Irish Times

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Nearly two thirds of the parliamentary party have been given jobs by enda. His potential challengers are either a gay Indian madman, or the simpleton son of a cork merchant prince family.

Enda is the only one in cabinet who has actually met the fine gael grassroots. The last time they tried a coup against enda, he was at an all time personal low, and the plotters were so horribly inept, that they won't be trying that again.

These cunts can barely take out their lads to pee, the prospect of them taking out a sitting taoiseach are vanishingly remote.

[Borracho]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It's not about Coveney or Varadkar, it's about what the parliamentary party want.

Fine Gal are only being propped up by Fianna Fail until the timing of an election suits the latter. That timing will arrive soon enough. And the FG parliamentary party are acutely aware that the longer Kenny clings on, the more chance there is of quite a few of them losing their seats when the election happens. The idea that they're happy with Kenny's piss-poor performance and are content for him to stay in power for the next few years, or even the next 12 months, is ridiculous.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It will be difficult for FF to force an election. They'd need the independents to go along with a no confidence vote, and the polls all show the independents getting walloped on a new election. Plus, the independents can't afford to run another campaign.

[loose cannon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Not to mention that FF will take back many of the independents seats...

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It's not about what the parliamentary party want though. It's what they can organise against a sitting taoiseach who has the support of much of the grass roots

They thought it was obvious that he should do the decent thing in 2010, yet here we are. They don't have the brains or the balls or the follow through to pull it off. Something really bad will have to happen.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Irish Water revenue has almost halved during the second quarter - unsurprisingly, given those were the first post-election figures.

[loose cannon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Irish Water will be tossed back and forth between FF and FG until the next election, each trying to snooker the other

[ursus arctos]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

From the FT

[loose cannon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

That falls into the third category of Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Another Red C poll:

FF 29% (+3)
FG 26% (-)
SF 13% (-2)
Ind 12% (-3)
Lab 6% (-)
AAA-PBP 5% (-)
Soc Dems 4% (-)
Greens 4% (+2)
Renua 1% (-)
Others 1% (-)

[Borracho]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Speaking of Averil Power, which we were about 50 pages ago, she has just been named as the new CEO of the Asthma Society of Ireland, having left politics in the wake of her failure to secure a Dáil seat in February.

Her salary is €105,000 a year. It's a great little nation.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

I wonder what percentage of the Asthma Society of Ireland's annual turnover that would be equivalent to.

I've found it. The Asthma Society of Ireland's income last year, which comes from donations, government funding and lotto money, was 830,501 euros.

Is she seriously getting 105,000 euros? That's sick.

[elguapo4]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Of course it is but it's the boards of these charities who should be called to account over the salaries they pay cause as far as I see paying huge money just makes people say "fuck that, I'm not paying for that"and stop donating

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

You know until Shane Ross decided to slay hypocrisy and waste at the OCI, I'd almost forgotten that he was a senior minister, with an important portfolio, which is dealing with a lot of crises at the moment.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Apparently Michael Collins was fighting for the cause of neoliberalism:

“Increasing general taxation is not the solution to all of our social and problems and infrastructural deficits and increasing it too much creates a problem in itself,” he added.

“Collins recognised that ‘the essence of our struggle was to secure freedom to order our own life’. And that is the vision that should be at the heart of our thinking in the 21st century.

“We need to advance and expand the recovering economy so that more people are free to order their own life; they are free to achieve their ambitions and their dreams.”

So says Varadkar.

Replace 'Collins' with 'our founding fathers' and it's standard PNAC claptrap.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

leo spent his twenties writing letters to the Irish times suggesting that we join up with america in iraq.

And Collins fought for the sort of laissez faire capitalism that killed a lot of people during the famine. I think he may have a bit of a point about general taxation, the composition of the Irish tax take has changed a lot in the last couple of years.

We're taking in about as much money as we did at the height of the boom, except there is no stamp duty, there is no capital gains tax, corporate taxation is still much lower. and there is no Vat from houses. Instead of free money from the bubble economy, that money now comes from income tax and USC on the top two thirds of earners. The bottom third of the work force don't pay income tax.

Given that a lot of these people are servicing mortgages on incredibly expensive houses, it is very difficult to see how much more money you can extract from them.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

So net migration reversed direction last year, with a net inflow of 3,100. 56,000 net jobs were created in the last 12 months (a rate of 3%) Employment has now hit two million, and unemployment is now down to 8%, half of what it was at its peak. The sheer scale of the positive change in our economic fortunes over the last five years is utterly extraordinary.

It's the second time that the Labour party have gone into government in bad economic times, and left government with the economy growing at an unprecedented rate. It's also the second time they've been destroyed for it.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

hmm, at its quickest, with a properly operating lending market it takes three to four years to go from buying a site to people moving into apartments. Four years ago ireland's developers were all bankrupt, our banks were not lending them any money, there was a substantial overhang of empty buildings. The economy has exploded in the last couple of years, and it's going to take a couple of more years for any accompanying increase in housebuilding to come online.

For the duration of the last government, we didn't have enough money to properly maintain the stock of public housing that we had, never mind build any more. An increase in public housing would be something that you would deal with during the course of a second government.

And to be honest, it's been very difficult for students to find accommodation in dublin since the turn of the century. People were already commuting from drogheda and kildare in 2000. It's just become worse.

For all of the improvement in our economic fortunes, only drops of that wealth have trickled down to the most in need.

actually again that's not quite true, there's a lot of people in employment who weren't. There's a lot of people in more secure employment than they were five years ago. Disposable income is rising sharply, right across the board.

Burst bubbles fuck people on the margins. Those people were well fucked at the start of the last governments time in office. The important thing is what happened next. Did things keep getting worse, as they looked like becoming, or did they get better.

And if you're only going to focus on the misfortune that inevitably befalls the most vulnerable in a time of economic desolation, you're going to miss out all the work that a government does to prevent the worst of this impact. in 2013 we were spending 40% of government expenditure on social welfare payments. it's the only sector of public expenditure that wasn't cut, at a time when everything was being slashed to the bone. It's difficult to express your priorities in a time of crisis more clearly than that.

The hilarious thing is that in Ireland, the Irish government turned the economy from the second most fucked bankrupt mess in all of europe, into the fastest growing economy, with a balanced budget, and a manageable debt, ended net migration, and created a fuck mountain of jobs, and in terms of economic performance, rank favourably with any government, anywhere, ever, we think they were utter cunts.

In the UK George Osbourne crashed the economy again, failed to make any impact on the budget deficit, and has ravaged the conditions and incomes of the poor, to directly transfer the money to the wealthy, and he was hailed by many (and enough of the electorate) as a genius.

it's funny how these things turn out.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Does the rental market solely depend on new properties? Or are landlords inflating the markets even more by withholding their hovels from rent till the price goes up even more? The vultures who have moved into our market will always want vacant possession also, so more evictions and possible homelessness then the old NAMA gaffs come back on stream for a grand more after a lick of paint.

Had we not the most craven, tell them what they want to hear AG, some form of rent control COULD have been imposed on the market, if framed proportionately (the SC have never found against rent control in general).

Had they the balls to push it through in 2011 during the crisis, the SC might even have signed up to the 82 style kill the landlords rent control (as they went against normal principles with public service pay in the FEMPI decision. Desperate times and all that will reduce the State's worship of property rights).

Right now if I want to move gaff it will cost me about 1500 PM (1-2 bed apartment) unless it's a hovel, or I want to buy a car and live in some Laois type pit. That's crazy money. There will be flat sharers in their 60s the way this is going. I doubt many Dubliners' exciting wage increases will pay for the increases the gouging rentiers are demanding. I dunno, maybe if half the Dail weren't buy to let scum themselves something would be done to move money from the pockets of the wealthy or smart pinshuners, and allow it circulate in the productive economy through the plebs actually having disposable income. But that's just mad (Adam Smith endorsed) Communism. For better to give the middle class and their little darlings generations of money for nothing, beyond painting out the damp every two years, between evictions.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Does the rental market solely depend on new properties? Or are landlords inflating the markets even more by withholding their hovels from rent till the price goes up even more? The vultures who have moved into our market will always want vacant possession also, so more evictions and possible homelessness then the old NAMA gaffs come back on stream for a grand more after a lick of paint.

in short yes. Apartments and rental properties are either being sold to people who then live in them, or are being taken out of the rental market so family members can live in it. For instance, my parents bought two apartments back in 1995, for half nothing. Both were available to rent, but My sister was given one to live in to encourage her to move home from Brussels, and the other apartment was taken off the rental market to enable me to gradually move back up to Dublin.

It would have been very difficult for my sister to find a flat, and it would be impossible for me to do so, if they didn't do this, and this is being played out across the country.

if they don't build more apartments and houses, soon there won't be a single rental apartment in the country. Rent controls also wouldn't have made very much of a difference. It would just have made life a little bit more bearable for those who were fortunate enough to have apartments, right up until the moment that the flat was withdrawn from the rental market.

but it would also have triggered a wave of bankruptcies, as an awful lot of Irish rental properties are attached to massive mortgages, that are barely serviced. The banks have studiously avoided lancing this boil.

Those properties would either have gone out of the rental market, or been bought by the vultures that you decry. But ultimately Ireland needs to have a very serious national conversation about property. We have to fundamentally change our way of looking at it and figure out a way of ensure that Irish people don't have to piss away a disproportionate amount of their disposable income on housing. It's very badly organised.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The buy to let mortgages should have been repossessed en masse. 2 years or so back this was apparently going to happen (least according to my land law lecturer at the time). There is no family home protection to hide behind for houses up for rent. If you have a massive mortgage you can't afford on speculative properties then I'm sorry my heart bleeds if you go bankrupt.

Even without vacant possession on every property they snaffled, it was such an obvious money maker I doubt many of our American friends would have been put off.

But yeah a proper conversation about property would be nice, like admitting a fuck load of natural young FGers, let alone the plebs, might never own ther own gaff (esp if their parents' wealth gets sucked up by their long life and expensive time in residential care). Like why is renting dead money but paying a mortgage past the average life expectancy isn't? And can we stop using the Ireland is different cos 800 years so we all need a fucking big garden as well as the title deeds thing? The population density of SoCal is not something for Dublin to aspire to.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

I can't believe there's not much of the spec student housing bubble in Dublin. It seems a banker, and a way to clear the wee nyaffs from the grown up rental market. From Glasgow to Bristol, 4-20 storey "luxury" student hutches are the most conspicuous and unstopped by Brexit developments. Haven't seen many of these in Dublin at all (I'm guessing tax incentives might be a reason).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

I can't believe there's not much of the spec student housing bubble in Dublin. It seems a banker, and a way to clear the wee nyaffs from the grown up rental market. From Glasgow to Bristol, 4-20 storey "luxury" student hutches are the most conspicuous and unstopped by Brexit developments. Haven't seen many of these in Dublin at all (I'm guessing tax incentives might be a reason).

There's a couple in ballymun servicing DCU right across . But if you look at where UCD is and look at where trinity is, why the hell would you build student accommodation near them when you could build a massive block of apartments. Seriously, where would you put these buildings?

The problem is hidden to a substantial degree because I'd be shocked if more than half of the student body in UCD weren't living at home. And I don't just mean the half of them that are from dublin, but also all the kids living in the commuter belt.

There's a lot of student accommodation in Galway, but there was a lot of space to build on here, and there's nowhere near enough because in winter, nearly a third of the population are students. There's 17,000 students in UCG alone.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: I can't believe there's not much of the spec student housing bubble in Dublin. It seems a banker, and a way to clear the wee nyaffs from the grown up rental market. From Glasgow to Bristol, 4-20 storey "luxury" student hutches are the most conspicuous and unstopped by Brexit developments. Haven't seen many of these in Dublin at all (I'm guessing tax incentives might be a reason).

There's a couple in ballymun servicing DCU right across . But if you look at where UCD is and look at where trinity is, why the hell would you build student accommodation near them when you could build a massive block of apartments. Seriously, where would you put these buildings?

The problem is hidden to a substantial degree because I'd be shocked if more than half of the student body in UCD weren't living at home. And I don't just mean the half of them that are from dublin, but also all the kids living in the commuter belt.

There's a lot of student accommodation in Galway, but there was a lot of space to build on here, and there's nowhere near enough because in winter, nearly a third of the population are students. There's 17,000 students in UCG alone.

There's a shit tonne of gapsites and derelict buildings around the city centre north side, especially around Abbey St (like by the Jervis stop) which will soon interconnect with Trinity on the new Luas line. A five-ten minute walk to college shouldn't be unimaginable for the Trinners boys and girls anyway. And the poor sods up at shiny new DIT could have tower blocks/respectful tenements put up around the Grangegorman/Phibsboro area (even conversion of offices etc).

There's no hope for UCD of course.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

yes, and if you think that the gap sites around the north side are going to be pissed away on student accommodation... The site cost alone renders these things implausible. Dublin is an awful lot more like london than leeds or birmingham, or wherever you see these things.