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/
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…
Government & HSE Booster Failure
December 19, 2021
Mr Michael Martin it appears enjoys tripping down the stairs of Leinster House taking every opportunity he can to announce more idiotic lockdowns to add to the absurdity we all have now gotten used to.
There will be a price to pay for our economy and his government when PUP runs out and enough Irish business put to the wall.
I’ve no doubt NPHET have the experience in epidemiology to be able to map the transmission of a virus in our population if its transmission remains unchecked.
What Mr Martin and NPHET are severely lacking in is knowledge of the counter measures required to deal with this epidemic.
The absurdity begins with the notion the best way to tackle the epidemic is to put the whole country into lockdown.
From the beginning many are opposed to injudicious use of lockdown; many are now changing their minds regarding lockdown
“…a cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID-19 finds that lockdowns are far more harmful to public health (at least 5–10 times so in terms of wellbeing years) than COVID-19 can be.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.625778/full “https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890 “
“Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. has now carried out two large-scale experiments in public health—first, in March and April, the lockdown of the economy to arrest the spread of the virus, and second, since mid-April, the reopening of the economy. The results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections.”
https://www.kusi.com/who-now-warns-against-lockdowns-due-to-extreme-economic-damage/ “Dr. David Navarro of the WHO said, “the only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to recognize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.” Let’s look at Mr Martin’s competence at “recognize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers”
Our test and trace strategy has largely failed due to under investment in the computerisation of our Health Service combined with an under resourced and austerity driven health service riven by lack of efficiency and wastage of resources.
Mr Martin went on tv the week following the announcement of the current booster campaign announcing that 93,000 people had shown up last week for 180,000 appointments…His figures were wrong based on lack of communication between departments lacking in the software and electronic infrastructure to communicate properly with each other.
Mr Martin’s attack on the hospitality industry has been unprecedented rising this week to the absurdity of an 8pm lockdown curfew for pubs and restaurants.
Young people out for the evening will now retire to their homes in groups to continue to party where regulatory oversight will not exist.
Instead government should be working with key member of local communities to manage lockdown on a local basis based on electronic data on the spread of the virus locally.
But Mr Martin has ignored the role of electronics and computer systems bringing the medieval electronic systems used by the HSE into the twentieth century where its not vulnerable to cyber attacks and breakdown.
Mr Martin has failed to expand the health service to cope with the emergency. We’ve still ICU bed numbers that would not cope through austerity without Covid and they are per population on par with the lowest in Europe.
The failed idiotic response of lockdown is designed to keep down numbers in a failed health service.
Yet Irish commentators continue to measure MR Martin and NPHET by a scientific yardstick. If they were truly scientific, track and trace would be properly implemented, our health service would be enabled with the computer systems it needs to run an efficient health service, our hospital beds would have been dramatically increased to cope with the outbreak that has already broken the back of our health service unable to cope with respiratory and other normal rates of infections. Hospital waiting lists have gone through the roof.
Currently our Machiavellian politicians with sneaky cunning have jumped on the NPHET bandwagon using lockdown as a sticking plaster to hide their derogatory, despicable lack of investment in health care. Immediately, hearing that phrase they’ll come back with figures as to the amount of investment being made at present. The reality is we’ve one of the poorest returns on health care investment of any country in the world most of it poured into a management system top heavy in numbers and salaries.
Lockdown behind NPHET coat tails does not hide the outlandish betrayal of health service workers making their lives easier through expansion of support whether through extra hospital beds, staffing, facilities and/or the setup of extra hospital locations through acquisition of hotels or other infrastructure: protection of workers against burnout with decent hours and support.
Government through lockdown means to do this on austerity measures alone.
Let’s face it, we shouldn’t expect anything different.
Our housing crisis continues with announcement of national upwards of 15% rise in house prices. Storm Barra recently hit Ireland and https://www.thesun.ie/news/8034527/ireland-halfway-point-storm-barra-major-damage/ we had “IRELAND is only at the halfway point of Storm Barra, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has warned with significant damage and disruption expected later tonight”
Now the last time I heard Darragh O’Brien he was chasing publicity and attention for his housing policy. We were almost in tears and he was almost in tears as he directly addressed us all telling us he would be working night and day to address housing issues that were continuing to reach crisis proportions as they have done throughout this government’s tenure in office.
There he was taking over the role of the meteorological service I guess following his lockdown of housing policy he’s got extra time on his hands maybe he plans to lockdown the weather.
. We need to get on with living with Covid. I’ve already had the Delta Variant of Covid 19 turned out to be a mild cold.
Its likely Omicron symptoms will be fairly mild for most. But those with underlying conditions need safe and precautionary care and they should consider lockdown precautions to protect themselves and staff working with them.
We need to be more focused in our response to Covid. We need to open up our economy to be able to live with future mutations and variants.
Incompetence, fear mongering and stupid lockdowns that effect people in areas where transmission rates are low, counter measures are strong, need to be dropped. Its clear lockdown has failed.
Its made even more absurd by protection against Covid through vaccinations at a high rate in this country.
Its even more absurd when we do not have data rates of transmission describing its consequence for rates of hospital transmissions.
These rates are still predictive and uncertain and we have a population democratically entitled to make their own health decisions and avoidance measures without undue totalitarian interference by the state exceeding its remit with policies bound to fail.
Perhaps RTE need a full extra channel for Covid. We’re sick of over coverage. We’re sick of government on its Covid bandwagon and its refusal to deal with other problems of state.
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…
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