Why Ireland's housing bubble burst
I object to the characterization of Ireland&#x27;s housing issues as somehow accidental, or solely due to broad market forces.<p>At every major decision point there were intelligent people screaming in the ear of media and politicians that property developers were getting away with murder.<p>I knew <i>teenagers</i> who emigrated as the writing was so clearly on the wall, and the entire time our print and TV media were inflating the bubble with every tool at their disposal.<p>Trails of brown envelopes (bribes) have been sniffed out repeatedly, and then left to grow cold. Large scale developments were made and begun without any plan whatsoever to connect them to basic and necessary infrastructure such as sewage, or schools.<p>The media have pointed fingers at immigrants, dole scroungers, and market forces - anything but policy. They give airtime to politicians who have been repeatedly proven to be actively working against us and caught in lies over and over. They smear anyone speaking truth.<p>And when it all went tits up the same fuckers - property developers and politicians and media - made even more money. For example, with NAMA, which this author inexplicably ignores completely.<p>Irish housing policy for the last decade has been to sell property to vulture funds and foreign investors at firesale prices tax free, while the average Irish worker has none of the same advantages and no chance of getting on the ladder whatsoever.<p>Our Minister of State for Housing recently tried to get his monkeys to find flaws in an ESRI report saying we could borrow billions for social housing. Our Minister for Housing has come through with just 5% of his promised build number. THIS IS POLICY.<p>Our government funds landlords with schemes such as HAP (1.5 billion euro directly to landlords since 2017) instead of building fucking houses. They then use those schemes to twist the numbers, pissing in our face and telling us its raining despite clear record homelessness and child poverty.<p>We give foreign companies billions to build houses which we then rent off of them for decades and don&#x27;t own at the end. It&#x27;s sheer, clear insanity. And this Oxford chap seems completely unaware, yet wholly confident in his &quot;understanding&quot; of the issues we have.<p>This crisis was NOT built on misunderstandings, or myth, or innocent mistakes and apathy. It was CONSTRUCTED. And at every point, the wrong people have profited at the expense of the 40% of Irish who don&#x27;t own a house.<p>And if I&#x27;m not wrong, neoliberals and banks are running this scam all over the world.