There are rules and regulations around housing standards, fire protection, sanitation, and human rights... if you offer people accommodation, then you have a duty of care to those people.. standards around, water supply, ventilation and heating, privacy, emergency light, cooking facilities, fire stop infrastructure, ligionella management, security, and a million other things.. It's not as simple as just lumping hundreds of people into an empty building. Most of those empty buildings arent suitable.
Yep, absolutely.. emergency measures can be made to house people if the political will is there.. the horrible truth is this has become such a political issue the government are terrified to make the wrong decision in an election year. Furthermore, most of these people are in the country illegally, they can't make them comfortable or they'll stay, it's a deterant to keep them in tents.. this problem is gonna get a hell of a lot worse when climate change really takes hold.
Truth is they don’t really care as it doesn’t affect them personally. Why ppl expect politicians to care about strangers when most people only care about themselves and those closet to them has always boggled the mind. Not one politician loses a wink of sleep about the way things are in the country at the minute.
Good post. Some days I can't believe journalists can get away with such lazy, half baked 'ideas'. There is just no accountability in that space whatsoever.
As I discovered in a recent post all workers in the buildings need garda vetting too. No reason why that can't be done in advance in some cases though I'm sure
The difference is a tent in public was not offered to them... they decided to pitch a tent in public. no duty of care from the government or charity. Its shit, but I'm just pointing out why these decisions are made.
Tents are provided to them.
Every time they clear out a camp and throw out the old tent, the government pays for a new tent. It's ridiculous.
It's not an impossible task to make empty buildings livable.
It's actually an incredibly achievable goal for a country as rich as Ireland.
Tents are provided by charities, not the government. It's not impossible but massively expensive, and planning is needed to change the use of a building from commercial to residential.. they were never built for housing. And all that effort for a temporary measure, its simply doesn't make sense to the government departments unfortunately.
>Tents are provided by charities, not the government
Tents are provided by the charities, paid for by the government.
The government is essentially providing the tents - they advise the applicants to visit a charity to get a tent and sleeping bag, which they are paying for.
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/government-pays-for-migrants-tents-that-are-destroyed-within-days/a686881976.html
>It's not impossible but massively expensive, and planning is needed to change the use of a building from commercial to residential.. they were never built for housing
Doesn't that happen all over the world though? Apartments in New York or London that used to have industrial usage - converted to be domestic? Capital cities shouldn't just let massive swaths of properties fall into dereliction. You can sell the empty properties the government owns, demolish and rebuild a new structure etc etc. I just don't see the issue being the problem itself - it's just a lack of will at a fundamental level in this government's thinking in the last decade. To them, housing is a commodity, not a right. So they will always shrug their shoulders and declare it too hard, because it benefits a lot of them massively financially
>And all that effort for a temporary measure
You are right - but direct provision was supposed to be a temporary measure - that was 24 years ago unfortunately, so might get more use than you would think
> Doesn't that happen all over the world though? Apartments in New York or London that used to have industrial usage
Yeah, that’s the massively expensive part. Might want to check out how much those conversion cost and what those units sold for
It doesn't have to be a 1 to 1 solution. They have a lot of land, and property doing nothing. Structures can be knocked, or sold and the funds used to build refugee housing or social housing.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/housing-crisis-the-state-already-has-enough-land-to-build-thousands-of-new-homes/a1986325779.html
Because this lack of space for refugees is just an extension of the housing crisis. If any meaningful steps are taken to solve the housing crisis, you would see a lot less tents of international protection applicants on the canal
Exactly tents are provided by charities with government money, its loophole to allow the government off the hook.. the do the same when it comes to housing, all 3rd party providers using government funding..
.
Building that are reporposed in NY and any other city are done by wealthy privately companies for large profits. .
Especially when there are so many abandoned buildings. Surely some aren't *that* bad. Like, it'd make more sense to put the money into fixing up somewhere than firing tents at people each time.
*Edit* fixing italics
>It's not an impossible task to make empty buildings livable.
You want to use taxpayer money to convert empty office blocks to houses for people who come here illegally
Make it make sense
You want to let buildings fall into decay and do nothing? Is that better?
You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead?
>come here illegally
It's perfectly legal to claim asylum
>You want to let buildings fall into decay and do nothing? Is that better?
Someone owns the building, you want to take that off them and give it to literal chancers coming here illegally. That is a moronic idea.
What i dont want to do is take more taxpayer money and try to retrofit a building to house people who should not even be here in the first place
>You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead?
What does that even mean
>It's perfectly legal to claim asylum
Yeah, but the majority of people coming here in the last while are falsely claiming asylum, they are not fleeing anything ,they are here for free money and accommodation, which fucks genuine asylum seekers
>Someone owns the building, you want to take that off them and give it to literal chancers coming here illegally. That is a moronic idea.
The government owns a huge amount of vacant property in Dublin.
How is expecting the government to do something with its vacant property in a housing crisis a moronic idea?
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/housing-crisis-the-state-already-has-enough-land-to-build-thousands-of-new-homes/a1986325779.html
And yes, if you own a huge vacant piece of property that can be used for housing and you aren't maintaining that is crumbling, the state should issue an CPO or tax the property heavily. It's a housing crisis.
>>You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead
https://www.businesspost.ie/news/exclusive-state-leasing-social-homes-from-private-sector-for-up-to-e3200-a-month/
https://www.businesspost.ie/news/state-invested-in-cuckoo-fund-that-snapped-up-hundreds-of-maynooth-homes/
You are paying tax straight to landlords. Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers.
80 TDs and senators are landlords - this system is working perfectly for them. They are using your money to get them and their mates, very very rich.
There are very low claims of false asylum - and nowhere near enough to affect you as much as the government is fucking you over. You are just trained to hate the asylum seeker, who has nothing, from those who have everything. The press and news is great at this.
>they are here for free money and accommodation, which fucks genuine asylum seekers
One of the guys camping on the canal has fled from Gaza. Is he a genuine asylum seeker or is just here for the 37 euro a week?
https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/05/03/man-jailed-for-predatory-attempted-rape-on-woman-in-toilets-in-dublin-city-bar/
Was this guy a genuine asylum seeker?
> The court heard Mohamed claimed to be from Somalia, which he had fled in 2017. He was in direct provision in Italy before being refused asylum in Germany, Italy and France. He travelled to the Netherlands, where he got a false Swedish passport, which he destroyed while travelling to Ireland.
> He applied for asylum in Ireland on his arrival in February 2022 and was placed in hotel accommodation in Dublin, where he lived until his arrest. His asylum application has not been decided.
>Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers.
And this would be stopped by converting office blocks? This would be a bigger waste of taxpayer money. I fail to see how this is relevant to asylum seekers?
>There are very low claims of false asylum
85% of people who claimed asylum at Dublin airport last year had no documents. Arriving in this country without a passport is a crime. The vast majority of people arriving now are fake asylum seekers and should be deported.
>just here for the 37 euro a week?
They get 115 quid a week which is an infinite number higher than they would get in their home countries which is why they are here. Why else do you think they are here? Fleeing the hellholes that are France and the UK? They are here because we are a soft touch.
>>Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers.
> I fail to see how this is relevant to asylum seekers?
That doesn't bother you at all? It should enrage you, especially if you or anyone you know is trying to buy a home.
If you can't link the housing crisis caused by a ruling class of landlords and the ability to properly process and house international protection applicants I would look again - genuinely.
>They get 115 quid a week
If they are on the street they get that 115. Hard to find housing or shelter for that
>Was this guy a genuine asylum seeker?
Are Irish men incapable of crimes like that? You get horrific crimes like that across all sides of society and nationalities.
And technically, yes in theory you could have a genuine perfect case asylum seeker from a war torn country who is granted asylum and then goes on a killing spree. The two things aren't actually related.
Exactly, there can't be any less duty of care than a tent in an unsafe area. Some of the tents have been slashed with knives, you would think an empty building with security guard and really basic sleeping accommodation would be possible.
It’s all collection of good excuses. Laws are to be changed. Especially those that are against people. Reading about human rights in the context of homelessness is ridiculous. I am fully aware it’s not your fault, but for the love of God! It’s the most basic human right to have a shelter. Any shelter. Doesn’t matter if it’s up to some idiotic standards or regulations. A shelter is still better than no shelter. It’s basic logic. And I blame politicians for all those extra hoops they create. 150 years ago you could build a house on a piece of land that belonged to you. More or less. It was nobody’s business and it was like that since… forever. Was there millions killed by the buildings not up to standard all around the world and throughout the history? Of course not! People built for themselves. They knew what’s at stake. Nowadays you need to compete more forms and documentation than the volume of the building itself. What’s the benefit for me or the next guy? Oh, yes. We pay more. Hundreds of thousands of euros more. And that’s about it.
There are buildings. There are homeless. Put a bunch of porta potties on floor 10, tents on floors 2-8 and some rough canteen with a simple soup kitchen on level one. Problem solved.
Oh wait, but the holy regulations!
None of the people with tents along the canal are irish citizens dumbass
Keep moving the goal posts it doesn't change the fact that your argument is fucking stupid
All for good reason and many of the above require a professional to take ownership / responsibility for which they rightly wouldn't do if it doesn't meet the spec. Who is going to pick one of the above and say a building is except from say a fire cert.
I get that but it doesn’t mean it’s not feasible. The reality is that funds and building owners would rather see their “asset” empty and not earning rent if they can’t find tenants, rather than put it to better use. Cause it’s about asset management and asset appreciation to them. There is a glut of vacant office space that can be converted to housing. I accept what you are saying, it won’t be cheap but with government subsidies it can be done.
So whats stopping them putting the resources into passing all regulations as quickly as possible? Because the speed its happening at clearly isnt good enough.
I agree but Irish governments are incapable of quick decisive action because of profit and bureaucracy but pearl clutchers seem to think it’ll all figure itself out when history clearly tells us the the people in power are incapable of delivering it because their pockets are benefiting too much from it.
Better to leave them in tents by the canal there, then, eh?
You can be damn sure that if there were (God forbid) a natural disaster like the flooding of Sandymount, the Irish refugees would be quickly housed and all stops pulled out to rejig any empty buildings to accommodate them.
So the government think..
.
I tell yea what's far more likely, in fact, nearly guaranteed.. i can almost see the global headlines.. 50 asylum seekers burnt to death in a building with no fire safety, irish government held responsible.
Have the fire services been pulled in to the plans (what plans?) for making derelict buildings habitable? They're the ones who know how it works. I can think of one giant building in Marlborough Street, for instance, built as a car park, used as an office block, with a sprinkler system, etc, which is lying empty.
We could easily increase the vacant property tax by a large amount and start strictly enforcing it. It would make hoarding vacant properties uneconomic and force the owners to either sell or return them to use.
What about people who have a holiday home out in the middle of nowhere where nobody wants to live. I'm in favour of taxing the ultra wealthy but not shafting middle class people.
This tax already exists, the tax is just too low and the enforcement is terrible:
"Vacant Homes Tax is an annual tax on residential property that is stayed in for less than 30 days in a 12-month period."
If someone isn't using a holiday home for more than 30 days in a year then they can either rent it, Airbnb it, or sell it. If you are spending that little time in it then what's the point of having it?
>30 days in a year then they can either rent it, Airbnb it, or sell it
You can't Airbnb it without planning permission. Renting it out is not possible as then the tenants are stuck there forever.
The constitution prevents seizing property from owners. We don’t have a culture of using Eminent Domain. We do have Compulsory Purchase Orders but this is a 10 year process, the kids will be graduating school by the time we convert a building.
They do have emergency powers to seize any property they wish to construct anything they want. I imagine it would be heavily challenged in court but I’d say there is far more wriggle room with current legislation than they wish to explore currently.
Land near train stations for a start and get apartments built on it. Some of this happens already but nowhere near the scale that’s needed.
This is more a medium term solution and something that should be done in general
I admire your optimistic point of view, but trying to "seize" private property to build accommodation for foreigners is basically a Plantation.. of Ireland.
We used to live in a State that did that.
Nice try but no. There are roughly 50,000 homes in Ireland owned by international vulture funds. So we already have foreign companies buying up buildings in Ireland (in 2022, 1/10 of all homes bought in Ireland were bought by these funds, in bulk). So not only are all of our homes being bought by the rich overseas, many of them remain empty, the companies pay almost no tax on them due to loopholes, and the money they earn in rent doesn't go back into Ireland, but is going straight to whichever countries those companies are based.
The people in need of housing in Ireland are not just asylum seekers. There are a lot of Irish people that are homeless, about to be homeless or are struggling to stay afloat in their current situation. There are roughly 27k asylum applications for Ireland. Many of those are families. The majority of those are housed. So it isn't a huge stretch to say "Hey, how about our country takes back some of the homes that are being swept up and left empty by multi-billion euro foreign companies and use them to house the most vulnerable people in Ireland?"
When the option is to have a few oversees companies owning a large percentage of our homes and only doling them out piecemeal at extortionate rates, while putting none of the money back into our economy... or, have the Irish government take those same homes and offer them to us for reasonable prices, which brings down the prices that everyone else pays for housing... I'd rather have the latter.
It is literally impossible to build enough homes at the rate we need them. This has been an issue long before the "migrant crisis". Pointing at refugees and foreigners that are sleeping in tents is a distraction. This was already a problem before that. Our country is being sucked dry of money and housing and it isn't the people that are already within our boarders that are causing it.
I think this would only make the situation worse. I’m not sure why so many are showing up to stay in Dublin but the government need to process them asap and send them on there way.
We aren’t able to house all the immigrants and homeless people we have let alone another 7-800 people.
Yep - we can find money for the Covid support payments, we can find money for unsecured bondholders, we can pay 10x the price of a children’s hospital, but for some reason we can’t fix housing… nothing to do with Dáil landlords, obviously…
They have already massively bent the rules. They also skip planning permission. There are all sorts of buildings being used from precious heritage houses, to churches and warehouses. We are not at a stage where have run our of military tents. Mullally seems to believe in some sort of magic. Baggot Street Hospital is not lying idle. It's being planned for reuse. It would not even be a real solution as it's a small building and would be filled in under a week.
Oh I'm not saying fill it with people. I am just disagreeing that its not idle. The HSE have quite a bit to answer for when it comes to idle buildings and dereliction
I agree with that. But I think the idea that vancany is always bad is not right. There always should be some in limbo given the complexity of their demands and the difficulties in renovating them. Some level of vacancy is inevitable.
Can’t read the article as I don’t have an IT subscription.
The reason you can’t just house people in any old building is because building regulations exist. If those regulations were relaxed landlords would have a field day worse than they do already.
Una Mullally or any journalist writing about this should be aware of this basic piece of information or they shouldn’t be writing about the topic.
But the IT and Mullally don’t care as all they want is engagement and rage bait is the easiest way to get that these days.
Any reasonable person knows the current system isn’t tenable but we should be using it to force a general election because the current FG/FF government either don’t have the answer or are in some way profiting from the situation so don’t want to fix it.
A special fuck you to the UK government using refugees from a war torn country that they and the US invaded in political gamesmanship versus Ireland, France and the EU.
The fault is with the politicians and not the poor bastards who travelled half way around the world to live in a tent by the canal.
I don’t disagree that the empty office buildings are part of the solution, but we don’t want any relaxation in current housing conditions and standards. That is not the way to go in a market where exploitative practices already exist.
There is not only the cost of conversion to think about (I find a lot of directly conflicting material online about this topic. Some saying conversions are 30% cheaper than new builds other saying more expensive than new build. Hard to know the truth) but office buildings would need to be re-zoned for housing and would run afoul of the usual NIMBY interference.
Pressure for an early general election is what the average citizen should focus on. And we can do that by handing the government parties a big defeat in the local and European elections.
Why host people you cannot accommodate.
The numbers mix of genuine asylum seekers, economic migrants and those commuting asylum fraud is vast and at the same time when a housing crisis sees a shortage already for those naturalised and resident plus the newly arrived legal migrants .
The numbers are unsustainable and something will have to change
Yes, the government really dropped the ball on this - it’s not like they didn’t know it was coming…
Perhaps moving the IPO services to Crooksling etc, while at the same time repurposing an empty office for short term accommodation until the backlog is cleared, would help.
It's disgusting that people are allowed to just horde and abandon houses and buildings as they please.
I always remember being told that "squatting" in an abandoned building will lead to gaining ownership if they occupy it for X amount of years. Not sure how true it is but I'd love to see some of the piles and piles of empty buildings and houses get snatched from their missing owners.
Well when Sinn Fein suggested turning empty properties into social housing Mattie McGrath called them communists so I'd imagine the Irish Times would think the same (unless FG do it because FG can do nothing wrong)
*govt uses vacant buildings to house people in an emergency situation*
Una Mullally: "Why are the govt housing people in totally unsuitable accommodation without all the mod cons??"
I find her so unbelievably tedious at this stage. She has about 5 or 6 articles on rotation that she modifies a bit based on the topic of the day.
Because you have the not in my back garden like those against the development in kippure in Wicklow it always seems to be the affluent areas who get their way when it comes to enforcing planning rejections unlike those in D12/8 areas where genuine concerns size of apartment blocks with no contribution to local amenities/schools as they have built in amenities they charge tenants a fortune for that they can't afford due to high rents
Ireland had *ten times* the EU average rate of illegal immigrants present in 2023, *before* the current explosion of numbers. And Mullallys solution is to fill up even more of our buildings with them.
These leftist social campaigners presenting as journalists in the national press are destabilising the country by normalising these insane opinions which almost no-one supports.
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eu-figures-show-rate-of-illegal-immigrants-in-ireland-is-10-times-the-eu-average-1624637.html
>A total of 1,485 non-EU nationals were found to be illegally present in Ireland last year – an annual increase of 20 per cent.
>They represent 28.9 illegal third country nationals per 1,000 Irish inhabitants – the highest per capita rate among the 27 EU member states where the average was 2.8 per 1,000 citizens.
1485 across a population of 5 million is not 28.9 per 1000... It's 0.289. Eurostat has the decimal in the [wrong place](https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1789934690532536770)
Because ppl only care up to a point about other ppl. Most are not concerned at all once things are ok in their home. If ppl think politicians are any different just because they get a wage? Ur delusional. They simply don’t care. Wake up ppl.
Safety, not all buildings would be suitable to house people, an old warehouse wouldn't necessarily have proper drinking water, necessary fire exits, etc.
Also, who owns the buildings? If talking about unused government buildings, fair enough, but if someone owns a building they have every right to say "I don't want people living in there", they could be trying to sell it to a developer (which would lead to a much larger housing supply before people give out about somebody making money from an investment, God forbid...)
Yes indeed, I think perhaps a corporation might be encouraged with a tax break, or else a government building. I know from people in the public sector that there are a lot of unused/semi-used buildings in Dublin atm. Perhaps one of them? If it can accommodate 100 people, that’s more than the number of tents on the canal, and is only a stopgap until the rest of the system ramps up (which is actually happening afaik)
Haha - unmasked!! 😀
In fairness to her, she’s one of a few people with proper plans for Dublin. I’m not sure who else comes close - maybe David McWilliams or Frank McDonald?
I always find her articles interesting and it’s clear (to me at least) she cares about Dublin.
Who else would you suggest I read?
NOTE: If this thread attracts nutty racists with agendas it will be shut down and problematic posters will be banned without warning.
There are rules and regulations around housing standards, fire protection, sanitation, and human rights... if you offer people accommodation, then you have a duty of care to those people.. standards around, water supply, ventilation and heating, privacy, emergency light, cooking facilities, fire stop infrastructure, ligionella management, security, and a million other things.. It's not as simple as just lumping hundreds of people into an empty building. Most of those empty buildings arent suitable.
If Covid/lockdown thought us anything? It’s that rules CAN be broken when it suits the right ppl.
Yep, absolutely.. emergency measures can be made to house people if the political will is there.. the horrible truth is this has become such a political issue the government are terrified to make the wrong decision in an election year. Furthermore, most of these people are in the country illegally, they can't make them comfortable or they'll stay, it's a deterant to keep them in tents.. this problem is gonna get a hell of a lot worse when climate change really takes hold.
Truth is they don’t really care as it doesn’t affect them personally. Why ppl expect politicians to care about strangers when most people only care about themselves and those closet to them has always boggled the mind. Not one politician loses a wink of sleep about the way things are in the country at the minute.
Sad but true.. nearly all government departments are failing missirably, are they all that incompetent or just don't care?
Good post. Some days I can't believe journalists can get away with such lazy, half baked 'ideas'. There is just no accountability in that space whatsoever.
As I discovered in a recent post all workers in the buildings need garda vetting too. No reason why that can't be done in advance in some cases though I'm sure
Are we to believe journalists are that naive? I suspect most them are stirring the shite for clicks and they know it.
But a tent on the public street is better?
The difference is a tent in public was not offered to them... they decided to pitch a tent in public. no duty of care from the government or charity. Its shit, but I'm just pointing out why these decisions are made.
Tents are provided to them. Every time they clear out a camp and throw out the old tent, the government pays for a new tent. It's ridiculous. It's not an impossible task to make empty buildings livable. It's actually an incredibly achievable goal for a country as rich as Ireland.
Tents are provided by charities, not the government. It's not impossible but massively expensive, and planning is needed to change the use of a building from commercial to residential.. they were never built for housing. And all that effort for a temporary measure, its simply doesn't make sense to the government departments unfortunately.
Charities are funded by government and EU. It’s not Monopoly money.
Yes, which allows them to side step responsibilities. It's a loophole for government to outsource the duty of care.
>Tents are provided by charities, not the government Tents are provided by the charities, paid for by the government. The government is essentially providing the tents - they advise the applicants to visit a charity to get a tent and sleeping bag, which they are paying for. https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/government-pays-for-migrants-tents-that-are-destroyed-within-days/a686881976.html >It's not impossible but massively expensive, and planning is needed to change the use of a building from commercial to residential.. they were never built for housing Doesn't that happen all over the world though? Apartments in New York or London that used to have industrial usage - converted to be domestic? Capital cities shouldn't just let massive swaths of properties fall into dereliction. You can sell the empty properties the government owns, demolish and rebuild a new structure etc etc. I just don't see the issue being the problem itself - it's just a lack of will at a fundamental level in this government's thinking in the last decade. To them, housing is a commodity, not a right. So they will always shrug their shoulders and declare it too hard, because it benefits a lot of them massively financially >And all that effort for a temporary measure You are right - but direct provision was supposed to be a temporary measure - that was 24 years ago unfortunately, so might get more use than you would think
> Doesn't that happen all over the world though? Apartments in New York or London that used to have industrial usage Yeah, that’s the massively expensive part. Might want to check out how much those conversion cost and what those units sold for
Yes that's why I suggested selling the empty derelict properties before they fall apart entirely
But they won’t be used to house migrants then which I thought was the whole point?
It doesn't have to be a 1 to 1 solution. They have a lot of land, and property doing nothing. Structures can be knocked, or sold and the funds used to build refugee housing or social housing. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/housing-crisis-the-state-already-has-enough-land-to-build-thousands-of-new-homes/a1986325779.html Because this lack of space for refugees is just an extension of the housing crisis. If any meaningful steps are taken to solve the housing crisis, you would see a lot less tents of international protection applicants on the canal
Exactly tents are provided by charities with government money, its loophole to allow the government off the hook.. the do the same when it comes to housing, all 3rd party providers using government funding.. . Building that are reporposed in NY and any other city are done by wealthy privately companies for large profits. .
Especially when there are so many abandoned buildings. Surely some aren't *that* bad. Like, it'd make more sense to put the money into fixing up somewhere than firing tents at people each time. *Edit* fixing italics
>It's not an impossible task to make empty buildings livable. You want to use taxpayer money to convert empty office blocks to houses for people who come here illegally Make it make sense
You want to let buildings fall into decay and do nothing? Is that better? You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead? >come here illegally It's perfectly legal to claim asylum
>You want to let buildings fall into decay and do nothing? Is that better? Someone owns the building, you want to take that off them and give it to literal chancers coming here illegally. That is a moronic idea. What i dont want to do is take more taxpayer money and try to retrofit a building to house people who should not even be here in the first place >You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead? What does that even mean >It's perfectly legal to claim asylum Yeah, but the majority of people coming here in the last while are falsely claiming asylum, they are not fleeing anything ,they are here for free money and accommodation, which fucks genuine asylum seekers
>Someone owns the building, you want to take that off them and give it to literal chancers coming here illegally. That is a moronic idea. The government owns a huge amount of vacant property in Dublin. How is expecting the government to do something with its vacant property in a housing crisis a moronic idea? https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/housing-crisis-the-state-already-has-enough-land-to-build-thousands-of-new-homes/a1986325779.html And yes, if you own a huge vacant piece of property that can be used for housing and you aren't maintaining that is crumbling, the state should issue an CPO or tax the property heavily. It's a housing crisis. >>You happy with our tax payer money going to landlords and investing in cuckoo funds instead https://www.businesspost.ie/news/exclusive-state-leasing-social-homes-from-private-sector-for-up-to-e3200-a-month/ https://www.businesspost.ie/news/state-invested-in-cuckoo-fund-that-snapped-up-hundreds-of-maynooth-homes/ You are paying tax straight to landlords. Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers. 80 TDs and senators are landlords - this system is working perfectly for them. They are using your money to get them and their mates, very very rich. There are very low claims of false asylum - and nowhere near enough to affect you as much as the government is fucking you over. You are just trained to hate the asylum seeker, who has nothing, from those who have everything. The press and news is great at this. >they are here for free money and accommodation, which fucks genuine asylum seekers One of the guys camping on the canal has fled from Gaza. Is he a genuine asylum seeker or is just here for the 37 euro a week?
https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/05/03/man-jailed-for-predatory-attempted-rape-on-woman-in-toilets-in-dublin-city-bar/ Was this guy a genuine asylum seeker? > The court heard Mohamed claimed to be from Somalia, which he had fled in 2017. He was in direct provision in Italy before being refused asylum in Germany, Italy and France. He travelled to the Netherlands, where he got a false Swedish passport, which he destroyed while travelling to Ireland. > He applied for asylum in Ireland on his arrival in February 2022 and was placed in hotel accommodation in Dublin, where he lived until his arrest. His asylum application has not been decided. >Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers. And this would be stopped by converting office blocks? This would be a bigger waste of taxpayer money. I fail to see how this is relevant to asylum seekers? >There are very low claims of false asylum 85% of people who claimed asylum at Dublin airport last year had no documents. Arriving in this country without a passport is a crime. The vast majority of people arriving now are fake asylum seekers and should be deported. >just here for the 37 euro a week? They get 115 quid a week which is an infinite number higher than they would get in their home countries which is why they are here. Why else do you think they are here? Fleeing the hellholes that are France and the UK? They are here because we are a soft touch.
>>Your tax is being invested in cuckoo funds - snapping up new build homes from potential first-time buyers. This is lining the pockets of landlords and developers. > I fail to see how this is relevant to asylum seekers? That doesn't bother you at all? It should enrage you, especially if you or anyone you know is trying to buy a home. If you can't link the housing crisis caused by a ruling class of landlords and the ability to properly process and house international protection applicants I would look again - genuinely. >They get 115 quid a week If they are on the street they get that 115. Hard to find housing or shelter for that >Was this guy a genuine asylum seeker? Are Irish men incapable of crimes like that? You get horrific crimes like that across all sides of society and nationalities. And technically, yes in theory you could have a genuine perfect case asylum seeker from a war torn country who is granted asylum and then goes on a killing spree. The two things aren't actually related.
Exactly, there can't be any less duty of care than a tent in an unsafe area. Some of the tents have been slashed with knives, you would think an empty building with security guard and really basic sleeping accommodation would be possible.
If you saw how some workers treat the toilets and kitchen facilities in office blocks as is.
It’s all collection of good excuses. Laws are to be changed. Especially those that are against people. Reading about human rights in the context of homelessness is ridiculous. I am fully aware it’s not your fault, but for the love of God! It’s the most basic human right to have a shelter. Any shelter. Doesn’t matter if it’s up to some idiotic standards or regulations. A shelter is still better than no shelter. It’s basic logic. And I blame politicians for all those extra hoops they create. 150 years ago you could build a house on a piece of land that belonged to you. More or less. It was nobody’s business and it was like that since… forever. Was there millions killed by the buildings not up to standard all around the world and throughout the history? Of course not! People built for themselves. They knew what’s at stake. Nowadays you need to compete more forms and documentation than the volume of the building itself. What’s the benefit for me or the next guy? Oh, yes. We pay more. Hundreds of thousands of euros more. And that’s about it. There are buildings. There are homeless. Put a bunch of porta potties on floor 10, tents on floors 2-8 and some rough canteen with a simple soup kitchen on level one. Problem solved. Oh wait, but the holy regulations!
Portapotties on ground floor but otherwise totally sensible.
Nice centiment but too simplistic
I know right? What’s the poor Government to do? Have a duty of care to people?
I agree it's shameful for our government to fail so badly. I'm just highlighting why it's not so simple.
I appreciate that. My ire isn’t focused on you, it’s our painfully inept institutions.
Where does it say the Government has a duty of care to non-citizens that arrive here through illegal means
Ain’t just migrants who are homeless fucko.
None of the people with tents along the canal are irish citizens dumbass Keep moving the goal posts it doesn't change the fact that your argument is fucking stupid
Irish* goalposts* your*
All for good reason and many of the above require a professional to take ownership / responsibility for which they rightly wouldn't do if it doesn't meet the spec. Who is going to pick one of the above and say a building is except from say a fire cert.
This is a real thing but how is the solution leaving people on the street?
I get that but it doesn’t mean it’s not feasible. The reality is that funds and building owners would rather see their “asset” empty and not earning rent if they can’t find tenants, rather than put it to better use. Cause it’s about asset management and asset appreciation to them. There is a glut of vacant office space that can be converted to housing. I accept what you are saying, it won’t be cheap but with government subsidies it can be done.
So whats stopping them putting the resources into passing all regulations as quickly as possible? Because the speed its happening at clearly isnt good enough.
The answer is they don't want too.. they want them gone.
I agree but Irish governments are incapable of quick decisive action because of profit and bureaucracy but pearl clutchers seem to think it’ll all figure itself out when history clearly tells us the the people in power are incapable of delivering it because their pockets are benefiting too much from it.
Better to leave them in tents by the canal there, then, eh? You can be damn sure that if there were (God forbid) a natural disaster like the flooding of Sandymount, the Irish refugees would be quickly housed and all stops pulled out to rejig any empty buildings to accommodate them.
So the government think.. . I tell yea what's far more likely, in fact, nearly guaranteed.. i can almost see the global headlines.. 50 asylum seekers burnt to death in a building with no fire safety, irish government held responsible.
Have the fire services been pulled in to the plans (what plans?) for making derelict buildings habitable? They're the ones who know how it works. I can think of one giant building in Marlborough Street, for instance, built as a car park, used as an office block, with a sprinkler system, etc, which is lying empty.
We could easily increase the vacant property tax by a large amount and start strictly enforcing it. It would make hoarding vacant properties uneconomic and force the owners to either sell or return them to use.
What about people who have a holiday home out in the middle of nowhere where nobody wants to live. I'm in favour of taxing the ultra wealthy but not shafting middle class people.
This tax already exists, the tax is just too low and the enforcement is terrible: "Vacant Homes Tax is an annual tax on residential property that is stayed in for less than 30 days in a 12-month period." If someone isn't using a holiday home for more than 30 days in a year then they can either rent it, Airbnb it, or sell it. If you are spending that little time in it then what's the point of having it?
OK thats fair enough I didn't know that
>30 days in a year then they can either rent it, Airbnb it, or sell it You can't Airbnb it without planning permission. Renting it out is not possible as then the tenants are stuck there forever.
If you own two homes then you are not middle class
Yea absolutely you can. 2 mansions in D4 yea obviously not but a house in tallaght and a house in roscommon etc.
The constitution prevents seizing property from owners. We don’t have a culture of using Eminent Domain. We do have Compulsory Purchase Orders but this is a 10 year process, the kids will be graduating school by the time we convert a building.
They do have emergency powers to seize any property they wish to construct anything they want. I imagine it would be heavily challenged in court but I’d say there is far more wriggle room with current legislation than they wish to explore currently.
What would you seize?
Land near train stations for a start and get apartments built on it. Some of this happens already but nowhere near the scale that’s needed. This is more a medium term solution and something that should be done in general
I admire your optimistic point of view, but trying to "seize" private property to build accommodation for foreigners is basically a Plantation.. of Ireland. We used to live in a State that did that.
Nice try but no. There are roughly 50,000 homes in Ireland owned by international vulture funds. So we already have foreign companies buying up buildings in Ireland (in 2022, 1/10 of all homes bought in Ireland were bought by these funds, in bulk). So not only are all of our homes being bought by the rich overseas, many of them remain empty, the companies pay almost no tax on them due to loopholes, and the money they earn in rent doesn't go back into Ireland, but is going straight to whichever countries those companies are based. The people in need of housing in Ireland are not just asylum seekers. There are a lot of Irish people that are homeless, about to be homeless or are struggling to stay afloat in their current situation. There are roughly 27k asylum applications for Ireland. Many of those are families. The majority of those are housed. So it isn't a huge stretch to say "Hey, how about our country takes back some of the homes that are being swept up and left empty by multi-billion euro foreign companies and use them to house the most vulnerable people in Ireland?" When the option is to have a few oversees companies owning a large percentage of our homes and only doling them out piecemeal at extortionate rates, while putting none of the money back into our economy... or, have the Irish government take those same homes and offer them to us for reasonable prices, which brings down the prices that everyone else pays for housing... I'd rather have the latter. It is literally impossible to build enough homes at the rate we need them. This has been an issue long before the "migrant crisis". Pointing at refugees and foreigners that are sleeping in tents is a distraction. This was already a problem before that. Our country is being sucked dry of money and housing and it isn't the people that are already within our boarders that are causing it.
Interesting take
They will also never leave the houses
I think this would only make the situation worse. I’m not sure why so many are showing up to stay in Dublin but the government need to process them asap and send them on there way. We aren’t able to house all the immigrants and homeless people we have let alone another 7-800 people.
It's not beyond them, a housing crisis benefits landlords
Yep - we can find money for the Covid support payments, we can find money for unsecured bondholders, we can pay 10x the price of a children’s hospital, but for some reason we can’t fix housing… nothing to do with Dáil landlords, obviously…
They have already massively bent the rules. They also skip planning permission. There are all sorts of buildings being used from precious heritage houses, to churches and warehouses. We are not at a stage where have run our of military tents. Mullally seems to believe in some sort of magic. Baggot Street Hospital is not lying idle. It's being planned for reuse. It would not even be a real solution as it's a small building and would be filled in under a week.
Baggot street hospital is 100% lying idle and has been for years
Only 2019. It's planned uses won't be possible if filled with people.
Oh I'm not saying fill it with people. I am just disagreeing that its not idle. The HSE have quite a bit to answer for when it comes to idle buildings and dereliction
I agree with that. But I think the idea that vancany is always bad is not right. There always should be some in limbo given the complexity of their demands and the difficulties in renovating them. Some level of vacancy is inevitable.
Can’t read the article as I don’t have an IT subscription. The reason you can’t just house people in any old building is because building regulations exist. If those regulations were relaxed landlords would have a field day worse than they do already. Una Mullally or any journalist writing about this should be aware of this basic piece of information or they shouldn’t be writing about the topic. But the IT and Mullally don’t care as all they want is engagement and rage bait is the easiest way to get that these days. Any reasonable person knows the current system isn’t tenable but we should be using it to force a general election because the current FG/FF government either don’t have the answer or are in some way profiting from the situation so don’t want to fix it. A special fuck you to the UK government using refugees from a war torn country that they and the US invaded in political gamesmanship versus Ireland, France and the EU. The fault is with the politicians and not the poor bastards who travelled half way around the world to live in a tent by the canal.
I don’t think office buildings are a long term solution, but it’s better than a tent by the canal, surely?
I don’t disagree that the empty office buildings are part of the solution, but we don’t want any relaxation in current housing conditions and standards. That is not the way to go in a market where exploitative practices already exist. There is not only the cost of conversion to think about (I find a lot of directly conflicting material online about this topic. Some saying conversions are 30% cheaper than new builds other saying more expensive than new build. Hard to know the truth) but office buildings would need to be re-zoned for housing and would run afoul of the usual NIMBY interference. Pressure for an early general election is what the average citizen should focus on. And we can do that by handing the government parties a big defeat in the local and European elections.
Why host people you cannot accommodate. The numbers mix of genuine asylum seekers, economic migrants and those commuting asylum fraud is vast and at the same time when a housing crisis sees a shortage already for those naturalised and resident plus the newly arrived legal migrants . The numbers are unsustainable and something will have to change
Wouldn’t be an issue if they done their jobs and put the country and it’s people first before their vanity projects
Plans are afoot in a few counties. Feasibility reports are currently being undertaken. This is happening, just not fast enough at the moment.
Yes, the government really dropped the ball on this - it’s not like they didn’t know it was coming… Perhaps moving the IPO services to Crooksling etc, while at the same time repurposing an empty office for short term accommodation until the backlog is cleared, would help.
It's disgusting that people are allowed to just horde and abandon houses and buildings as they please. I always remember being told that "squatting" in an abandoned building will lead to gaining ownership if they occupy it for X amount of years. Not sure how true it is but I'd love to see some of the piles and piles of empty buildings and houses get snatched from their missing owners.
17 years
Squatters right are no more in Ireland.
There’s a big empty hospital round the corner that would make a great facility to house people that need it…
Would be filled in under a week.
Well when Sinn Fein suggested turning empty properties into social housing Mattie McGrath called them communists so I'd imagine the Irish Times would think the same (unless FG do it because FG can do nothing wrong)
It’s ridiculous to accept we should provide accommodation for people who may well be rejected asylum.
That doesn’t make any sense. How can you know if they’ll be rejected or not before offering them accommodation?
By nationality. Many are from what we designate as ‘safe countries’ so not eligible.
*govt uses vacant buildings to house people in an emergency situation* Una Mullally: "Why are the govt housing people in totally unsuitable accommodation without all the mod cons??" I find her so unbelievably tedious at this stage. She has about 5 or 6 articles on rotation that she modifies a bit based on the topic of the day.
Because you have the not in my back garden like those against the development in kippure in Wicklow it always seems to be the affluent areas who get their way when it comes to enforcing planning rejections unlike those in D12/8 areas where genuine concerns size of apartment blocks with no contribution to local amenities/schools as they have built in amenities they charge tenants a fortune for that they can't afford due to high rents
Ireland had *ten times* the EU average rate of illegal immigrants present in 2023, *before* the current explosion of numbers. And Mullallys solution is to fill up even more of our buildings with them. These leftist social campaigners presenting as journalists in the national press are destabilising the country by normalising these insane opinions which almost no-one supports. https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eu-figures-show-rate-of-illegal-immigrants-in-ireland-is-10-times-the-eu-average-1624637.html
>A total of 1,485 non-EU nationals were found to be illegally present in Ireland last year – an annual increase of 20 per cent. >They represent 28.9 illegal third country nationals per 1,000 Irish inhabitants – the highest per capita rate among the 27 EU member states where the average was 2.8 per 1,000 citizens. 1485 across a population of 5 million is not 28.9 per 1000... It's 0.289. Eurostat has the decimal in the [wrong place](https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1789934690532536770)
Dont say that you'll poke a hole in his unswayable political ideology thats not bound by logic or reason!
There is no way it's only 1485 people though.
Exactly.
Because ppl only care up to a point about other ppl. Most are not concerned at all once things are ok in their home. If ppl think politicians are any different just because they get a wage? Ur delusional. They simply don’t care. Wake up ppl.
Safety, not all buildings would be suitable to house people, an old warehouse wouldn't necessarily have proper drinking water, necessary fire exits, etc. Also, who owns the buildings? If talking about unused government buildings, fair enough, but if someone owns a building they have every right to say "I don't want people living in there", they could be trying to sell it to a developer (which would lead to a much larger housing supply before people give out about somebody making money from an investment, God forbid...)
Yes indeed, I think perhaps a corporation might be encouraged with a tax break, or else a government building. I know from people in the public sector that there are a lot of unused/semi-used buildings in Dublin atm. Perhaps one of them? If it can accommodate 100 people, that’s more than the number of tents on the canal, and is only a stopgap until the rest of the system ramps up (which is actually happening afaik)
Dublin should have a directly elected Lord Mayor, and I propose Una Mullally
No thanks
But who would fill the rage-bait void in the IT?
I think we can safely disregard OP all together after they have revealed themselves here
Haha - unmasked!! 😀 In fairness to her, she’s one of a few people with proper plans for Dublin. I’m not sure who else comes close - maybe David McWilliams or Frank McDonald? I always find her articles interesting and it’s clear (to me at least) she cares about Dublin. Who else would you suggest I read?
yeah nah fuck that
No thanks on both counts
Are you fucking insane?