A lot of people asking me about Nick Rabbitts (@Nick468official ) article in the Limerick Leader.

The article was called “Original Opera Plan in Limerick Had Provision For Housing”, a mouthful title for a juicy story.

Nick was very kind to offer to share the story with TCV to highlight an atrocity in local government which cost Limerick City 160 apartments. The journalist isn’t at liberty to speculate how this happened, such is the drawback of print media but if you have any theories please feel free to leave a comment.

The original plans for Project Opera included 161 housing units in the scheme, the Limerick Leader can reveal.

Amid persistent calls for residential units in the €150m project, it has now come to light that days before securing funding to buy the site from Nama in 2011, council bosses outlined plans for 59 units in existing buildings and 102 new homes.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Limerick Leader show the ‘preliminary capacity study’ prepared by the city’s senior executive architect Seamus Hanrahan outlined the proposal, with former city manager Tom Mackey adding the site could “comfortably accommodate” both social and affordable housing.

Plans were also in place for a “large department store” with its main entrance at the Ellen Street-Michael Street junction.

Instead, a fresh blueprint unveiled for the €150m proposal earlier this year by Limerick Twenty Thirty – a public body which has taken over the running of the site from council – showed three towering office blocks, but only limited commercial space.

Crucially, no residential units were included, bringing about opposition from many quarters, including from the Limerick Chamber and homelessness charity Novas.
Councillors were due to debate the future of the site at a meeting on Tuesday morning.
Cllr Cian Prendiville, who has campaigned for housing in the €150m plan says people must “demand” these units are built, adding: “I think people deserve to know when was this U-turn made and who agreed to it?”

Back in 2011, the old City Council was given €12.5m funding from the Department of the Environment to buy the Patrick Street site after plans for a shopping centre fell through due to the economic downturn.
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A letter from Mr Mackey – dated October 28, 2011 – seeking funding under the department’s regeneration budget stated he believed the Opera Centre offered opportunities to deliver both social and private housing “which will increase demand in the city centre”, as well as providing “new civic spaces which will entice people back from the suburbs to the city centre.”

“In order to achieve this, in the current economic climate, Limerick City Council must have control of the site to ensure it is developed efficiently and effectively to address the need for social and economic regeneration of Limerick City,” he added.

Reacting, Cllr Prendiville said: “Somewhere between 2011 and today, the council gave up on this plan for the city centre to be a place to work, socialise and live. Precisely at the time when a need for social housing and affordable mortgages was growing, the council turned its backs to provide 160 apartments on the site.”

"It's either us, or chaos!!" a man shouts from the podium
"Chaos, chaos!" the crowd shout back
"Doesn't matter, that's us too." He chuffs

So opens the Twitter account of @hiredknave one of the internet’s best kept secret writers, but I’m willing to blow the lid on his cover by sharing some of his work here.

Richard wrote three great posts in the last ten days alone, all worth checking out, but the one I’d like to share with you is called ‘A note on impartiality in reporting on the 8th Amendment’.

A crucial piece in considering the wording used by established media and an example of why it’s hard to re-educate the conservative majority when introducing fundamental changes in an effort to create a socially balanced and equal society.

A referendum on the repeal of the 8th Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland is to be held this year. It is likely, as with previous referendum campaigns, that a great deal of attention will be devoted to the matters of ‘fairness’, ‘impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, and that broadcasters, particularly the State broadcaster RTÉ, will devote equal airtime to voices for and against.

If an article in the constitution is the subject of a referendum, it follows, in the interests of the ‘impartiality’ regularly cited to ensure that both sides are given equal hearing, that the assertions of that article should not be reported as valid.

Some people will argue that the article is valid and others will argue that it is not. So, having regard for the declared need to ensure ‘impartiality’, it follows that a broadcaster should not do anything to give the impression, from its own coverage, that the article is valid. Or not valid, for that matter.

Yesterday afternoon RTÉ Radio 1 ran a news report during its Drivetime programme on Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin’s speech in support of repealing the 8th Amendment.

Introducing the speech, household name Eileen Dunne referred to “the 8th Amendment that recognises the equal right to life of the mother and her unborn child”. This is a paraphrasing of the wording of the amendment. It is also -perhaps coincidentally- the exact wording used on the Wikipedia article on the 8th Amendment (as of today).

Given that the amendment in question will be under consideration for removal through a referendum, you might conclude that impartiality means not taking a stance on whether the right mentioned by the text, or the categories associated to that right, exist in fact. Some people think the right exists, others do not.

If we say “the 8th Amendment recognises the equal right to life”, which is what RTÉ News says, then we are tacitly proposing that this equal right to life actually exists, and that the 8th Amendment recognises it. Hence its removal would not remove this right from existence: it would simply remove it from the constitution.

If we refer to “mothers” in this way,, we are tacitly proposing that anyone who is pregnant is a mother, regardless of whether they want to be or not.

If we refer to the “unborn child” in this way we are tacitly proposing that anyone who is pregnant ought to be considered as carrying an unborn child, regardless of whether they wish to give birth to a child. Or in other words, the question of whether they are going to give birth to a child is not a matter for whoever is pregnant.

The point is that the validity of what the constitutional amendment says is being contested by a referendum, but RTÉ in this instance (and I would venture that this happens regularly, not only with RTÉ) has effectively reported that what the constitutional amendment says is valid, and in so doing has conveyed the political perspective that informs this constitutional amendment as simple fact. Such reporting cannot be considered impartial.

Later on in the Drivetime programme, RTÉ played a 42-second recording of Micheál Martin’s speech and a one minute long recording of Fine Gael anti-choice TD Peter Fitzpatrick’s malign drivel.

(Richard concludes here but if you've any further thoughts or examples of impartiality in the media please leave a comment). 

This is a painting by the talented Stephen Johnston called 'Jennifer' which was shortlisted for the prestigious Hennessy Portrait Award 2016.

There is a striking contrast here between age and youth, sharp blue eyes and golden waves adorn the detail of aging beauty.

This post originally featured with a story about peace and hope in Northern Ireland but was sadly removed due to a difference of opinion with the writer over the image used. Unfortunately compromise could not be reached on this occasion but talks are on going. 

The following post is by Tony Groves aka @Trickstersworld who co presents the @EchoChambersPod as well as featuring prominently on other sites. Originally titled Money Problems I kind of half got permission to edit it so if you like what you see check out the original at echochamberpod.com along with some other great posts from inside the mind of Ireland’s best pod cast. 

Money is not a problem. A simple sentence, repeated over and over by Housing Minister after Housing Minister. Five words designed to give the impression that the Government are throwing all the necessary resources at tackling the housing crisis. Money is not a problem.

Maybe money should be a problem. In fact, given Fine Gael’s self-styled nonsense about being the party of the fiscally responsible, money should be placed at the very centre of the housing crisis.

I’ve been lucky to sit down and chat with a host of experts on the housing crisis, all of whom agree on one thing. Fine Gael aren’t putting the resources into the right areas. The economic reality is that this government, the one so obsessed with the Debt to GDP ratio, are burning money.

Take the homeless hubs, or as Mary McAuliffe calls them The Poor Warehouses.

The average cost of housing a family is €69,000. Dublin City Council currently have over 950 vacant units in need of a refurbishment. The cost of the refurbishment would be between €30-50k and the works could be completed in a few months.

For €47 million we could give 950 families a home, a permanent home. Money is not a problem.

Instead, in November 2017 alone there were over 1,530 families accessing emergency accommodation. The average time spent in the emergency accommodation system is 3 years, that’s a cost of about €316 million.

€316m to warehouse a national disgrace, or €47m to make a serious effort to address it. Money is not a problem.

If Fine Gael want to be taken seriously as custodians of the economy then they need to address their economic lunacy in tackling the housing crisis. Money is not a problem.

But wait, there’s more. The current crisis isn’t just a homelessness crisis, there’s also a drastic crisis in the availability of affordable housing. Affordable housing should be, by definition, housing that is affordable to the average worker. Taking the latest CSO stats on a double income household and current mortgage lending rules the cost of an Affordable Home should be in or around €240k.

Yet the state are buying homes and selling them to people at a 15% discount of the market value. Given that the average cost of a house in Dublin is €365k this is not affordable housing, nor is it anywhere in reach of the average couple.

This wouldn’t be such a disgusting waste of money if it wasn’t for the fact that, as shown by the Ó Cualann Cooperative, family homes can be built for between €151-168K. That’s affordable housing. It can be done quickly, cheaply and to high building standards. I know, I’ve seen them for myself. Money is not a problem.

The State could do this on a wide scale, but they are married to private developers and the “free-rigged-market”. The money that is not a problem is going to developers, at roughly 2.5 times the cost per unit when compared to the Ó Cualann Cooperative.

Finally, for today, there’s another black hole that is swallowing money that is not a problem. It’s called the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and it devours over half a billion euro a year. HAP as a temporary scheme is a good idea, as Mel Reynolds told me, “you need to keep the patient alive”. But as a long term strategy it is disastrous, socially and economically.

The average HAP payment is €825 per month. A mortgage of say €190k over 20yrs at 3.5% would have a monthly repayment of €800. Now, if the government wanted to they could borrow money at near 0% rates, build houses, or pay someone like Ó Cualann to build them and rent the homes on long term leases, SAVE the state a fortune in HAP and other rent assistance schemes and still own the underlying asset.

These things aren’t complex. What we are doing now is complex. Fine Gael are supposed to be the party that fixes the economy. But they are burning money by choosing the most costly solutions to the crisis.
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So listen out for the “money is not a problem” mantra and tell them straight, “no, but it should be, it is the economy, stupid”.

Picture by @Slanecartoons

This is a post from Old Diesel Blog by @olddiesel who has been blogging regularly since 2013. Originally titled ‘So Skehan gets to keep his job’, Old Diesel clearly didn’t approve the reappointment. Before we continue it’s worth remembering some of Conor Skehan’s best quotes on housing:

“Baby boomers are part of a housing market distortion that’s happening all over the western world. They have this enormous amount of money, they’re very interested in property and they regard property as a particularly cosy thing to dip into,”

“An awful lot of Irish Times readers are owners of a second house, and probably a holiday home as well and they are, unwittingly, part of what is creating a shortage of availability of housing.”

“We unwittingly created a problem by prioritising self-declared homelessness above all other types of housing need, which created a distortion in the waiting list system and may have encouraged people to game the system.”

“If you were a social scientist analysing it, you might find people who had chaotic lives suddenly being displaced by people who had two or three kids and who have found a way of gaming the system. If you were systematic about it, you might find that one or two constituencies were places where that happened more than anywhere else in the country.”

“One of the tragedies of living on an island is that we are people who indulge in insular thinking.”

“Our housing crisis is completely normal. Every country in Europe has equivalent issues in terms of affordability, in terms of homelessness”

“Homelessness is a dreadful thing when it happens to someone, but it is a normal thing, it happens” 

The post touches on maladministration in Ireland and how our complacency keeps us from viewing alternatives, I hope you enjoy:

So Conor Skehan has been reselected to continue his role as chairperson of the housing agency – in spite of spouting nonsense about how people “might be gaming the system by presenting homeless to skip the queue”. 
Most sensible people will of course be aware that the actual problem is that there are more people then available housing. This means that too many people are left without a home – even if they’ve had no problems that might have caused having no home.  
 
What I’m wondering is if there are people out there that would be better suited to the position of chairperson of the housing Agency. I suspect there is – there has to be – the days of we couldn’t find anyone better have to be over, unless the person you get in is actually excellent.  
 
I would like to suggest some superior to Skehan contenders for the role of chairperson of the housing Agency. 
 
Michael Bennett and Hugh Brennan.  
Michael Bennett delivered 3 bed Passive house for 190 k a unit – and via Co op housing with O Cealunn in Ballymun Hugh Brennan delivered A2 BER rated 3 bed for 170 k. While there’s little doubt small land cost contributed to both projects coming in at a very reasonable cost – this also serves to highlight just how big a problem land cost is. In any case – both Michael and Hugh have actual house delivery experience behind them – using cost effective approaches to building excellent homes. One of Hugh’s buyers was quoted as saying her MORTGAGE for her Hugh Brennan delivered home was 600 euro a month. The possibilities are off the scale at such a low level per month.  
 
Erica Fleming 
A fearless campaigner – not afraid to openly challenge Fine Gael or Labour. Passionate, with actual experience of being homeless herself, determined, willing to drive through barriers. You just know that anyone who puts a barrier in her way is probably going to lose – painfully. Happily if Erica is demolishing barriers – the people are probably going to win. HANDSOMELY. 
 
Lorcan Sirr  
Housing expert and lecturer on said topic – always makes very relevant points. Lorcan is switched on to the BIG issues surrounding housing. Ideal qualities for a chairperson of a housing related portfolio.  
 
Nice shortlist in my opinion
 
Pic once again by the very talented @EoinKr