Ireland's Trump

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cremeegg

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John Halligan, (the government minister) has said that landlords are exploiting people and that he would "jail the bastards".

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irelan...-for-fast-buck-says-john-halligan-404371.html





If this isn't incitement I don't know what is.

We have all seen the consequences of this kind of intemperate speech in other contexts recently, is this really acceptable from a Government minister ?

Somewhere this month or next there will be an uncomfortable meeting between a landlord and a tenant, perhaps both people under pressure. I hope John Halligan's word don't tip a tense situation into violence.

This man is not fit to govern us. His colleagues should drop him from the cabinet.
 
It's a supply and demand game. Is anyone going to go after the hotel industry for raising prices in the summer when there is a high demand for rooms?

Still nothing on the builders sitting on massive land banks who refuse to build. Or a lack of government policy on solving this problem. It's all the landlords fault you see...

Steven
www.bluewaterfp.ie
 
SBarrett said:
Still nothing on the builders sitting on massive land banks who refuse to build.
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Never mind that you'd need to be insane to build a housing estate at the moment with a non-functioning mortgage market that effectively caps your median potential selling price somewhere south of median unit cost -even if you can find a bank foolish enough to advance you the necessary development finance.
 
T McGibney said:
Never mind that you'd need to be insane to build a housing estate at the moment with a non-functioning mortgage market that effectively caps your median potential selling price somewhere south of median unit cost -even if you can find a bank foolish enough to advance you the necessary development finance.
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Yet the development that are being built are snapped up at crazy prices. Phase 1 of an 11 unit development near me in Kilternan sold out in minutes. The main road full of cars with people going to view. Starting price at €600,000.

3 units in Stepaside going to €1m a pop. They'll probably be snapped up too.

Getting a mortgage is difficult, mainly because people aren't aware of the banks methods for assessing mortgage applications, especially the ability to repay requirement (yeah, we save €4,000 a month but never mention all the withdrawals from that savings account :eek:). Even still, people are still buying off the plans and for big money.


Steven
www.bluewaterfp.ie
 
SBarrett said:
Yet the development that are being built are snapped up at crazy prices. Phase 1 of an 11 unit development near me in Kilternan sold out in minutes. The main road full of cars with people going to view. Starting price at €600,000.

3 units in Stepaside going to €1m a pop. They'll probably be snapped up too.
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Take a step out of the prosperous South Dublin bubble in any direction and it's a totally different story though.
 
cremeegg said:
This man is not fit to govern us. His colleagues should drop him from the cabinet.
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Promotion to cabinet was never likely to change the mantra of JH. This can be no surprise to Enda who take a huge risk in bringing him into the fold. I'd fancy a bet on him being the first man out in any contentious vote!
 
My original point on this thread isn't that John Halligan's opinions are misinformed, which they may be, but that it is unacceptable for a government minister to go around calling people bastards.

He should be thrown out of government.
 
It's not incitement. He's not encouraging crime or violence, he's expressing an opinion that some people/businesses are acting unethically.

cremeegg said:
My original point on this thread isn't that John Halligan's opinions are misinformed, which they may be, but that it is unacceptable for a government minister to go around calling people bastards.
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In his capacity as a TD, I'm fine with it. He's complaining loudly about the wrong things, but this is how his electorate decided to spend their vote.
As to the fact that he's also a minister, I wouldn't be too hopeful for the future of whatever-fas-is-called-now, but I'm not worried about his influence on housing policy - he will have none.
 
IT WOULDN'T TAKE HALLIGAN LONG TO HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION IF THERE WERE NO LANDLORDS IN THE MARKET. AN AWFUL LOT OF WHAT ARE CALLED LANDLORDS ARE LEAVING THE MARKET, AN AWFUL LOT MORE WILL BE DOING LIKEWISE. AN INDIVIDUAL BUYING A PROPERTY TO RENT OUT WOULD NEED HIS HEAD EXAMINED RIGHT NOW, EVEN WITH ALMOST ZERO INTEREST RATES ON MONEY. HALLIGAN'S NOW PART OF THE SO CALLED GOVERMENT OF THIS COUNTRY AND THIS HOUSING DEBACLE IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. HE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF HIMSELF.
EXCUSE THE CAPITAL LETTERS, MY GRANDCHILD HAS BEEN NAUGHTY.
 
cremeegg said:
it is unacceptable for a government minister to go around calling people bastards..
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He's not a member of the Government, i.e. a Minister of a Department of State. A minister of state was previously known as a "parliamentary secretary". Basically, it's just a fancy title for jumped up TDs.
 
PMU said:
He's not a member of the Government, i.e. a Minister of a Department of State. A minister of state was previously known as a "parliamentary secretary". Basically, it's just a fancy title for jumped up TDs.
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To be honest I don't care. This man called me a bastard and I am not happy about it.
 
With you cremeeg,

Some landlords are at best unsavoury , but surely most are not .
Using a broad brushstroke like he did , ends up tarring good with bad , and that is unfair.

Comment.
From threads it looks like average house is at k200.+ and much more round Dublin.
Without doubt , @ those prices purchasers cannot afford them or cannot afford to stay in their area..
So unless our Mr Halligans and his ilk in Dail address that issue ,and get real,our housing problems cannot be solved .
There seems to be an ideological blockage over the need and long-term benefits of social housing by both FF and FG.

Without an affordable place to live ,all else comes under pressure , be it wages, transport, schools etc .
Its much too important to leave to committees !
 
Gerry Canning said:
There seems to be an ideological blockage over the need and long-term benefits of social housing by both FF and FG.
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There's hardly an ideological blockage in the light of Dan O'Brien's comments on populism and playing to the gallery, but there most definitely is a budgetary one.

Let's do the math. At an average build cost of €250k per unit, 50,000 social housing units would cost €12.5 billion. There's no way a debt-soaked country like ours could afford that level of investment in the first instance.

Now look at rate of return. At an average rent of €50 per week, which may be overstated as many social housing tenants are paying less, these 50,000 units would generate €130m in rents each year. That's a rate of return of 1.04% per annum.

I don't know how much it costs the State to borrow, but if we assume an average interest rate of 2.5%, that would mean the State would have to charge an average rent of €120 per week to each new social housing tenant in order to break even on its borrowing cost. There's no way that's achievable when many of them are getting the order of €200 per week on the dole.

And even that's ignoring the substantial cumulative repairs & maintenance and depreciation costs on the State's initial investment.

The sums don't add up.
 
T McGibney said:
Never mind that you'd need to be insane to build a housing estate at the moment with a non-functioning mortgage market that effectively caps your median potential selling price somewhere south of median unit cost -even if you can find a bank foolish enough to advance you the necessary development finance.
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I drive past the building site off the River Road in Dublin 11 most days and I see guys cutting up bits of wood with saws and hammering then into blocks with hammers. There is no pre-fabricated elements to the build even though it's a very large site. In short there is a massive cost being added to the construction price due to construction methods which are grossly outdated and inefficient. The median unit cost is high due to the utter and complete incompetence of the people building the units. They are the root cause of the housing and homelessness crisis but because of the political pressure they can exert and the stupidity of ministers like Halligan and Kelly before him nobody is taking them to task. If you want to fix any problem find the root cause and concentrate on it.
 
The house construction sector is grossly outdated and inefficient because all the progressive and innovative builders have been chased out of business. The only ones building developments of any size are the lucky few who still have Celtic Tiger or pre-Tiger sites on their books. If you bought the site in 2002, you can still afford to build using 2002 methods.
 
T McGibney said:
The house construction sector is grossly outdated and inefficient because all the progressive and innovative builders have been chased out of business. The only ones building developments of any size are the lucky few who still have Celtic Tiger or pre-Tiger sites on their books. If you bought the site in 2002, you can still afford to build using 2002 methods.
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That's a cop-out. The time markets change is when they are under pressure. That's the way it always has been. The only reason the construction industry hasn't changed is because they are so used to living off tax breaks, nods and winks and market manipulation. I'm a capitalist and so I hate protectionism as it stops capital flowing to where it gets it's best return and so wealth becomes concentrated and inefficiency is tolerated. That hurts the poorest in society the most.
 
Purple said:
That's a cop-out. The time markets change is when they are under pressure. That's the way it always has been. The only reason the construction industry hasn't changed is because they are so used to living off tax breaks, nods and winks and market manipulation. I'm a capitalist and so I hate protectionism as it stops capital flowing to where it gets it's best return and so wealth becomes concentrated and inefficiency is tolerated. That hurts the poorest in society the most.
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How is it a cop-out? I'm not defending or representing the industry (with which I have no more connection than you have), I'm simply making an observation. Talk of protectionism is laughable in an industry where practically every operator has collapsed.
 
It's a cop out because progressive and innovative people are the ones to survive a downturn.
If there are none now that's because they were never there.
We all give out about inefficiencies in the state sector (and rightly so) but this is as bad or worse and they were paid one hell of a lot more than any state employee and still are.
 
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