Posted on 06/21/2006 6:42:52 PM PDT by Murtyo
TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern reacted angrily to criticism of the Government’s record on housing by Deputy Joe Higgins yesterday, labelling the Socialist Party TD “a failed person” in an unusually personalised attack.
Mr Higgins had raised the newly-published report by Permanent TSB and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), which detailed the massive increases in house prices over the last decade.
The study made “chilling reading for tens of thousands of young working people in need of homes”, Mr Higgins told the Dáil. “In March 1996, the average price of a home in Dublin was €82,000. This year, 10 years later, it is €384,000, an increase of €300,000. That represents a shocking €30,000 increase per year. Prices outside Dublin have increased pro rata.”
He said Mr Ahern had “failed cataclysmically to stop the unbridled speculation by developers and house builders”, adding that this was “deliberate” party policy and dated “all the way back to the devil’s pact made between Fianna Fáil and house builders and speculators in the 1960s”.
The builders, he said, had “bought the party’s councillors who in turn corrupted planning in Dublin and, perhaps, other areas and created the nightmare we now have”.
Referring to late Taoiseach Charles Haughey, Mr Higgins added: “They [also] bought the party’s former leader, who the Taoiseach eulogised unstintingly last Friday. The VIP pen in the Donnycarney church was like a major house builders’ convention.”
However, Mr Ahern staunchly defended the Government’s record on housing, before rounding on Mr Higgins and the Socialist Party’s policies.
Mr Higgins wanted to bring Ireland back “to the days of pathetic poverty when de Valera and Lemass built social houses, when no other houses were being built”, said Mr Ahern. “People were living in council houses and had to emigrate because they had no jobs and no future.”
When Mr Higgins pointed out that these were Fianna Fáil politicians, Mr Ahern responded: “Does Deputy Higgins wish to drag us back to a time when people had no salaries and no jobs?
“He has a failed ideology and the most hopeless policy pursued by any nitwit. He is a failed person, whose failed policy has been rejected. He will not pull people back into the failed old policies he dreamed up in south Kerry when he was a young fellow. Now go away.”
While Mr Higgins has often provoked flashes of anger from Mr Ahern in the past, it is unusual for the Taoiseach to personalise his ripostes. But last night, a spokeswoman for Mr Ahern said he was unrepentant.
Asked if the Taoiseach regretted his comments, or had sought out Mr Higgins to apologise, she said: “No.”
The exchanges were simply part of the routine “cut and thrust of the Dáil”, she added.
I wish Berite Ahern would make up his mind - he called himself a socialist only a few months ago!!
Everybody in Ireland calls themselves a Socialist; espcially if they're a Capitalist! It's one of the most humorous aspects of the Irish psyche!
I've have to stick with Bertie on this one. Rapid home prices acceleration and building comes with prosperity. And there's nothing true Socialists hate more than prosperity!
Prosperity is bloody expensive!! ;)
It's my first intinct to bash Bertie around here, with him appeasing Sinn Fein/IRA and the Eu, and all that!! ;)
It seems the Irish media is either left wing or Bertiebot - and often both!!
I thought the same thing.
The entire US has experienced a rapid rise in home prices for going on 10 years. Especailly so in the New York City area. I've sold 2 houses during that time and have benefited well.
The problem is that Ireland's adoption of Reagan/Thatcher economic programs has made it too inviting. Not only are the Irish not emmigrating like they used to but many of the Irish Disapora have returned. And with them have come people from around the world. They all need a place to live!
Urban planning always sounds good but the plans are typically created by Socialists and look something like the dull concrete apartments that you find in North Korea. But they're next to railroad tracks!
The problem is, people don't want to be confined by urban planning and thus, the human desire for uniqueness and character causes a mess when it comes to home building and planning. New Jersey is 50 years ahead of Ireland in this regard. And though the socialists here have complained and complained for all those many years, we've somehow managed (remember, New Jersey has 6 times the population density as China!).
Sudden Wealth Syndrome is tough but it's not fatal!
It has dawned on me lately that Bertie is a bit of a John Kerry - he keeps changing his mind:
E.g.
"We are not going to apologise for any small role we may have played in helping to remove a dictator who made his people suffer for 20 years, carried out horrific acts and didn't care about democracy. He is gone now, and thank God for that." (May, 2003 - speaking of the war in Iraq)
And then:
"We were always dead against the war." (December, 2003)
I guess was for it before he was against it!!
I work in the woodwork industry - so I benefit from the housing boom!!
The only trouble is the market will reach saturation sooner or later.
Remember, Ireland once supported 8 million people. You have a long way to go before you get back to that number!
According to kellyIRA, the Famine Genocide killed 5,000,000 people (Or at least the site he kept linking did)!!
If you're not already on the housing ladder and you want to own a home within twenty-five miles of Dublin city centre, forget it, unless you're bringing in one hell of a salary. And Dublin is not like New York, where a superb mass transit system exists to ferry people in from Long Island, NJ and upstate, or where 10 million people live within ten miles of Manhattan. Dublin is a blanket of two-storey housing estates with a dreadful public transport system, poor road network design and appalling traffic congestion. If you're forced to buy a house 30 or 40 miles outside the city, as many now are, you're looking at three or four hours a day stuck in traffic getting to and from work, if you're lucky. Planning in the Dublin area was run for years to line the pockets of developers and their political cronies and the city is now paying the price.
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