"Jeff was very spiritual in nature, he saw the flooding of Ireland with foreign peoples as a direct attack on who we were as a race."

https://www.theburkean.ie/articles/2024/09/19/in-memoriam-jeff-gallagher

It's been very interesting to see how all of the parties have presented themselves to the public in recent times, in particular Fine Gael.

First, Simon Harris comes out with the line that homelessness and asylum seeker immigration are linked.

A few days later, Varadkar says that immigration has increased too quickly in Ireland and just yesterday, Neale Richmond was on Newstalk saying that it should be acceptable to talk about mass immigration, despite issuing work permits for 31,000 people.

Since East Wall in November 2022, I've talked about how we've entered a new phase in Irish politics. Safety valve. At the time, it was the question of who would be able to claim that energy. Would it be Fine Gael under Varadkar, or would it be Independent Ireland or would it be McDowell if he was to do something.

The new FG framing has been "yeah sure, we can talk about it, but we don't want to turn into populists" on this issue. They're using the right as an anchor. We just want to be sensible. Centrist. Sure. While this is a major change from even a couple of years ago (they used to use PBP or the left as an anchor instead) we're facing into a scenario whereby, it is Fine Gael who are the ones who are trying to hijack this energy under Harris.

"We're not like the far right. We're not like the far left. We're sensible, common sense, put money back in your pocket types. The last guy was weird and who normal people disliked, he's gone now. Why wouldn't you vote for us?"

I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks.

So far this is very very good. 500 pages in.

Far from perfect but it goes into places that no modern novelist would even touch.

While Sally Rooney is writing romance novels dressed up with references to Trinity to sound clever, this book covers an awful lot.

A lot of "based" ideas in here.

Things this book covers:

Mass immigration, abuse of the elderly, weak men and IVF treatment, AI, broken families and anhedonia, erosion of democracy, nature of the medical system in terms of priorities, NGOs, relationships and true connections being the answer.

Loads going on.

I think most of all, the idea of an author writing a book like this is becoming increasingly redundant in our modern society.

Which is mad in a sense. Literature has, unlike other art forms, the ability to put us in the mindset/thinking pattern of other people. To see the loss of that is horrific to say the least.

70 candidates. In 39 constituencies. Wow.

They ran 42 candidates in 2020 and they're less popular now than then.

Unless there is a major swing in the coming weeks, they are going to split their vote like crazy with this.

House price increase is "driven by population growth" and is "not sustainable in the long term" says Conall MacCoille, Chief Economist Bank of Ireland https://t.co/aEHf8aKLqB

Hate speech bill back next Wednesday at 4pm in the Seanad according to Keogan.

https://fxtwitter.com/SenatorKeogan/status/1844392902442598877

Following on from this stream a few months ago I'm going to do a livestream at 20:30 today on housing and the rental market. Going to mainly focus on supply (but there will be some demand stuff as well) and the history of the Irish market post 2011.

In addition, I'll try and do some projections on the future of the Irish housing market. I'll open up comments later on.

You should be able to leave comments for the stream under this post if you wish.

Thank you for listening. Stream on the Irish Housing Market. I talked about NAMA, bedsits, rent controls, foreign purchase of Irish assets, brownfield developments, bureaucracy, banking credit, HAP payments, BER restrictions, profit margins and more.

This followed on from Part One, where I talked about the psychology of the housing market.

Had a video I was going to share, but it went down when my internet went down for a bit.

Links discussed in the stream.

https://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/ireland-research/residential-land-supply-study.pdf

https://t.me/IrelandArchive/17102

https://extra.ie/2023/11/19/news/irish-news/vulture-funds-own-1-in-6-mortgages

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ires-reit-the-facts-behind-ireland-s-biggest-landlord-1.2749116 <IRIS REIT

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2023/11/27/construction-of-more-than-22000-homes-held-back-by-planning-delays/

https://archive.ph/5y8rn

https://ryanresearch.substack.com/p/irish-housing-crisis-explained

https://bpfi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/BPFI-Housing-Finance-Report-Final.pdf

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/landlords-forced-update-bedsit-and-studio-style-apartments-dublin-irel/275576/

https://headstuff.org/topical/the-green-party-housing-reforms/

https://www.michaelmcdowell.ie/biggest-problem-of-the-housing-crisis-is-the-department-of-housing.html

https://irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41454985.html
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/landlords-must-ensure-homes-meet-minimum-energy-rating-from-2025/40777282.html

https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/homes/the-ber-faced-lies-our-inaccurate-energy-ratings/30257397.html
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dber/domesticbuildingenergyratingsquarter22023/

https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/quarterly-bulletins/quarterly-bulletin-signed-articles/economic-policy-issues-in-the-irish-housing-market.pdf?sfvrsn=9879661a_12


https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/financial-stability-notes/rising-construction-costs-and-the-residential-real-estate-market-in-ireland.pdf

https://scsi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SCSI-Real-Cost-of-New-Housing-Delivery-2023-Report.pdf

https://www.thejournal.ie/bakers-corner-dun-laoghaire-student-accommodation-5591325-Nov2021/

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2024/04/20/other-eu-countries-have-banned-foreign-property-buyers-to-ease-housing-crises-should-ireland-do-the-same/
https://x.com/PeterPaulGuy/status/1842638901439078448

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40299404.html

https://mre.ie/why-are-landlords-leaving-the-irish-housing-market/

https://www.owenreilly.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dublin-Residential-Market-Report-Q1-2023.pdf

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/the-building-of-37000-properties-in-pre-plan-stage-at-risk-because-of-underinvestment-in-water-and-sewerage-infrastructure-MXPMPTWNYNGVRBHIYLBIME7V7Q/

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41449156.html

https://mymortgages.ie/ireland-is-once-again-the-most-expensive-country-in-the-eurozone-to-take-out-a-mortgage/

https://t.me/LastGael/1858

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-objecting-to-multiple-planning-applications-to-extract-money-from-developers-rte-investigation-claims/a242626393.html

https://www.rtb.ie/about-rtb/data-insights/data-hub/rtb-private-tenancy-registration-statistics
https://dublininquirer.com/2023/08/09/census-data-raises-questions-about-narrative-that-landlords-are-fleeing-the-market/

https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census2021/Sample_Census_2022_Household_Form_English.pdf
https://dublininquirer.com/2023/08/09/census-data-raises-questions-about-narrative-that-landlords-are-fleeing-the-market/

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40028588.html#:~:text=The%20maximum%20height%20for%20buildings,Dublin's%20docklands%20and%20George's%20Quay.

https://irelandisfull.substack.com/p/hap-is-born

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/06/25/irelands-housing-crisis-is-so-grave-employers-getting-into-landlord-business-and-buying-property-for-staff-ryanair/

"[...] emogender, EPICgender, epigender, equalgender [...]"

Senator Sharon Keogan
is currently in the Seanad listing hundreds of genders that would be recognised by Irish law if the government gets its way with hate speech legislation #WokeGoneMad

Back in July - I made two points on a Trump-Vance presidency

The first being that Vance spoke against the Irish hate speech which will be ultimately a battle between Trump admin and Brussels censorship given Ireland is the US tech base for EU

The second on how Trump wanted to cut US corporation tax and the potential impacts this would have on Ireland’s current economic model of scrapping bottom of the barrel taxes from international (mostly US) tax cheats

Well… it appears one of the top Trump advisors wants to end Ireland's economic model.

Are Irish NeoLibs prepared?

Meanwhile, in reply to the above post.

Small businesses/restaurants and pub closures are beginning to accelerate rapidly. The fact that they're closing well before the Christmas peak tells you all you need to know.

Will something come of this, or is it like that meme where "nothing ever happens"?

Who knows, but it feels like we're in 2006. And we're a bank. And our portfolio is made up of loans to the construction sector. And all it will take is a spark to some dynamite to ignite the whole thing.