Last night’s Tonight with Vincent Browne featured Michael Taft, CIT economist Tom O’Connor, and Labour Finance spokesperson Joan Burton. The topic was the recent ERSI report which predicted that the economy would see Ireland moving out of recession (in terms of positive growth) in the second half of 2010. Needless to say, the devil is in the detail.
The program, which you can watch on the TV3 site was a rare enough occasion in the Irish media where our ability to implement a stimulus program and what form it would take was taken seriously and discussed in depth.
Tom O’Connor provided some of those ideas, and you find them developed further in his post on Progressive Economy.
The package he recommends has three elements: one geared towards stimulating enterprise, another involving investment in social, health and educational infrastructure and a third on using currently empty and unsellable housing stock for social housing.
One point worth highlighting here, although I recommend reading the whole post. In package II, which details social, health and educational infrastructural investment he suggests:
Revolutionising mental health services as provided for in Vision for Change (2006) = €750 million.
As discussed in Justin Frewen and Dr. Anna Datta’s post which was published on ILR yesterday, this makes both sense both economically and socially.
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April 20, 2010 9:53 am
This is the new government line…use the empty houses and ghost estates for social housing. Yep lets ‘load up’ all the poor social housing tenants and ship them out to the outskirts of Dublin, maybe Wicklow, nice view but ‘f**k’ all public transport for those who live there, no schools, libraries, leisure facilities. See the devlopers had no obligation in terms of planning or legislation to install any of the public or social infrastructure that is vital for the well-being of a healthy community. Or why not transport social housing tenants to the ouskirts of Letrim or Cavan, sure they are only social housing tenants, crappy half-built estates sure it’ll do them rightly.
Why should social housing tenants have to take second best, and support the greed of the banks and the folly of this governemnt. And how can the government even get away with floating this idea, because in this country no-one has a right to housing. You either buy privatly, you rent privatly, or you enjoy what is considered the governments largesse.
What should happen is that a one of the more notorious ghost estates should be preserved as a ‘HISTORICAL BUILDINGS MONUMENT’as reminder to one of the most shameful and traumatic periods in our history.
This ghost estate could have a purpose built visitors center with interactive displays for the visitors, in particular visiting school groups. This if it is done well, with imagination and creativity it could benefit the childrens ‘social education’. They could trace the historical time-lines that led to the birth of the celtic tiger, and the disasterous government policies that led to its demise and the current economic crisis. The children could then do a social history project, charting the political ideogies of those like Charlie MacCreevy and Bertie Ahern, the role of the corporates who fed the tiger, and who eventually bailed out leaving it to starve to death.
The ‘Ghost Estate Interactive Visitors Display’ could trace the way planing and local parish-pump politics has shaped not only the way we live in terms of our unimaginiative poor quality housing estates, but it could also could look at the role of the so-called professions, such as the architects and the solicitors who used thier professional skills to breathe life into the estates that would eventually become ghosts. Again another subject for an essay, ‘The Role of The Architectural Profession in the provision of Housing in Ireland 2000-2009′.
The serious point here is that, we preserve buildings to remind us of the horrors of war, we preserve buildings to remind us of our ancient past, we preserve buildings to remind us of our advances into new milleniums. Buildings and houses in particular remind us who we are, fragile and vulnerable human beings who’s most important need is that of shelter. This government along with all the associated professions exploited this most basic of human needs in such a cruel and callous way. We need to preserve one of these Ghost Estates as a reminder of this, rather than ask those who are vulnerable and in need of housing to bring them back to life.
Cheers
Robert.
Note: that if any-one wishes to develop or sponsor my idea of a Ghost Estate Interactive Visitors Centre I would be happy to discuss further. Now who would sponsor such an idea, one of the Dragons, O2, Independent Newspapers Property Supplement, maybe Duncan and one of RTE’s property porn shows could get involved.. *&+£^*?