITS NOT.
Clearly Micheál Martin and his incompetent allies must go. The most honorable thing for them to do is to follow the example of fleeing senior executives in the HSE, and honorably resign or retire early no plan (it’ll improve current planning) left in their wake.
Otherwise we are doomed to experience them making a bad situation much worse. As our president Michael D Higgins recently said :
Housing ..”Isn’t a crisis anymore, IT IS A Disaster..”
Government has been a star performer for the speculative sector internationally and home grown….”Building Homes Is What Is Important”
The people of Ireland deserve better than the mess provided by this incompetent government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich growing more foolhardy by the minute.
But the reality is we’ll get more showboating around Europe and locally before real change will come. Until then the increasingly absurd will prevail…
till again…
HSE Unfit for Purpose, Scrap it!
February 21, 2022
The Branches of medicine Are the angiology, cardiology, intensive care medicine, endocrinology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, hematology, hepatology, infectious medicine, nephrology, neurology, oncology, pediatrics, pulmonology, rheumatology and sports medicine.(https://tinyurl.com/4vfa7594)
We need a summit of medical experts from each of these areas to analyse how the current HSE is failing each of these branches of medicine and to come up with proposals to best practice services compared to worldwide best practice.
- There was a professor from one of the teaching hospitals on the radio describing how the HSE was unfit for purpose. Most of its hospitals were outdated unsuited to the needs of a growing elderly population with outdated plant and buildings. Wards of 6 and over with high transmission rates, lack of privacy, shameful treatment of the elderly.
The news is also now gone from numbers on trolleys to numbers on chairs as they’ve not enough trollies or room for them. Today Mr Watt and Mr Reid were questioned at the Oireachtas Committee. Their combined salaries nearly 3/4 of a million. This against the relatively recent resignation of Sláinte Care officials tasked with implementing its reforms. Some reforms such as regionalisation seem to be on the back burner the aim being to keep the current hierarchy in place.
An email reportedly obtained by Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane, was sent to Mr Reid in September. In it, Mr Watt said ‘structural changes need to be kept to a minimum’. Department of Health secretary general Robert Watt and Paul Reid HSE Chief Executive reveal their true colors in this correspondence.
Their role is to maintain the status quo and not jeopardise the hirerarchical system of oligarchy controlled by a small group of people in the HSE and Dept of Health, a number that includes themselves. Notwithstanding the shambolic unfit for purpose austerity driven service driven by non medical criteria.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/what-does-south-kerry-camhs-report-reveal-about-irish-mental-health-services-1.4807928 The true state of Irish mental health services revealed only the tip of the iceberg of how unfit for purposes such services are in Ireland.
Only plans Reid and Watt seem to have is to have staff increases but their targets are already accused of being unrealistic. We need to take away the responsibility for health services and place that responsibility into the hands of those with medical expertise.
It’s a bit like a couple who buy a property in need of refurbishment. The more money thrown at it, the more they need to spend finding problems at every level including the foundations.
HSE are responsible for providing documents registering births, marriages and deaths and that service is currently in a state of collapse. Waiting lists even before Covid were in a state of collapse.
The whole of the HSE operates like a medieval fiefdom unable to serve the public in a modern way. Contact tracing failed during Covid with a computer system unfit for purpose.
If you visit Tallaght Hospital or St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin today and look everywhere you’ll see staff carrying tons of folders from place to place. Everything is hand written with the expensive and costly overload of tons of time waste required for this system.
One wonders with the annual payment of over a billion paid in damages to satisfy claims against the HSE is a paper only practice designed to shred paper rather than keep Modern records.
HSE is incapable of providing for the needs of a growing population. Let’s scrap the whole of the HSE edifice.
This time allow medical personnel design a new building fit for purpose. Let’s have medical knowledge design the building not those who have no medical expertise whatsoever.
Let medical science and its expertise design a service fit for purpose one that actually works.
Meanwhile it’s become apparent in a gambit to rival the scandal re Arlene Foster and Renewable Heat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal.
It’s a largely Zeppelin proposal thousands of workers perhaps lured away from where they are needed in the construction industry. Large loans to be provided to those lured into hiring companies to put in attic insulation for householders able to put it in themselves.
Large numbers unable to afford such loans. The scaffolding of these proposals is dodgy in the extreme becoming more flaky by the day. Billions diverted from other more worthy causes diverted into this doomed to fail scheme.
The question of whether such state subvention of climate change funding proposals better spent elsewhere unresolved. Money better spent on building houses for those in need.
Perhaps it might be wiser to reduce the cost of insulation allowing householders to DIY. Standard fixed prices agreed by service providers?
There appears to be no way to avoid the coming mess that will rival the scandal of the ballooning costs of Ireland’s new children’s hospital.
https://www.thejournal.ie/planning-regulator-watchdog-dublin-city-5684038-Feb2022/
“The Office of the Planning Regulator claims the council had failed to provide any evidence to justify its plans to stipulate that 40% of all units in new apartment developments must be made available for sale.”
These morons don’t get it that having all apartments for rent leads to a transient population with no incentive to maintain the apartments of buildings they rent. Many will trash them or party away every night before moving to another rental. Such apartments do not require communal areas or open spaces suitable for children. They are built to extract maximum profit.
Most of all they are designed to enslave renters the lack of for sale apartments keeping the selling price of apartments unaffordable.
The Office of the Planning Regulator is not fit for purpose and should be disbanded immediately.
The governments policy on housing becomes darker by the minute.
We’ve got to get back to a system of “the buck stops here” one of accountability where the public can fire those in charge of shambolic services including Mr Watt, Mr Reid and Mr Martin who’ve been hiding far too long under the mask and distraction of Covid!
Maybe rampant inflation across our crumbling economic system will bring the change we need.
….till again
Mutton Pretending to be Lamb!
January 23, 2022
Just when statistics were showing the Pandemic was out of control with overwhelming numbers of cases in the community, Covid lockdown restrictions were suddenly ended. Fortunately, the Omicron variant was not as dangerous or deadly as the original Covid 19 virus. It had mutated into a virus similar to the common cold with many experiencing no symptoms at all.
Early last week just over three months from originally contracting Covid which also fortunately in my case turned out to have symptoms similar to the common cold, Booster vaccine was advised and my wife and I tried to book through the HSE website. The website had broken links and would not work in spite of repeated efforts over a number of days.
Those successful in booking often on arrival at vaccine centers experienced queues over 2 hours long. When Booster was first announced as available a chaotic overrun of centers occurred. It took almost a whole year to get the majority of the population vaccinated though we’re less than 5 million on the island.
HSE authorities spread disinformation that schools were safe places and children were not carriers certainly not asymptomatic super carriers. But with lockdown of hospitality and severe lockdown generally abided by the community, it was obvious that children who contract colds and viruses annually from their peers and bring them home, they also brought Covid home.
The severe lockdown had worked only to delay Covid just as the WHO said it would. The mistake of over reliance on Lockdown had been made with severe damage to parts of the community able to manage and protect services both in hospitality and other sectors. We had the unnecessary shut down of the construction industry even though we were told Housing was in a state of emergency. Construction Federation of Ireland argued they were well able to manage and protect workers from Covid, Michael Martin TD disagreed.
The pandemic showed up how ill prepared our hospitals and staffing are in dealing with a Pandemic. Questions need to be asked as to how woefully inadequate the HSE computer system is: especially its contact and trace system and the organisation of its booking system management of vaccine rollout? It faltered from the outset and quickly collapsed.
The head of the HSE with a salary of over €400k responsible for the above debacle if he’d a similar job in private industry, would have long been fired. Such a poor computer system would not be tolerated.
Other mistakes were made, the original failure to lockdown outbreaks in secure nursing homes and similar outbreaks in meat plants. Its arguable we’ve a health service unfit to provide a modern, professional and functioning service in normal times, never mind in Pandemic times.
What needs to avoided most of all is a triumphant falsification of the above evidence along with the false belief our HSE performed with superior excellence finally rather than getting lucky, defeating the Covid dragon.
But it was a smiling Michael Martin at the news conference ending lockdown who conveyed the disinformation and false notion that somehow the battle against Covid was nearing its end and the enemy had been vanquished… A poorly serviced hospital system unable to adequately address a Covid outbreak due to poor staffing, bed supply, non functioning contact trace system, did not serve us well. We did not have support from a good computer department with excellent data management capability.
Leaving aside the cost of the above to the economy, the long term effects of this on the care of people with disabilities, families left to cope on their own; the effects on the education, socialisation, of young people in particular, we really need a plan on how we are to get back to the level of health services serving our community, to address waiting lists. What are our current wait times and waiting lists, lets know what they are and what plans are to address them.
There appears to be no plan to audit service levels at the moment nor a plan how deficits in the HSE, waiting lists, will be dealt with.
We’ve done Covid Health care on the cheap. Reliance on government to bring forth such a plan should be tempered by the reality that we’ve arguably the worst performing government our state has had since the inception of our state. Let me outline some evidence for this view.
Both Michael Martin and Leo Varadkar are very accomplished at serving up Mutton pretending to be Lamb.
To my mind no greater evidence exists as to the incompetence, disinformation, betrayal of democracy, failure to deliver, pattern of repeated doomed to fail political policies pursued by Mr Martin both as ex minister for Health and since then up to his present role sharing with Leo Varadkar, as Mr Martin’s Housing for All strategy, see link below.
We could say FF Housing policy is recidivist, repeatedly offending against basic common sense, a form of insanity repeating the same mistakes over and over again, plainly stupid, evidence of poor leadership, lacking in intellectual competence, filled with a type of nonsense unfit for serious debate.
An absurd form of propaganda indicating detachment from reality and an over arching sense of its own worth; maybe a complex metaphor for a conceit that the authors of Housing Strategy for All can not only get away with the rubbish in its pages, but they can stay in power on foot of it, instead of instantly getting the boot out of power for the rubbish it contains.
Housing For All Download
Clearly its the zealot pursuit of power that motivates Mr Martin, not democracy and the needs of the people.
Biggest Lie in the document is its not a Plan at all. Its a Plan to have a Plan, “Publish a new
Housing First National Implementation Plan”. We’ll have to wait for that.
2nd largest lie in the document is, its not a “For All” plan. It mostly is a plan to make unaffordable housing affordable not by reducing house prices, but by “helping” aspiring owners giving them the thousands extra they need to afford their purchase, instead of reducing the selling price of the purchase.
The proposed Shared Equity Scheme has even been condemned by our own central bank. Again it lines the pockets of developers putting up house prices. If the purchaser can’t afford the price, government steps in offering to give the purchaser the difference between what they can afford and the asking price.
In return, the government accepts a stake in the value of the house according to the amount of the loan.
Surely this is an Irish version of the US subprime mortgage that precipitated the crash of 2008? Is it a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing to quote Shakespeare:-)?
What it signifies is the pessimism and despair that abounds on any fair analysis of the reign of Michael Martin TD’s housing policy!
What can go wrong with people inventivized to purchase what is unaffordable for them? More people offered more lending with unaffordable loans pushing selling prices up further and further and further.
Everything this government can do does to push up house prices making them even more unaffordable, it does.
Even worse, not only home buyers are put at risk, but in a house price property downturn, the investment on behalf of taxpayers could all be lost with the state getting disastrous negative yield.
More mutton pretending to be lamb. The choice is between deciding whether “Housing for All” is plain crooked or plain moronic?
The effect of this is to put money in the pockets of developers, not house purchasers. Developers who may be worried their selling prices have gone beyond the reach of the purchasers of these houses!
Its already failed with a 15% rise in house prices last year. Not one of the Cuckoo funds it could have dismantled has had its share price effected as they continue to look forward to rich pickings from aspiring house buyers. Notwithstanding their efforts to prevent Irish buyers buying property only their rent only version of modern serfdom.
Its fairly transparent throughout the document there is no conviction to accelerate the provision of a large housing stock to address pent up demand that delivers affordable housing. Instead there is the commitment in perpetuity to continue the unconscionable and unsustainable rise in property prices with band aid incentives to remove possible blockages to rising house prices.
The ones who gain from this are property developers who are largely now being replaced by cuckoo funds. Cuckoo funds…”They pay no tax on the income they have, the tax structure is designed in a way that it is only actually paid by the investors, but the investors in the main are the likes of pension funds internationally which are exempt from any type of tax also on these funds.”
Other counties eg Canada to protect their local property buyers have placed 20% tax liabilities on such overseas investments that only pillage and loot prospective buyers in the local property market. To incentivise the Irish property market FF and FG have inserted Cuckoo hose pipes into the dead body of the Irish property market, sucking its remaining lifeblood abroad!
Government has introduced and encouraged extortionate rack-renting landlords to Ireland. Our property sector is now built on the worst excesses of laisser faire extortionate rack rent of young Irish people sold into rent slavery by their own government.
Its extraordinary to comprehend the nature and extend of government waste and incompetence in this sector alone. Last year an exemption was brought in excluding the cost of stamp duty of 10% on properties leased back to the government as social housing units by Cuckoo funds!
“The climate allowing global real estate investment trusts (Reits) to flourish was engineered nearly 10 years ago by Fine Gael minister for finance Michael Noonan when he introduced tax breaks to encourage these companies to invest here and boost an economy emerging from deep recession.” https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/miriam-lord-government-in-a-flap-about-the-cuckoo-in-the-property-nest-1.4556510
Cuckoo funds surfed into Ireland on foot of Government sponsored mess below and have since had a devastating effect both on the extent and quality of housing provision. Local buyers are outbid and they include the deep pockets of government with its efforts to provide ‘social housing’ sourced from local developers.
By comparison when people had houses and homes with community centres and a place to bring up their children.
The irony is that Michael Martin manages to get it both ways. When its pointed out to him that Cuckoo funds are purchasing whole housing estates from plans, he expresses surprise then carries on as if he’s the one victimized now dedicated to ending the practice!
Look at his Housing for All policy document its a document the shredder well deserves,
“NEW FAST-TRACK PLANNING FOR HOUSES TO BYPASS LOCAL COUNCILS
On 24 December 2016, The Planning & Development (Housing) & Residential Tenancies Act 2016 (“the Act”) was signed into law. The Act aims to provide greater stability and protections for residential tenants.
The Act introduced a new fast-track planning procedure for large scale “strategic housing developments”. The new procedures will apply to:
- residential developments of 100 dwellings or more;
- student accommodation projects containing 200 or more bed spaces;
- alterations of existing planning permissions to permit development as outlined above,
on land with appropriate zoning and subject to limitations on the extent of other uses.
While Applications will be made directly to An Bórd Pleanála, the new procedure requires preplanning application consultations to take place. Consultations take place firstly with the local authority and then between An Bórd Pleanála, the developer and the relevant local authority. This could potentially result in planning decisions issuing within 25 weeks of commencement of the pre-application consultation process.
Where permission is granted under the fast-track procedure, an extension of planning permission is available only where substantial works have been carried out during the original lifespan of the planning permission. This aims to prevent land-hoarding in the wake of speculative applications for fast-tracked planning permission
Developers planning to build large-scale housing schemes will be able, from Monday the 10th of July, 2017, to make their case directly to An Bórd Pleanála, bypassing the local-authority decision-making processes.”
https://www.ors.ie/news/new-fast-track-planning-for-houses-to-bypass-local-councils/
The evidence that we’ve the worst government in the history of the state led by its most incompetent Taoiseach, is quite clear to me.
Hopefully, the above can inform your choice and the electorate will respond giving them the 1% vote representing the real interests they serve.
One canard that has gone up in recent weeks in the one about 100,000 vacant properties that could be renovated and refurbished by purchasers. The housing minister has been looking at it and has come up with the nonsense notion of providing grants to buyers
May I introduce you to the phrase “Tilting at Windmills” describing the visionary nature of Michael Martin, Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza though I doubt our housing minister has the foresight of Sancho Panza :
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”
“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.
“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”
“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”
Instead of running around with band aid windmills for dragons that only worsen the Housing crisis, Michael Martin and Darragh O Brien need to create a housing agency with powers to CPO those properties on a national level, establish Council driven private construction companies, purchase these properties, build them to standards fulfilling our planning laws.
Compare the pic in the advert with its panorama Field of View to the blocks they don’t show stuffed in here, there are more blocks stuffed in behind these. No community open spaces or communal areas for children to play…:
Innocent home owners lured into the world of refurbishment can becoming entangled in local planning laws, become victims of poor construction methods, run into unplanned expenses, hidden costs emerging from the missing foundations and the damp who knows what else…
No worries for cuckoo funds building developments such as the above local development raising the possibility of 3000 cars exiting onto a road already choked with traffic during morning rush hour. The development is Cuckoo friendly largely rent only so a largely transient population. Therefore, not family or community oriented with open spaces suited to the needs of families and children.
Also that picture is misleading as it represents only half the development. Hidden away occupying the rest of the limited space in a Dublin suburban patch of land surrounded by residential areas dwarfed by the buildings, are packed in as many of those apartment buildings seen on the right of the photo, as they could manage.
The development was refused planning locally with local residents and organisations and politicians all objecting to it in unison but it bypassed such concerns getting permission from An Bórd Pleanála on foot of the above legislation.
Its clear housing policy of FF is not fit for all.
Its fit for for the few who are making massive amounts of money keeping our rack renting economy going many of them FF and FG TD’s.
The policy is probably supported and demanded of us from the ECB freezing any money supply we need having been bitten before by our Ghost Housing Estates!
Welcome to the new world of the absurd propaganda where true information on what is going on in our world is becoming even more sparse!
till again…..
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…
We’re Sick of It!
March 21, 2021
Paul Reid is being interviewed again he’s the public face of HSE during Covid. Remarkably he’s paid over €400k for the role. I’m not impressed.
Covid hotels are still not up and running with thousands returning from holidays abroad free of proper regulation or sanction.
Logistics regarding distribution of vaccine seem to be in a delayed mess. Some GP’s get batches of vaccines that come without syringes. Some cannot tell elderly patients when they might be vaccinated! There’s certainly no public knowledge assuring roll out is transparent and efficient and timely.
I’d like daily briefings on TV in a public information broadcast telling me who, what, where, when and how vaccinations will occur. Scrap the privacy and secrecy laws preventing distribution of real data on Covid. There is still no absolute sense of engagement with local communities informing them of the incidence of Covid in their midst telling people how they must respond on a local level.
What we have is failing lockdown. The more it fails the more it is applied. Lockdown as currently applied is inefficient and prone to failure. We need a more scientific and targeted response that will not kill the patient economy with a cure that’s worse than the disease
The Astrazeneca mess has led to messy delay while NIAC and EMA confirmed what WHO and Astrazeneca had already confirmed that there was no risk increase for blood clotting among patients in any age group. Beyond normal expectations of its incidence. Neither the EMA or NIAC were ever in a position to challenge the statistical evidence in the distribution of Astrazeneca to millions of people across the UK and elsewhere that there was no risk of any significance.
“It’s my support group for Zoom fatigue syndrome.”
But we had to endure delay for tens of thousands while we were subjected to propaganda NIAC and EMA were more safety conscious than Astrazeneca. This led to reckless disregard for damage caused eroding confidence in the public regarding Astrazeneca.
It appears to this writer reticence from NIAC and EMA is politically motivated rather than science motivated. Not that Astrazeneca comes off worst in this regard.
Another perfectly safe vaccine is Sputnic. It is safe to assume politicians also because of its origin in Russia have removed Sputnik from the table as an option that could offset shortfalls in delivery of other vaccines.
We’re all sick of Covid restrictions that have lasted over a year. In spite of sacrifices, numbers are still at alarming levels.
Paul Reid and the HSE have left the door open in fighting the virus by failing to put in place a state of the art track and trace system as exists in the most successful countries in dealing with it. Countries such as Iceland, New Zealand, South Korea. As recently as a few weeks ago local GP’s were in the front line expected to track and trace phoning up suspected cases and doing their own guesswork.
Meanwhile construction in this country has been dealt a mighty blow by incompetence at the highest levels. Private equity firms responsible for inward FDI are alarmed that projects such as Ardmore Studios in Wicklow and Newmarket Square in Dublin are lying idle with construction workers leaving the country and skills lost with contracts lost.
We are alone amongst every other country in the world treating construction in this way. Construction Federation of Ireland have called out the investment made by construction firms to respond safely to Covid, to no avail.
With losses expected to be close to €3bn this year and expected shortfall of 10000 homes not being built to deal with our housing emergency, our politicians must shoulder accountability and responsibility for the abysmal failure of its response to Covid.
Our response lacks credibility. Its unscientific in its lack of investment in scientific measures to address the challenges posed by Covid. Our GP’s lack IT infrastructure to help track and trace. We do not have enough hospital beds even without Covid. Our waiting lists for hospital procedures and consultations have become absurd.
Roll out of vaccines is fraught with mismanagement and cobbling together of systems that are fragile and in initial stages have failed in many instances.
Perhaps instead of business people tasked with gutting our health service with austerity and under investment, we need some caring doctors in charge to develop our health service to respond to the needs of the people.
We’re sick of lockdown that is not working. Young people are the first to come round to the view, why be careful when plainly sacrifices are not working. Pretty soon the general public will be asking similar q’s.
It’s clear inward FDI investors will be asking similar q’s. Those selling bonds to fund our losses due to Covid may be losing confidence expecting higher interest rates. Pretty soon mass redundancies, business closures may threaten our culture and way of life.
The quicker we get out of failing lockdown, the better.
Our nearest neighbour thanks its lucky stars it avoided the EU mess allowing it to respond to Covid successfully immunising its total population by the end of next June.
Compared to the sleep walking local response led by the HSE, Paul Reid, Michael Martin, Varadkar et al pulling the wool over our eye’s as the mess gets bigger and the cover up even bigger.
Till again….
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