Irish Politics Thread

The political will is interesting. In truth, like many things politically, it is a complicated issue, which encompasses central government, local government, planning authorities, and individuals. Self interest guides the debate, and as a result the vast majority of politicians etc look like hypocrites, or at least inconsistent.

The Huntacha wrote: Het-field wrote: The political will is interesting. In truth, like many things politically, it is a complicated issue, which encompasses central government, local government, planning authorities, and individuals. Self interest guides the debate, and as a result the vast majority of politicians etc look like hypocrites, or at least inconsistent. As in, there isn't any.

The whole Golfgate debacle getting dismissed really has the look of the judge looking after the boys.

Het-field wrote: If anything, the trial should reassure people that even those in power are not immune. The Courts and the investigative process was carried out in full. Plenty of other issues around COVID and politicians behaviour which never got that far.

It was such a high profile incident it was always going to trial but with a Supreme Court judge having attended the event and also a witness there was only going to be one outcome.

Het-field wrote: The point is by virtue of the trial they had to account for their actions, while other attendees paid the price at the political level. In fact, no issue surrounding COVID has had more due process and accountability than this one.

It seems the judge decided the outcome in under 5 mins so it’s fairly obvious her mind was already made up. The rules were clearly broken and as one political correspondent said today other people who had to have 10 people at a funeral to mourn a loved one sure all they had to do was divide up the church with partitions and say one group was for a funeral and another for a confession and another for a months mind.

Shedite wrote: MC Hammered wrote: It’s weird how that this thread doesn’t get much traffic. We love nosing at the UK and commenting on their situation. Strange when we have plenty of scandal/ stories going on locally.  Did anyone watch the debate between O’Broin and O’Brien last night? Is the consensus that it was a bit of a non event? Yeah bit of a shouting match really, they both have nice visions, but I can't imagine either of them hitting their targets with our track record. The Prime Time Housing week as a whole has been decent. Few interesting takes from last night...  - In 1990, 100 people fit in 25 homes. These days it's closer to 40 homes. In that time the population has gone from 3.5m to 5m. More people to house and less people per house has resulted in home many more houses we needed (I'm paraphrasing the figures but that was the general jist)  - A lot of people knock the approach of "build homes anywhere" with an attitude of "who'd want to live there". The one place that gets mentioned a lot is Leitrim, where we built 100,000 homes in the boom. It's the only country in Ireland that prices are still the same as 2000. They used that as proof that supply dampens the rises.  - On the "building in the middle of nowhere", people nowadays have an idea that being asked to live in an estate next to a field is bananas, but a lot of locations were like that in the 80's. Housing went up around them and they became what we know today as suburbs. The rental prices is the one thing that came across as nuts all week - how anyone can save for a mortgage when they're paying ore than that mortgage on rent is beyond me

Edited by t_rAndy - 05 Feb 2022 at 1:49pm

Unnecessary comment maybe, but not in any way indicative of anything other than acknowledging an outcome.

There is a wing of Irish politics at the moment that seems incapable of understanding that the current conflict is between Russia and Ukraine. Every comment needs to be counterbalanced with some reference to NATO, who are not actively involved in the conflict at all. They seem frustrated with the “one sided view”, when in fact supporting Ukraine and decrying Russia is a position generally shared.

Back in 2006 the PDs had a policy document that looked to move Dublin port and create a high rise “downtown” area around the Poolbeg area. The expectation was to have an American style building with retail units, offices and homes all in one.