I doubt you could find a single thing the state does that no-one games. A more relevant metric would be whether significant numbers of people are gaming it.

In the jargon, you 'present' to your local authority as 'homeless' to get emergency accommodation.

To do so you cannot be a home owner, or have a current valid tenancy. Apparently you must show that your previous tenancy ended. You then claim that you were unable to source another one.

If you were living with relatives/friends you claim that they are no longer happy for you to live there any further.

Then there are probably cases like flooding and fire which are quite concrete.


I am sure that most people who present as homeless are indeed homeless.

However it is impossible to disprove that someone could not find a new tenancy, or that their family actually won't house them anymore.

If people in emergency accommodation are prioritised for social housing then an incentive exists to present as homeless. Six months or a year in a hotel room is unpleasant - but maybe not much more so than living with family - and if you are more likely to get a house at the end then it may be worth it.

What social house?

Stocks and flows.

Private house completions followed pretty much the same trajectory from 2008 (down 90% to from '08 to '11) -- it's not a conspiracy against social tenants:

The social house completion data also follows the trend of the economy albeit with a bit of a lag

Don’t worry coles a few more good years and we will be back to ensuring that Ireland is the best small country to not bother working or contributing to society in.

When the history of this period is written the failure of the EU/ IMF to provide stimulus funding for house building should be put in bold letters.

So simple, so effective, so predictable that the failure to do so would make a bad situation much worse.

What were they thinking.

That was not the consensus view on the pin.

Hindsight is often 20-20 vision

The ECB is dominated by thinking which rejects countercyclical stimulus in favour of procyclical flagellation based on profligacy myths.

Irish society completely bought into this thinking.

I recall it being a lively debate.

If anything, the counter argument was we would if we could but we cant.

Edit: this thread is an interesting walk down memory lane viewtopic.php?f=4&t=44492&start=585

It would appear that there were plenty of posters who were pro- austerity and anti-stimulus.

But there were a few on the other side of the argument too.

Of course it is. Every single policy of the State has been geared towards driving up property prices. Whether that is on the supply side by allowing speculators and vulture funds to hoard zoned development land with Capital Gains exemption, deliberately avoiding a Site Value Tax which would have driven vacant sites to the market, kicking derelict building charges so far down the road so as to make them pointless, strangling local authority social housing funding (funding for housing comes from central government), relying on private developers to build affordable housing for people who can't pay for them, handing over vast quantity of rental units to scum vulture funds rather than allowing them be sold on the open market, avoiding repossessions of bankrupt Buy to Let units for years and years despite them being vacant etc etc, doing nothing effective to prevent gouging of tenants etc etc, while on the demand side they traveled the world to attract as many 'language students' and low-skill labour to replace the Irish and Polish who were emigrating. How many people have come into Ireland in the last 5 years? 100'000? 200'000? Probably a lot closer to 300'000. At a time when no housing is being built and every government policy is ensuring that speculators can make more money by doing nothing? For fuck sake. "Not a conspiracy against social tenants"? If it's not a conspiracy then it's culpability by neglect! What the fuck did they expect to happen at the bottom of the market???

Some councillors back housing chief on queue jumping

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social- ... -1.3350279

Dogma trumps reality

1) Land hoarding is an excuse much used by those on the left - yet the reality is vulture funds are dumping land at every opportunity i.e. Plenty of residential land available in large towns for less than €20k per acre.

2) Vacant site registers are compiled by local councils - local politics ensure few if any sites are placed on the register. Central government is starting to call out the failures of certain left lead councils in this matter.

3) Again in fighting and apathy at council level is preventing new social housing rather than a lack of funds from central government?

4) Harsh reality is that private building firms are much more efficient than their public sector counterpart. Does it really cost €200k plus to build a 3 bed semi-D if you already own the land? Surely you as a builder knows this?

There's currently a protest outside Skehan's offices by the usual suspects

what exactly are they protesting?

down with common sense and reasonable commentary