“Short-term lets make up about 50% of 350,000 bed spaces available across Irish tourism industry each night”

.. 175,000 bed spaces (≈ 60,000 new homes) is equivalent to almost 2 full years of new build supply.. getting some of this back would fix housing crisis
www.newstalk.com/news/thousan...

We don't acknowledge or even realise in this context, that while we are absolutely doing a really good thing, we are essentially paying money on top of our taxes to support the vital services that should be funded ... by our taxes. And by doing so, letting the State off the hook.

We never talk about, when there is such a feel-good factor around such fundraising drives, and we marvel at the amounts raised, how the State should be fully funding many of these organisations to do this work. OR PROVIDING THESE SERVICES ITSELF. Because we have a right to public services.

But what is never a part of the conversation around the #LateLateToyShow Appeal is how the process strongly contributes at a societal level to people who need services too frequently having to rely on charity, not rights, to get their needs met.

This is fundamentally wrong.

Here’s my proposal to Oireachtas Housing Committee 2018 for quick regulatory ‘fix’ for over the shop conversions, to reduce burden/risk for owners..it became FF Private Members Bill 2019, dropped 2020 —so FF Housing Minister Browne has access to all the workings data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachta...

“Housing Committee to hear that just over a quarter of approved vacant property grants are issued” (2025) www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

We have one. It's called the Office of Public Works.

Or if you specifically mean housing, we have several, they're called local councils.

What we don't have is the policial will to spend money when it will undermine their property-owming supporters and voters.

This is _exactly_ it. Terrified a Left* government might get in then and take the credit.

*anyone that's not FF/FG

As I said. Half-baked idea, so please do "well ackshually" the shit out of me mister centrist dad.

There is a very concerted effort by people who stand to profit from it to have judicial reviews abolished and I think a lot of public commentators have tricked themselves into thinking this is the One Neat Trick to Fix the Every Crisis Without Changing the Political Status Quo

Micheál Martin was first a cabinet minister in the late 90s. Just imagine how much he’d make his own job easier now if the Fianna Fáil government back then had a plan for what they wanted to achieve by the 2020s.