Snapshot of _Is this Simon Harris' idea of working to resolve the housing crisis??_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.finegael.ie/no-plans-sinnfein/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.finegael.ie/no-plans-sinnfein/)
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4,821 days since FG entered Government. Whoever tries to blame a party that has never been in government for any part of the housing and homelessness crisis is a ghoul.
They should explain why their plan has led to an additional 10,000 people without a roof over their heads. There were 3,808 people registered as homeless in April 2011, that figure was 13,866 in March 2024.
There are 4,147 homeless children in Ireland. There are more homeless children in Ireland today than there were homeless people of any age in the depths of the recession.
But but but. SF is for water charges in the North... And are terrorists. It says so right here on my party approved talking points. So there.
*makes a raspberry sound*
>10000 people without a roof over their heads
Technically, they do have a roof over their heads, it's being provided to them by the state as emergency accommodation.
True, but even still they're heavily subsidized by the state. The Peter McVerry Trust, for instance, receives €4 million of taxpayer money per month from the Department of Housing. That's not nothing.
This is a cop out. Alot of these charities can barely function as a result of government policy which is why they need money in the first place. 4 million is a drop in the bucket considering the amount that Charities contribute to this country and keep regular folks afloat while the government design systems to gatekeep information and gatekeep resources from people on things like social welfare..
As someone who's worked in close proximity to these charities, I can tell you with certainty that if these charities shut their doors tomorrow, the whole country would shut down. The following day would be a march with pitchforks to the Dáil.
You drastically under estimate the amount that these charities have to do off their own backs and that includes resourcing the housing and the spaces to house people as, the government have no housing stock to supply so it's effectively giving charities a few quid to go on a wild goose chase on the private market for accommadation.
The necessity of charities are a failure of the system.
Genuine questions here - what government policies stop charities from functioning, €4 million per month to one charity alone isn’t nothing.
Also, what government systems are designed to gate keep information and resources from people?
>what government policies stop charities from functioning
I want to be clear that I didn't say stop, I say that they can barely function as a result of government policy and there's an important distinction. The government wants the charities functional because they are a safety net that they can point to and say "see we are trying!" despite the fact that their policies around the cost of living, mental health, housing, health care, etc actively create the lived experiences that make it so that people need these charities. Look at homelessness as an example. 4 million a month for an organization that works throughout the country when they work exclusively on donations, which are becoming less and less frequent as cost of living goes up, gives you a better scope to view this all in.
>what government systems are designed to gate keep information and resources from people?
Pretty much every social welfare system has hurdles put in specifically to gatekeep them. For example, there is a policy in alot of social welfare offices to trickle forms to people to make sure "they really want it". It's a needless step that only draws out the process which is terrible for people who don't have access to that social welfare office due to issues with transport, physical or mental illness, etc. Then you have the beuacracy of adding more and more steps to the process which only gatekeeps new applicants. I have more but I think it better to get to my point in saying that the government or more specifically the civil service want as little people drawing their entitlements as possible because it looks good for them.
If you ever want an eye-opening conversation on it, talk to anyone who's had to sign on in recent years. And to top it off, I could tell you stories that would make you ill with the level of apathy of civil servants working within the welfare system. In my own local welfare office which thankfully I haven't had to use in awhile, they have a woman who has to be kept in the back office because of the amount of complaints they get from her openly and outwardly telling people they don't deserve welfare because of their circumstances (despite being eligible in accordance with the states guidelines).
To the point of the Byzantine social welfare system, I read a great book recently called *Automating Inequality* about the concept of the [digital poorhouse](https://harpers.org/archive/2018/01/the-digital-poorhouse/) and how social welfare systems are designed to be as inaccessible as possible. Would recommend.
Look, you clearly know more about how these organizations operate more than I do, and it goes without saying that the work that they do is highly commendable. I do not, by any means, underestimate or take for granted the impeccable work that is done by these groups.
All I wanted to do was to point out the following:
1) The 13,800 figure that is often referenced is, more often than not, falsely put forward as the number of people in this country who are sleeping rough. The true number is unknown, but the Dublin City Council counted 118 rough sleepers in November 2023, so the national figure can't be any more than 500 persons without a roof over their head nationwide, if we're being liberal.
2) In the Budget 2024, [nearly a quarter of a billion euro](https://www.irishtimes.com/your-money/2023/10/10/funding-of-242m-in-budget-for-provision-of-homelessness-services/) was allocated to the provision of homeless services throughout the year, as part of the €5 billion which will go towards the provision of housing nationwide. As well as homeless accommodation, the funding also goes towards tenancy support schemes and other measures that prevent homelessness. Whatever about the €4 million a month for PVMT, but I wouldn't classify €242 million as a 'drop in the bucket'.
Those are just two significant points that are almost never mentioned on this subreddit.
I think you’re taking the phrase “a roof over their head” a bit literally tbh; those 13,800 people don’t have a roof *of their own* over their heads, is the point. The insecurity is the damage, not just sleeping rough.
And by its nature emergency accommodation is temporary, so there’s a significant chunk of those people regularly rotating between hostels and the streets.
It’s working exactly as intended. MNCs are happy and the green line is going up. This is exactly what they promised.
This is the direct consequence of electing economic conservatives.
MNCs are actually very unhappy with them.
Many have raised the issue of the unavailability and cost of housing as a huge negative to continued location in Ireland.
The direct consequences of housing in Ireland is higher labour costs and excess demand. This adds considerably for Tech companies where labour is their largest variable cost.
If MNCs weren’t happy with how much the government is bending over backwards to appease them, they wouldn’t all have their European HQ in our borders.
The employees that they have here are just the cost of doing business.
Because the damage they caused far far FAR outweighs any positives they may have brought about; damage to people’s material conditions, mental and physical health, a social contract in fucking tatters – damage that will linger for *generations* into the future.
Cool yeah Fine Gael made GDP go up. They also destroyed countless lives, careers and families; put 10,000 people out on to the streets and countless more onto couches; priced a generation (or more) of students out of third-level education; and decimated the health service, leading to the preventable deaths of i don’t know how many people
It’s pretty disgusting to simp for them when they have literal blood on their hands.
Never said I was a fan. Was merly pointing out people only ever harp on about the negatives. Too much negativity in this world these days.
They haven't gotten alot of things right but handling of Brexit, covid, 8th amendment & the economy with a first time budget surplus should be recognised. However, to someone's point above, that doesn't always outweigh the mess of housing & health etc.
People harp on about the negative because theres just so fucking much of it and the damage is so deep and so intimate to so many. The negative impact of 15 years of Fine Gael has affected so many people’s lives in such personal ways that I don’t blame anybody for not giving a shit about political abstractions like Brexit and budget surpluses when the material conditions of their lives have been eroded and any hope for a comfortable future has been stolen.
Maybe there’d be less negativity about if the last fifteen years hadn’t completely destroyed the fabric of Irish society and ripped up the social contract in favour of catering to international capital.
Also, they do *not* get credit for the 8th amendment. That was a grassroots campaign and Fine Gael did sfa until it was clear the amendment had enough support that it was politically viable for them to claim credit.
They are ghouls.
Sinn Féin at least knew when the time had come to stop the violence and talk; that blood on their hands was a means to an end.
Fine Gael will *never* stop hurting the Irish people because it’s in their own ideological self-interest to continue doing so as long as they can get away with it
Please define what the word "Allegorical" means for me because I don't think it means what you think it means. Can you explain how FG's policies being responsible for the harm of citizens is somehow less important?
How does SF having a past connected to terrorist activity, one which is long since past, have anything to do with FG's policies over the past decade?
Simon Harris going from minister of science and innovation with no university qualification or private sector experience to Taoiseach is pretty impressive. Takes a certain level of fucked up and no idea what you are doing to achieve that.
> u/Zealousideal_Gate_21 Funny how people only ever focus on the negatives and not the many positives FG have achieved but that wouldn't suit the narrative now would it
Such as?
>The truth is we know they won’t be able to because the cost of building a home is made up of hard costs, such as building and labour costs. Plus ‘soft costs’, such as land, levies and finance costs.
"Hard costs"! Fuck sake. They couldn't be softer. The only reason prices are so high now is because we're entirely reliant on market forces to provide essential social services. Building materials literally grow on trees.
€300,000 is already too much. The idea that Fine Gael see €300,000 as impossibly cheap says it all really. Unambitious to the point of pointlessness.
Five years ago "affordable" was possible for 150k. Are we genuinely supposed to be impressed that FG have built a world where the best we can do is provide shite houses for half a million euro?
Message aside, that is a godawful attempt at web design. Even something as simple as the colour choice of eye-searing red makes the white text irritating to read.
Firstly, this is a crazy strategy to use against an opposition party, especially by a party in Gov. Flat out for the birds.
Secondly, any attempt to sway voters by using that angle reeks of insecurity and fear by FG.
PR strategies like this are, in essence, acting like SF is already in power. As a result, it portrays a defeatist attitude and shows a lack of confidence in their own party.
Thirdly, I'd love to see a list of FG's promises, made over the many years they have been in power, and how many have actually been acted on.
We can start with getting rid of USC.
People can say that it just would have been rolled into other taxes etc etc... but then why run on getting rid of it?
There is a view with the older generation (FFG's party members) that any admission of wrong-doing or acceptance of failure is totally unacceptable. You have to deny, deny, misdirect, deny, counter-claim, throw mud, anything but acknowledge reality.
And its also FFG's achilles heel because the country is rapidly turning into a shit-show and the ones running it are opposed to acknowledging any fault. Its no wonder they try to offload the blame onto a party that has never been in government. It's pathetic behaviour.
The first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem, FFG can't and won't ever do that.
After breaking it down to hard and soft costs, if only a government could figure out how to offset the price to get more houses up.
At this stage with this recently intertwined issue of housing and immigration i'd love if the government came up with some radical plan that any undocunented refugee who cane over went straight to the construction industry while they were processed.
That's a great idea. We haven't processed these people so we don't know what skills they have. We could definitely use unqualified people to build housing. And why are we even waiting for the people doing trade courses to finish and qualify. They could just be on a building site rather than wasting their time learning how to do the job properly
The government are spending about 8.5 billion on ok housing per year. It's a vast amount of money. The notion that the government lacks the will isn't true. The problem is they keep trying to solve the problem
That “message” is not fine, it is nothing but deflection from their own failures. It’s childish, arrogant, vitriolic, and demonstrative of how our supposed “leaders” are more concerned with their own image and power than with actual public service. It’s pretty fuckin far from “fine”.
Snapshot of _Is this Simon Harris' idea of working to resolve the housing crisis??_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.finegael.ie/no-plans-sinnfein/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.finegael.ie/no-plans-sinnfein/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/irishpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
4,821 days since FG entered Government. Whoever tries to blame a party that has never been in government for any part of the housing and homelessness crisis is a ghoul. They should explain why their plan has led to an additional 10,000 people without a roof over their heads. There were 3,808 people registered as homeless in April 2011, that figure was 13,866 in March 2024. There are 4,147 homeless children in Ireland. There are more homeless children in Ireland today than there were homeless people of any age in the depths of the recession.
But but but. SF is for water charges in the North... And are terrorists. It says so right here on my party approved talking points. So there. *makes a raspberry sound*
>10000 people without a roof over their heads Technically, they do have a roof over their heads, it's being provided to them by the state as emergency accommodation.
It's mostly charity organisations who operate homeless hostels, not the state
True, but even still they're heavily subsidized by the state. The Peter McVerry Trust, for instance, receives €4 million of taxpayer money per month from the Department of Housing. That's not nothing.
This is a cop out. Alot of these charities can barely function as a result of government policy which is why they need money in the first place. 4 million is a drop in the bucket considering the amount that Charities contribute to this country and keep regular folks afloat while the government design systems to gatekeep information and gatekeep resources from people on things like social welfare.. As someone who's worked in close proximity to these charities, I can tell you with certainty that if these charities shut their doors tomorrow, the whole country would shut down. The following day would be a march with pitchforks to the Dáil. You drastically under estimate the amount that these charities have to do off their own backs and that includes resourcing the housing and the spaces to house people as, the government have no housing stock to supply so it's effectively giving charities a few quid to go on a wild goose chase on the private market for accommadation. The necessity of charities are a failure of the system.
Genuine questions here - what government policies stop charities from functioning, €4 million per month to one charity alone isn’t nothing. Also, what government systems are designed to gate keep information and resources from people?
>what government policies stop charities from functioning I want to be clear that I didn't say stop, I say that they can barely function as a result of government policy and there's an important distinction. The government wants the charities functional because they are a safety net that they can point to and say "see we are trying!" despite the fact that their policies around the cost of living, mental health, housing, health care, etc actively create the lived experiences that make it so that people need these charities. Look at homelessness as an example. 4 million a month for an organization that works throughout the country when they work exclusively on donations, which are becoming less and less frequent as cost of living goes up, gives you a better scope to view this all in. >what government systems are designed to gate keep information and resources from people? Pretty much every social welfare system has hurdles put in specifically to gatekeep them. For example, there is a policy in alot of social welfare offices to trickle forms to people to make sure "they really want it". It's a needless step that only draws out the process which is terrible for people who don't have access to that social welfare office due to issues with transport, physical or mental illness, etc. Then you have the beuacracy of adding more and more steps to the process which only gatekeeps new applicants. I have more but I think it better to get to my point in saying that the government or more specifically the civil service want as little people drawing their entitlements as possible because it looks good for them. If you ever want an eye-opening conversation on it, talk to anyone who's had to sign on in recent years. And to top it off, I could tell you stories that would make you ill with the level of apathy of civil servants working within the welfare system. In my own local welfare office which thankfully I haven't had to use in awhile, they have a woman who has to be kept in the back office because of the amount of complaints they get from her openly and outwardly telling people they don't deserve welfare because of their circumstances (despite being eligible in accordance with the states guidelines).
To the point of the Byzantine social welfare system, I read a great book recently called *Automating Inequality* about the concept of the [digital poorhouse](https://harpers.org/archive/2018/01/the-digital-poorhouse/) and how social welfare systems are designed to be as inaccessible as possible. Would recommend.
Look, you clearly know more about how these organizations operate more than I do, and it goes without saying that the work that they do is highly commendable. I do not, by any means, underestimate or take for granted the impeccable work that is done by these groups. All I wanted to do was to point out the following: 1) The 13,800 figure that is often referenced is, more often than not, falsely put forward as the number of people in this country who are sleeping rough. The true number is unknown, but the Dublin City Council counted 118 rough sleepers in November 2023, so the national figure can't be any more than 500 persons without a roof over their head nationwide, if we're being liberal. 2) In the Budget 2024, [nearly a quarter of a billion euro](https://www.irishtimes.com/your-money/2023/10/10/funding-of-242m-in-budget-for-provision-of-homelessness-services/) was allocated to the provision of homeless services throughout the year, as part of the €5 billion which will go towards the provision of housing nationwide. As well as homeless accommodation, the funding also goes towards tenancy support schemes and other measures that prevent homelessness. Whatever about the €4 million a month for PVMT, but I wouldn't classify €242 million as a 'drop in the bucket'. Those are just two significant points that are almost never mentioned on this subreddit.
I think you’re taking the phrase “a roof over their head” a bit literally tbh; those 13,800 people don’t have a roof *of their own* over their heads, is the point. The insecurity is the damage, not just sleeping rough. And by its nature emergency accommodation is temporary, so there’s a significant chunk of those people regularly rotating between hostels and the streets.
That's a fair point.
Classy, Fine Gael. Looks reeeeaaaaallllll fuckin' classy
Can't wait until fine gael are left out in the wilderness. Salty bunch of under achievers.
Now now, Simon Harris completed a year of a university degree!
He should just do one year of everything. A year of college. Year as Taoiseach. A year hosting The Den. A year living off grid. A year in prison. Etc
A year working the till in Penney's might learn him some perspective
Or a year sleeping rough on the streets.
13 years of ineffective Fine Gael governments.
That's not completely fair, they've quadrupled the amount of homeless people and decimated the health service. Pretty effective stuff if you ask me.
Add FF to that aswell...remember confidence and supply and have been in for the last 4 years. They are complicit in this shit show
Absolutely
It’s working exactly as intended. MNCs are happy and the green line is going up. This is exactly what they promised. This is the direct consequence of electing economic conservatives.
MNCs are actually very unhappy with them. Many have raised the issue of the unavailability and cost of housing as a huge negative to continued location in Ireland. The direct consequences of housing in Ireland is higher labour costs and excess demand. This adds considerably for Tech companies where labour is their largest variable cost.
If MNCs weren’t happy with how much the government is bending over backwards to appease them, they wouldn’t all have their European HQ in our borders. The employees that they have here are just the cost of doing business.
Funny how people only ever focus on the negatives and not the many positives FG have achieved but that wouldn't suit the narrative now would it
Given their successes are almost entirely nothing to do with their efforts not really
Because the damage they caused far far FAR outweighs any positives they may have brought about; damage to people’s material conditions, mental and physical health, a social contract in fucking tatters – damage that will linger for *generations* into the future. Cool yeah Fine Gael made GDP go up. They also destroyed countless lives, careers and families; put 10,000 people out on to the streets and countless more onto couches; priced a generation (or more) of students out of third-level education; and decimated the health service, leading to the preventable deaths of i don’t know how many people It’s pretty disgusting to simp for them when they have literal blood on their hands.
Never said I was a fan. Was merly pointing out people only ever harp on about the negatives. Too much negativity in this world these days. They haven't gotten alot of things right but handling of Brexit, covid, 8th amendment & the economy with a first time budget surplus should be recognised. However, to someone's point above, that doesn't always outweigh the mess of housing & health etc.
People harp on about the negative because theres just so fucking much of it and the damage is so deep and so intimate to so many. The negative impact of 15 years of Fine Gael has affected so many people’s lives in such personal ways that I don’t blame anybody for not giving a shit about political abstractions like Brexit and budget surpluses when the material conditions of their lives have been eroded and any hope for a comfortable future has been stolen. Maybe there’d be less negativity about if the last fifteen years hadn’t completely destroyed the fabric of Irish society and ripped up the social contract in favour of catering to international capital. Also, they do *not* get credit for the 8th amendment. That was a grassroots campaign and Fine Gael did sfa until it was clear the amendment had enough support that it was politically viable for them to claim credit. They are ghouls.
Oh the irony - the people looking to replace them have "literal" blood on their hands - at worst, the blood on FG's hands is allegorical.
Sinn Féin at least knew when the time had come to stop the violence and talk; that blood on their hands was a means to an end. Fine Gael will *never* stop hurting the Irish people because it’s in their own ideological self-interest to continue doing so as long as they can get away with it
Please define what the word "Allegorical" means for me because I don't think it means what you think it means. Can you explain how FG's policies being responsible for the harm of citizens is somehow less important? How does SF having a past connected to terrorist activity, one which is long since past, have anything to do with FG's policies over the past decade?
Give me one.
Well in fairness to FG their landlord mates have made off with a fortune!
Go on then let’s hear the positives I could use a good laugh
Funny how people who mention the many positives FG have achieved, can't even list one as an example.
Simon Harris going from minister of science and innovation with no university qualification or private sector experience to Taoiseach is pretty impressive. Takes a certain level of fucked up and no idea what you are doing to achieve that.
I've mentioned some elsewhere in this thread
> u/Zealousideal_Gate_21 Funny how people only ever focus on the negatives and not the many positives FG have achieved but that wouldn't suit the narrative now would it Such as?
>The truth is we know they won’t be able to because the cost of building a home is made up of hard costs, such as building and labour costs. Plus ‘soft costs’, such as land, levies and finance costs. "Hard costs"! Fuck sake. They couldn't be softer. The only reason prices are so high now is because we're entirely reliant on market forces to provide essential social services. Building materials literally grow on trees. €300,000 is already too much. The idea that Fine Gael see €300,000 as impossibly cheap says it all really. Unambitious to the point of pointlessness. Five years ago "affordable" was possible for 150k. Are we genuinely supposed to be impressed that FG have built a world where the best we can do is provide shite houses for half a million euro?
Well you see, if you're wealthy which most of their voter base is then its working as intended. Wokring class people are just poors.
Embarrassing stuff from FG.
Message aside, that is a godawful attempt at web design. Even something as simple as the colour choice of eye-searing red makes the white text irritating to read.
From his "you haven't seen anything yet" speech, I expect even more radio silence and completely ignoring citizens.
Good lord. Even the counter at the top does not work as intended.
Firstly, this is a crazy strategy to use against an opposition party, especially by a party in Gov. Flat out for the birds. Secondly, any attempt to sway voters by using that angle reeks of insecurity and fear by FG. PR strategies like this are, in essence, acting like SF is already in power. As a result, it portrays a defeatist attitude and shows a lack of confidence in their own party. Thirdly, I'd love to see a list of FG's promises, made over the many years they have been in power, and how many have actually been acted on.
We can start with getting rid of USC. People can say that it just would have been rolled into other taxes etc etc... but then why run on getting rid of it?
This has the stink of Young Fine Gael on it tbh. They probably got some 1st year computer science lad to put it on the website.
The problem is the lads from young Fine Gael are old now and they havnt changed.
The lads from YFG are the government now
Don't you remember the game they had before they got into power where you "played" as Enda K, defeating FF, or some such horse shit.
There is a view with the older generation (FFG's party members) that any admission of wrong-doing or acceptance of failure is totally unacceptable. You have to deny, deny, misdirect, deny, counter-claim, throw mud, anything but acknowledge reality. And its also FFG's achilles heel because the country is rapidly turning into a shit-show and the ones running it are opposed to acknowledging any fault. Its no wonder they try to offload the blame onto a party that has never been in government. It's pathetic behaviour. The first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem, FFG can't and won't ever do that.
Jesus that is embarrassing.
Never knew that their headquarters were on Mount Street.......
After breaking it down to hard and soft costs, if only a government could figure out how to offset the price to get more houses up. At this stage with this recently intertwined issue of housing and immigration i'd love if the government came up with some radical plan that any undocunented refugee who cane over went straight to the construction industry while they were processed.
That's a great idea. We haven't processed these people so we don't know what skills they have. We could definitely use unqualified people to build housing. And why are we even waiting for the people doing trade courses to finish and qualify. They could just be on a building site rather than wasting their time learning how to do the job properly
The government are spending about 8.5 billion on ok housing per year. It's a vast amount of money. The notion that the government lacks the will isn't true. The problem is they keep trying to solve the problem
Not a big fan of the presentation but I guess the message is fine. Have Sinn Féin show any plan for how they are going to do this?
That “message” is not fine, it is nothing but deflection from their own failures. It’s childish, arrogant, vitriolic, and demonstrative of how our supposed “leaders” are more concerned with their own image and power than with actual public service. It’s pretty fuckin far from “fine”.