Last night.
On RTÉ One’s Prime Time.
Miriam O’Callaghan hosted a near 25-minute debate on housing and homelessness with People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett, Labour’s Jan O’Sullivan, Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Bróin, Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy, and Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien.
The politicians discussed their policies while Ms O’Callaghan had the following exchange with the minister after she recalled how a homeless man suffered life-changing injuries while the tent within which he was sleeping was removed by from along the Grand Canal near Leeson Street Bridge in Dublin last Tuesday…
Eoghan Murphy: “We took over the housing brief in 2016 and we’ve doubled the number of homes built. Now that’s not enough but we’re going to double it again if we’re elected to Government.”
Miriam O’Callaghan: “Just to go back to that homeless man at the canal. I mean your leader’s instinct was first to look for a statement from a Fianna Fáil politician.”
Murphy: “Leo Varadkar’s first instinct was shock and anger and then he was upset about it. And I know this because I work with him. And he expressed sympathy when he was first asked about it. But the best way to help that individual, and other individuals, is actually not the route to emergency accommodation, it’s the route to a home.
“And that’s Housing First. People talk about how they’ve solved homelessness in Finland and some large cities. It’s that Housing First model.
“You build homes for single individuals, you take them from emergency, from the streets, into the home and you wrap the care and supports around them. And we’ve introduced that and we’ve helped more than 300 people…”
O’Callaghan: “But by any measure I suppose, in 2016, young people weren’t able to buy their own homes, rents were escalating, thousands were falling into homelessness. Four years on, that situation is exactly, more or less, the same.”
“By any measure you have failed.”
Murphy: “Well since that period, we’ve been able to help 11,000 people out of homelessness. It’s not enough but those people are in homes now because of the supports that we gave. And what we did start, when we took over the housing brief, was we did focus in, not just on building more private homes, but social homes as well.
“So, in 2016, I think it was less than 1,000 social houses were built. I mean actually new homes built. Last year it was more than 6,000…”
Meanwhile…
During the programme…
Architect Orla Hegarty tweeted:
“Social housing ‘delivered’ in recent years, significant amounts purchased and leased (Research: Killian Woods, of the Business Post)”
And…
5296 social homes built by @FineGael from 2016-2020.
Don’t let them fool you with unrealistic private development figures and ESB connections.#GE2020 pic.twitter.com/kaLzhc2ZUK
— Cllr. Anthony Flynn (@AnthonyICHH) January 21, 2020
Oh.
Yesterday: ‘It’s Not Possible To Make Housing More Affordable By Just Increasing Supply’
Watch Prime Time back in full here
This was an infuriating watch. Boyd Barrett made a lot of sense.
+1
RBB is one of the few genuine and competent politicians in this country
more homeless children than ever, thanks posh-boy
Did they as Eoin how SF are doing with homelessness in Northern Ireland?
this is not the UK. no one cares how they do their business
Which government holds the purse strings in northern ireland?
Plenty of old chestnuts on that tree of yours
you know marylou’s feeling the squeeze when sentence coherency is abandoned
About 16 minutes in Murphy says this:
“We took over the Housing Brief in 2016 and actually, interestingly, Brendan Howlin, because the Labour Party had the Housing brief before then until the middle of 2016, admitted they didn’t have enough money.
Once we came in, Department of Housing and Minister for Housing, 6 billion in funding for housing, ring-fenced over that period of time.”
He’s basically saying: the Government I was part of, didn’t fund Housing because Brendan Howlin was Minister. However, once my party took over Housing, the Department of Finance, also controlled by my party, decided it was a priority for funding.
Unbelievable spin.
Or you could look at the pretty chart and see that the number of houses delivered jumped in 2015 – which was under Brendan Howlin. He’s not blaming Howlin – he’s giving a reason that he failed.
The country was stone-broke in 2008…2013; as the economy improved then the available money increased.
We borrowed €13bn in 2008, €25bn in 2009, €18bn in 2010, €26bn in 2011 and €19bn in 2012, €36bn in 2013.
> http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1027552.shtml
> https://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/theres-no-housing-bubble-michael-noonan-wants-prices-to-rise-30168455.html
High house prices, FG govt policy since April 2014
Speaking at the ‘Sunday Independent Business Evening ‘ on Tuesday, Noonan said the Government will use NAMA, the state toxic property loans agency, to tackle the housing shortage. “We need to get property prices up another bit,” he told the Dublin event.
That’s what they were using the 6 billion in funding for, to get prices up, not to get value for money. Now look where ye are.