Simon Harris’s speech at the Fine Gael ardfheis in Cork last weekend garnered lots of coverage as the party leader and Tánaiste said he wanted to see “penalties” for people on social welfare who refuse to seek employment.
“At a time of full employment, it is simply not acceptable for any person to remain on the live register year after year after year,” he told delegates.
Elsewhere at the event, a senior Irish businessman addressed a Fine Gael ardfheis for the first time since 1972.
Back then, Mark FitzGerald (whose father Garret was Fine Gael leader for a decade from 1977 and was twice taoiseach) was just 14 with long hair and a nascent interest in the property market.
His hairline has thinned out in the intervening years and the co-founder of Ireland’s largest estate agent Sherry FitzGerald is eligible now for the free travel pass but the topic of his speech 54 years ago remains topical today: housing dereliction.
It’s hard to comprehend now but in the early 1970s people were still removing roofs from housing in order to avoid having to pay local domestic rates.
Under Irish laws at the time, a building without a roof was legally classified as a derelict structure, meaning it was exempt from local rates.
Fianna Fáil taoiseach Jack Lynch abolished rates later that decade, stripping away the need for such drastic interventions.
Half a century on, the country is once again grappling with the issue of derelict sites amid a housing crisis that flowed from the 2008 crash.
FitzGerald re-established his connection to Fine Gael last year, joining a commission set up to review the party’s organisation in the wake of a disappointing general election result.
“Our towns, cities and villages have their futures in front of them,” he told delegates. “Ireland is in the middle of a huge transformational project when it comes to the built environment. We are right to take a calculated risk to use some of the corporate taxes to transform the country.
“Dare to compare our towns and villages with those in France and Germany – the difference is that here they have their futures in front of them.”
Stirring stuff. Let’s hope he’s right. Solving the housing crisis would certainly garner Harris and Fine Gael more votes at the next election than cutting welfare benefits.
