President Michael D Higgins at the launch of Merchants Quay Ireland’s annual report this morning in Dublin
RTÉ reports:
“President Michael D Higgins has urged bodies like the City and County Managers’ Association to apologise publicly for not valuing social housing more in recent decades. Speaking in Dublin, he said that while a newspaper headline proclaims today that the economy is roaring back in Ireland, inequalities are roaring back much louder in the world.”
“President Higgins was speaking at the launch of the annual report of the housing charity, Merchant’s Quay Ireland. The report states that it delivered 19% more medical interventions to homeless people throughout the Republic last year and that homelessness and drug use continues to grow in the midst of what it terms “an unprecedented housing crisis”. The President recalled that in 1995 there were 2,000 methadone users in the State but that there are now 10,000.”
President calls for apology over social housing (RTÉ)
Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie
I call for an apology from that lying hobbit, the Queen’s lapdog, the man who abandoned his own promises to the people who voted for him. Apologise and be gone you muppet.
What promise did go back on?
Can you explain you’re comment in more specific terms or are you just going for soundbites and slogans?
It’s a Zuppy thing…. can’t colour between the lines so she/he uses a wide brush.
…let me try…Squee rubber stamped one of the most devisive pieces of legislation ever to be inflicted on the Irish people without a whimper and with indecent haste…ok…that’s his job…but the Michael D of old may have toed the party line but he would have kicked and screamed at the obscenity of spending hundreds of millions to create a hated quango that will ultimately be privatised for the enrichment of a few…muppet.
Doesn’t explain the Queen’s lapdog bit, though.
They pal around at weekends maybe?
and here’s the usual cretin who doesn’t live here lecturing.
argualbly it’s not an apology that’s needed. what is needed is more housing units, more comprehensive legislation to regulate the rental market and more supports for tenants facing notice to quit.
That’s an excellent comment, which shouldn’t be dismissed due to a lack of capitalisation. :)
It’s logical though, so it’ll never fly in the Dáil.
Basically the president of New Ireland is saying that New Ireland isn’t quite as great as we think it is.
Gays – progress!
Working mothers – progress!
20/30-something adults living on top of one another in expensive shared accomodation – progress!
Oldest mothers in Europe – progress!
Streets of our towns and cities oozing with drunks, druggies, mentally ill and washed up homeless people – progress!
Direct provision abuse on a scale at least an order of magnitude worse than the Magdalene laundries – progress!
Scandanavian levels of taxation without the services – progress!
The remnants of sovereignty (economic, military, political) – progress!
God be with the days where you went work Monday to Friday and came home in the evening to your two-up-two-down and a smiling wife, cut the grass on a Saturday and went to Mass on a Sunday. New Ireland is great for the small minority, not so great for the rapidly growing underclass, the burgeoning working poor and squeezed ex middle class swathes.
Maybe if we all watched RTE at least two hours a day, things mightn’t be so bad?
you almost made me spill my tuscany three-bean salad..
*salad
Young conservative neat hair Fine Gaelers any minute now, with their sneering hatred of the less well off, the marginalized, the victims of drug abuse.
“May your future attempt to smother yourself be more successful than your attempts to smother dialogue” – Dali Lama 1912 – 2014
“victims”?
I dont have a problem with that ….. however , isnt social housing an ideology thing?
driven by the very practical issue of clearing out tenements.
Sure couldn’t he donate a big whack of his salary straight to Merchants Quay, since his accommodation, food transport needs etc are paid for?
Hard to see why a former Labour TD needs such a big salary, or rather, why anybody deserves such a salary for going around talking shite, shaking hands and signing Bills.
He took office with a whopping big pay cut to his salary, unlike the last president who shook hands and drank tea with everyone and stood for what exactly (apart from backing up her husband after the whitewash that was the magdelene investigation)? The position of president in this country is not about who will lead us as much as who we want to represent us on the world stage. If people are annoyed that Michael D acts like a statesman, lunches with the queen and signs bills into law that are not unconstitutional then they really should educate themselves on what the presidency is exactly.
He earns €249,014 per annum, after he took a cut of €76,493. Wow. Slow clap for the little man.
Now, if you might address my point rather than engaging in waffle, lick arsery, forelock tugging and condescension, can you tell me why he needs so much money to act like a Statesman, lunch with the Queen and sign Bills into Law? He earns more than both the German and Russian Presidents.
Wait, what, this is your feckin’ approach to housing policy? Let’s have the president give some of hos salary towards it and we’re sorted? Or must anyone at all making a comment about it put some of their salary towards it? And we won;t force them to do it by law, just by sneering and insults until they do it, and then a slow golf-clap if they’re stupid enough to do it and then a few cutting remarks about how little it was and a few more insults? Truly this is the answer to all our problems.
You expect me (or anyone) to take you seriously after you wrote “Slow clap for the little fat man.” Perhaps you would prefer we elect based on looks like the Americans have since Reagan.
He is small and he is fat.
Anyway, back to the point I made, any chance of addressing that?
Thank God David Norris wasn’t elected.
I would credit norris with more integrity in the role of president than any other politician of this generation.