Fomenting dissent, or whatever. Surely we can
Boycott of holiday home owners needed - says County Council manager
- Thread starter Howth Head
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While I disagree with him the fact that he’s a landlord in Galway City is hardly relevant to the substantive point he’s making.
Howth Head
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I wouldn't call his point "substantive." It was a very specific suggestion of ways to make life difficult for people who are legally entitled to enjoy their own property within the law - just as he as a landlord is entitled to run his own property business without interference. He essentially wanted to see locals encouraged to target and intimidate those people - it had sinister undertones. Public policy on holiday homes is another matter altogether.
Simon Bourke: Holiday home owners have simply won at the game of life, it’s not their job to solve housing crisis
Even as a blow-in I’ve developed a level of disdain for them. Having wintered it out, endured the high tides, the eastern beasts, I’m entitled to enjoy the summer months in peace, we all are. But as soon as we feel the sun on our backs, the sand between our toes, they appear. Our neighbours.
www.independent.ie
I live in a small estate in a house approximately 200 metres from the beach. In that estate there are six, maybe seven, permanent residents, a couple of vacant properties, and horror of horrors, another six or seven holiday homes. More than half of those holiday homes are bigger than my house, fancier than my house, and better kept than my house. I have met the people who own those houses and they are all perfectly nice, perfectly pleasant and polite; probably great neighbours to those who live beside them for most of the year.
Last week, Tom Gilligan, the director of services for housing and roads at Mayo County Council, proffered an alternative solution to the nation’s ongoing housing problems by suggesting a ‘boycott’ of all holiday-home owners. This “peaceful, non-violent civil action” would have encouraged those living among Co Mayo’s some six thousand holiday-home owners to avoid any engagement with these “bad neighbours”, embark on public campaigns, host community meetings, and apply “social pressure” to the home-owners via open-letters and local resolutions.
Official who called for boycott of holiday homes puts one of his three houses for sale
The senior council executive who controversially called for a boycott of holiday homes has listed one of his three houses for sale.
extra.ie
Howth Head
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Given how strongly he feels about outsiders, I presume he's only selling it to locals with ties to the area?
Would he be in favour of doing the same thing to owners of large houses around the country in which only one of two people live? If we're talking about the impact of under occupancy on our housing shortage then that's a much bigger problem. He could start a "Boycott the Grannies" campaign.
As long as they are paying the full cost of it themselves then that would work... my point was that targeting holiday homes is populist and would have little impact on the overall national problem.
The answer is staring us all in the face, forced euthanasia for all over 75.
This has the dual advantage of freeing up housing for migrants who entered the country illegally and significantly reducing the burdensome and pesky publicly funded pension costs.
A recent Irish independent survey said 70% of those under 20 were in favour of it or 3 out of every 100 people in that age cohort strongly believing its the only solution.
Let's see if you feel the same way when you're in your seventies
That's a bit severe. How about making it so that retirement benefits last for a maximum of 20 years. After that time you stop getting your pension or access to free healthcare and you are subject to a 10% [property tax. If you're a bricklayer and you're physically crocked at 65 then retire in the comfortable knowledge that you'll be well dead by 85. If you spend your day polishing the backside of your trousers at a desk and are in good health at 65, expecting to live for another 30 years or so, then you should work on until you are 75.
On a serious note I'd increase property tax so that the current annual charge is what is charged per month. I'd double that for second homes and I'd make all indirect taxes fully deductible from income tax.
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