The real team players are the ones willing to make a sacrifice.
Colman Reidy – Editor In Chief
It’s come to my attention that a report was sent to Minister for Finance Jack Chambers (FF) on 6 November 2024 showing that the government knew it was projected to fall far below its housing goals.
This revelation could have seriously impacted the government’s chances in the election on the 29th of the same month. It undermined government messaging that they were well on track to deliver 40,000 homes in 2024, far from the 30,330 that were actually built.
However, I ask you this reader:
How are we meant to build 40,000 new homes if we don’t believe that we can?
Should we punish our elected representatives for daring to dream?
It harkens to a problem I see with young people today. They quite simply lack the grit and optimism required to succeed in life.
When you’re two tries down, with a tempestuous Fijian barrelling on the warpath past your own 22, the only thing to do is to put your body on the line. Back yourself. Heave your body betwixt his pumping thighs and hope catching yourself in the spokes is enough to get him off. (Something our Sam Prendergast could learn.)
This is exactly what Minister Chambers has done, proverbially speaking of course. When presented with a number of different potential housing figures he chose the one he liked best and stuck with it.
The point of running for government is to get your team elected. Had Minister Chambers done what was expected of him by a few on the nationalist left and made the complete housing figures known; he would’ve been shattering the confidence of a FF/FG coalition still in it’s infancy, weeks before a crucial election and, more importantly, he would’ve been letting his friends down.
Would that really be the type of person we want in power?
People should be free to make up their own minds as to what the housing figures are. This housing data was nothing new. The Central Statistics Office published it two weeks before Mr Chambers received his report and was debated in the Dáil on the day of publication.
What we see from this debate is a tale of two TD’s:
Then Housing Minister Daragh O’Brien (FF) a man of calm. Just barely breaking a sweat as he “confidently predicted [completed housing units] will be in the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year”.
And we have Deputy Pearse Doherty (SF) losing his cool over the opinions of pencil-necked pessimists at the CSO and accusing a fellow Deputy of “lying” about something that hasn’t even come to pass.
Since the year was not yet over, Doherty could not say for certain that the government wouldn’t hit their targets, and now that the year is over and we unfortunately find that to be the case, can we really hold Ministers O’Brien or Chambers, or anyone in government, to account? For what? Having a little faith in these dark times?
Maybe their predictions were wrong, but these aren’t fund managers or doctors, they’re humble government ministers. Maybe they believed in 4th quarter magic just a little too hard, but at the end of the day, isn’t that their job?
And while Chambers didn’t contribute to this debate on the day, he did the right thing by keeping the November 6th report to himself.
Elections, like sports, are war. What the average punter might not understand is that parading around knowledge of core government failures just weeks before an election isn’t just bad strategy but runs circumspect to all known laws of Realpolitik.
Sergeant Chambers isn’t a Fifth columnist and I certainly wouldn’t want someone like that on my team.
A Quiet Word 