Pat Kenny was just asking on his radio programme looking for people who live in ‘ghost estates’ or just people who want to be in the audience and have ideas about what to do with our 300k empties to contact them. The number (I think) was 01 2082941. There is also an email address on their website rte.ie/news/thefrontline/).
An ideal opportunity for some of our Dublin region based Pinsters to meet up and get the points they want to make on the national airwaves. The Frontline has been doing very well on the ratings. I assume it is next Monday night they are referring to.
Well I suppose we probably will own a good few of them once NAMA comes in, but there’s a simple solution to what to do with the empties - sell them to whoever wants them at whatever price they will pay. That, or let them fall apart.
Certainly I hope there are not any further hare brained schemes to make them into social housing, retirement villages, drug rehabilitation centres etc. I’m not against those worthy causes, but I am against this government brining them in because they will only be a way for the government to funnell more money into the developer’s pockets at taxpayers expense.
So sell or don’t. Simple. Perhaps this is too obvious for frontline, as they probably want some angry irrational person to say they should be burned to the ground etc etc.
In some areas they cannot be sold unless the money is retained to complete estates and houses both. No point flogging a shell in Castlepollard for €15k and it still being a shell 10 years later
… which is largely dependent on what the banks will lend them.
Don’t forget that part. In the minds of many people, that is what is causing the stalemate and preventing them selling. One of the intentions of NAMA/HCL is to rectify this situation. It needs to be realised that the great body of FTBers do not have any real sway in the so called market. Rather, once it has been settled what are the greatest sums, and under what terms, that the banks are capable of lending in the new paradigm (the NAMA/HCL paradigm), they will be herded in to borrow and buy as required by the mainstream property propaganda.
I would support KN on this, except that in Kenny you are dealing with a fool and an puppet for someone upstairs (unlike other hosts he always has an earpice and is directed from outside the studio). I’ve been on Frontline and it’s very different when you are sat there. The distribution of lapel microphones is just one way of thwarting the message coming out to the viewer. Kenny hears those with lapel microphones, and they don’t need the boom mic to make a point. It’s all grand while it’s just simple contributions, one at a time, but once it gets to argy bargy time, the rigged nature of the programme become apparent to the participants, but not to the viewers.
If you have the Microphone you may get the chance to deliver one cutting soundbite that explains your position , have it rehearsed and deliver it well. Kenny will not come back to you! If you dont have the microphone then DEMAND one.
If they won’t give you a microphone then walk out noisily clattering and knocking as soon as the programme starts
The panel will probably have Country Tom and yer man the ex property economist ( name slipped) and a FF hack from somewhere.
The Frontline is a bad name for the programme, how about The Insane Asylum… Anyone who wants to spend time in the company of Pat Kenny either LIVE or vicariously is in need of some serious psychological help…
I’d favour selling our empties rather than demolishing/deconstructing. But the longer the process takes the more likely these homes will fall into disrepair and become eyesores.
The empties are owned by someone… Each one of them… It’s up to that particular individual or corporation what they do with them, until some of them are actually in NAMA’s hands, this debate is moot and it’s hard to know how many will eventually end up there…
That sounds like the opening line for a polemic, so no.
( no copyright on these lads )
"We have more EMPTY houses than RENTED houses of all kinds, who will take these unless everybody in a rented house divorces "
**
“Ireland has a built in 10 years oversupply unless we start knocking them, if we knock half of them we might fill the rest up in 5 years”**
“If the government takes over the 300,000 empty properties we will then own 3 times what we own in Council housing today”
“The biggest ship EVER built is lying on a beach in India right now doing nuthin and we could buy it for €25m. Then we could load 100 semis on the deck at a time and ship them straight to Haiti if Tom guarantees the members built them quake proof”
