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Showing posts with label Fine Gael/Fianna Fail Coalition 2026. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fine Gael/Fianna Fail Coalition 2026. Show all posts
Donal O'Driscoll ✍ For all my opposition to successive Irish governments, I feel some of the sensationalist rhetoric of the last week or so needs to be scrutinised.

1. This government has no legitimacy.
 
This is patently not true. I may not like this government, but Ireland is a parliamentary democracy. Ireland is divided into constituencies, each constituency elects a set number of TDs. Out of those TDs, parties negotiate alliances. Governments are formed as a result of these alliances. I may not support this government, but it was elected legitimately as per the Constitution.
 
2. This government is a dictatorship.

Again, patently false. The government was elected in 2024, people had the right, as I did, to vote for alternative options. An insufficient amount of people did so. This government has done nothing to change rules to guarantee their power or anything else to indicate they are dictators.
 
3. We're being taxed to the Hilt. 

I don't disagree at all that tax monies are not well distributed in Ireland, but we are a comparatively low tax economy, certainly by European standards.
 
4. We can find money for everyone else but our own. 

Apart from the dangerous overtones of this argument, it is a total red herring. There is nothing to suggest spending on overseas aid directly takes from domestic spending. Again the problem here is distribution of public funds, not the amount spent on foreign aid.
 
5. The government have sold us out.
 
Have they though? I despise both FF and FG, but as much as they may put a positive spin on things at election times, they essentially are honest about what they are. We have decades of history to tell us what to expect from FF or FG in government. Collectively as people, we didn't vote in sufficient numbers to get them out. That is on us.

⏩Donal O'Driscoll is political activist from West Cork.

Sensationalist Rhetoric

Jim Duffy ✍ It is scandalous that the government is proposing that tenants renting modular homes in back gardens should not be covered by the tenancy acts. 

That is monumentally stupid. It is a golden rule that you never ever ever lead a block of tenants outside the law and leave them wide open to exploitation. It beggars belief that it is being proposed. It is almost certainly unconstitutional as it blatantly breaks the principle of equality before the law.
 
The modular idea is nuts anyway, as they are not covered by proper planning. For example, in back gardens they would be entirely inaccessible to fire engines in the event of a fire. They would be death traps. That is one of the reasons why people were not allowed build homes in their back gardens - as they would be inaccessible to the emergency services and be potential death traps.
 
I lived in an apartment building where a fire broke out in one of the apartments. My flatmates and I had to break down the door. The landlord had Forty Three illegal Chinese migrants living in the two-bed apartment. He had bunk beds crammed in everywhere. The sitting room had four bunk beds. There was a bunk bed in the bath. For 'privacy', he had plastic bin liners hung between the beds. One of the bin liners had caught fire and set the bunk beds on fire. People slept in there in shifts.
 
He was prosecuted both by the Gardaí and the council under planning laws and the tenancy acts, and was kicked out of the building. In the court case it was confirmed that he was part of a smuggling ring bringing in illegals, and it was confirmed that all the residents were illegals. Some had been brought in with promises of good jobs, but found themselves forced in a brothel he ran elsewhere.
 
I lived next door and my flatmates and I had noticed that there seemed to be a hell of a lot of people coming and going, and we rarely saw the same face twice. We were suspicious, but discovered the truth when the apartment went on fire and we had to break in to rescue people. (He locked people in.)
 
Now, we have our imbecilic government proposing to allow modular homes to be built with no planning permission, no restrictions, no legal rights for tenants, and in locations that would have no means of access for emergency services. It is a disaster waiting to happen, and perfect for scams and exploitation.
 
What is their next insane scheme going to be? Reintroduce Dublin's notorious tenements that were the worst in the British empire, even worse than Calcutta?
 
This government seems have gone stark raving mad. Ministers should be held legally personally liable for every disaster their crackpot schemes produce!

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Monumentally Stupid

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