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Minister for Housing Simon Coveney on Tonight with Vincent Browne last night

Last night.

On Tonight with Vincent Browne.

In a pre-recorded interview with Fine Gael’s Minister for Housing Simon Coveney, who is running in the Fine Gael leadership race against Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar…

Mr Coveney said he is different to Mr Varadkar who, earlier this week, said he wants to lead a party for “people who get up early in the morning.”

In addition, Mr Coveney said  “those people are as important to me as people who pay for everything” referring to people in receipt of social welfare payments.

The Housing Minister also called for people to judge him based on his actions, pointed to his €5.5billion social housing plan.

From the interview…

Simon Coveney: “I think there is a choice for the party that’s quite different.”

Vincent Browne: “Tell us the choice, between one person who says what and the other person says. Tell us both.”

Coveney: “I will. What I have been talking about is a party that represents everybody. Unlike most parties in the country at the moment, many of the smaller parties in particular, focus on niche areas in society and only represent that group of people and then actually get political traction on the basis of division and anger and protest.”

“What I’m talking about is Fine Gael representing someone who is unfortunately in a sleeping bag tonight on the streets of Dublin, as well as supporting people who are creating thousands of jobs. And supporting them and celebrating that success.

“This is a party that I joined and it’s a party that I’ve been a part of for nearly two decades of my working life that I believe has to get the best out of everybody regardless of their limitations or disabilities or social disadvantage or whatever. And…”

Browne: “Ok, that’s what you stand for…tell us how…”

Coveney: “I am not the kind of person that talks about Fine Gael only representing the person that gets up early in the morning.”

Browne: “And that’s what you stand for. Now tell us how that differs from what Leo Varadkar stands for?”

Coveney: “Well I think that is my vision for the country, is one…no, let me finish now and I’ll get to your question.”

Browne: “Ok, good.”

Coveney: “My vision is one of social justice, as well as economic progression. And I think that the approach that I have, that Fine Gael needs to reach out to people who don’t naturally support us and who may never support us in the future but our responsibility to try and get the best out of those people in society, not in some kind of dependancy way but in an enabling way.”

“I think that is a very different message to what I’ve heard from Leo Varadkar this week when he talks about Fine Gael being the party of the person that gets up early in the morning to work. Of course those people need to be represented by Fine Gael because they pay for everything. But there are many people who need the State’s intervention to allow them fulfil their potential and those people are as important to me as people who pay for everything.”

Browne: “Ok, he’s talking…”

Coveney: “I think that is very different vision for the party.”

Browne: “Ok, he talks about a sense of, culture of entitlement in the country. Do you perceive that?”

Coveney: “I mean, I think there is a politics in Ireland at the moment, that calls for the State to deliver people’s rights on everything. A right to a house, a right to healthcare, a right to education, a right to a decent income.”

Browne: “Justice. That’s justice.”

Coveney: “Yeah it is… but the way…”

Browne: “Are you not in favour of that?”

Coveney: “The way in which you achieve it is to ensure that the State enables people to make a contribution to society, as well as a dependency on a government. And I think that is the big difference between me and the hard left. And I think, you know…judge me on what I’m actually doing. I mean, in housing policy at the moment, Vincent, people will talk about the numbers and so on. We have a huge social housing build programme that’s now under way, it’s a €5.5billion project and so on. But the real change, actually, that I’m looking to bring to social housing policy in Ireland is forcing integration.”

“I no longer accept the hard-left arguments that we should designate whole parts of cities and fill them with social housing estates in a mono-tenure way. Instead we have to ensure that social houses are part of private developments and that private housing is part of new social developments…”

Browne: “Are you suggesting that Leo Varadkar is part of the hard left?”

Coveney: “No, I’m not. I’m not suggesting anything about Leo Varadkar, I’m talking about myself.”

Previously: ‘They’re Loud And They’re Growing’

Social Housing And Affordable Housing Are Not The Same 

Related: Homeless families with nowhere to sleep sent to Garda stations (Kitty Holland, The Irish Times)

Dublin councils accused of preventing housing development (Olivia Kelly, The Irish Times)

Watch back in full here

How many are you on?

Celebrate the 13th issue of Rabble [non-profit newspaper from the underground] in the Pearse House, Pearse Street, Dublin 2 at 7pm.

Featuring Fiona Measham founder of  The Loop, which conducts forensic testing on pills and powder and what have you at festivals and clubs in the UK.

Plus a screening of club documentary Notes on Rave In Dublin.

TESTING YOKES TESTING YOKES TESTING YOKES TESTING YOKES

Celebrate Rabble13

Mark Hamill and the late Carrie Fisher photographed on the set of The Last Jedi by Annie Leibovitz.

READ ON: Cover Story: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Definitive Preview (Vanity Fair)

(Via Paul Condron)

https://vimeo.com/218695484

Dublin-based filmmaker Kevin Littlewood writes:

Ghost buildings and hidden walkways, dotted across an ever-changing Dublin city. A short film of what we pass and what passes us…of what remains, even when it’s gone.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Earlier today.

During Leaders’ Questions.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was asked about former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Seán Fitzpatrick being acquitted of furnishing false information to Anglo’s auditors.

The acquittal followed solicitor with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) Kevin O’Connell admitting that he had destroyed documents relevant to the criminal proceedings against Mr FitzPatrick, among other matters.

During Leaders’ Questions, Mr Kenny said:

“The ODCE is a statutory independent body. Its mother Department, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, has no responsibility or power of enforcement. The ODCE takes its own legal advice. There were gardaí attached to the ODCE in the beginning but they were not involved in the way this case was taken. The judge did point out that the most fundamental error was the way in which they went about taking evidence from the auditors of Anglo Irish Bank, who were both from the firm of accountants involved.

He said that it was intended that their statements would be taken in the normal way by members of the Garda Síochána who were then attached to the ODCE. Instead, however, the statements were obtained through solicitors from a legal firm.

The ODCE pointed out that it has now undergone substantial organisational change and that it was simply not equipped to undertake parallel investigations on the scale involved. I want to say this: I have not spent the past six years as head of Government and making very difficult decisions only to hear again now the allegation in respect of white-collar crime that people can walk away, that nobody is guilty and that nothing is being done about it.

“Let us, as a Parliament, decide what we must do with an organisation like the ODCE. I can confirm that when the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, had responsibility for jobs, requests by the ODCE to his then Department for resources were granted. Now I find that the ODCE says it was simply not equipped to take parallel investigations on the scale involved.

“I can confirm that the Minister has asked the Director of Corporate Enforcement for a full report, including on the role of all professionals involved in this case. That report will cover the issues involved since 2008 when this case commenced – almost ten years ago. Nothing is ruled out.

“When Deputy Catherine Murphy had her full group, she put forward a proposition for a statutory standing body in the Dáil to deal with matters of corruption and so on.”

“The Minister will bring this before Government in due course. The Government will consider it next week, but I want the Minister to carry out an absolute review of what happened. It is not good enough.”

Sigh.

Transcript via Oireachtas.ie

Earlier: A Moment Of Panic

She’ll hold you nice and cosy.

Eimear wins tickets to see Wallis Bird (above on the cover of new album ‘Home’) at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, County Kildare on June 3 with this heartfelt wish:

“I am a genuine fan of Wallis Bird and would love to see her because she’s got this third, giant hand that everyone is standing on throughout her gigs and she holds ya nice and cosy and tight in there or she shakes it around like a dance floor with springs. And both are exhilarating.”

FIGHT!

Thanks all.

Wallis Bird at the Riverbank

Yesterday: Free Bird

Thanks Eric

A digital photoseries in which German photographer Clemens Gritl extrapolates the scale and repeated patterns of 20th century brutalist forms, capturing his exaggeratedly monumental towers in the classic black and white style of 1960s architectural photography.

designboom