“Ní raibh pingin againn.”
An Béal Bocht nó An Milleánach: Droch-sgéal ar an droch-shaoghal, Myles na gCopaleen
Without a secure home we are in a state of ontological insecurity. Persistent stress, in relation to things we have no control over, causes physiological damage – it leads to raised cortisol levels and significantly impacts our physical and mental health. Housing insecurity is a major contributor to stress and anxiety.
Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About It,Rory Hearne
An unusual conflict erupted recently within Wicklow County Council corridors of power regarding the now academic rent review as the champagne socialists of the Labour Party battled it out with the death and taxes, more death and more taxes Green Party as to who was the most downtrodden in a political amphitheatre that would have even Myles na gCopaleen himself blush.
Unwittingly (or even worse, wittingly) aping bedrock Thatcherite and Friedmanian economic doctrine, competing Cllrs spewed trite empty pious platitudes about how “we just had to get on with it” with collective bootstraps pulled up so far they apparently restricted blood circulation to the neoliberal hive mind of the chamber.
Such demonstrative dog-whistling did not fall on deaf ears, though, as every proclamation of heroic civic martyrdom stirred the chamber gallery’s ancestral ghosts from their looming baroque portrait paintings of the faithful and embittered disciples of intergenerational wealth who cheered uproariously in their all too brief respite from their daily flogging of any workshy Irish citizen under 40 “still having their arses wiped living at home.”
Governments also wanted house prices to rise so that the older generation of home-owning voters would get their property values back up […] They wanted to protect the value of the assets held by the privileged groups in Irish society
Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About It,Rory Hearne
The Labour Councillor’s opening jabs in the Béal Bocht title fight landed with the precision of a wily alley cat as he extolled his ability to seemingly obtain and service a mortgage on a 30k salary alone in a county (median house price €480,000 – CSO) where this princely amount wouldn’t even touch a deposit for said dwelling.
The panel of poverty judges were clearly impressed with this majestic opening salvo they had just witnessed, but one did have a contrarian query regarding whether any potential additional revenue streams or inherited wealth were involved to achieve such a herculean feat of property ownership on such a lowly public servant’s salary? This barbed observation threatened to rob entire Millennial and Gen Z generations of their Wicklow Che Guevara, an all too delicate desert rose, or buttercup on a cow dung, for the long since disenfranchised ‘Generation Rent and Shafted.’
“You’ll find no Bank of Mammy and Daddy here, just sheer grit, blood, sweat, tears, early mornings, long hours, hard nights, daily commutes, determination and bank holidays? Sure I don’t even know what those are?” the Bray Guevara heroically declared to the Irish inquisition.
Sixty per cent of renters who receive state supports toward their rent (HAP, RAS) are in poverty after they pay their rent […] Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in 2019 showed higher levels of the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation associated with infection and stress, in private renters […] They are financially insecure and housing insecure. This means they are more likely to be suffering from various forms of ill health, from depression to cancer.
Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About It,Rory Hearne
Green Party Councillor Toil paced and prowled her corner like a coiled panther ready to unleash hell upon her Labour opponent, and she did not disappoint. Her Tyson-esque opening gambit went straight for the jugular and, just like a Yorkshire tiger, included both claws of single parenthood and council housing in a one-two counterpunch that lifted her opponent straight off the mat, à la Cooper vs Ali fashion, stunning onlookers. The poverty judges, glowing, could barely contain their admiration for such an audacious strategy. Were they witnessing the birth of the next Katie Taylor Lidl™, a messianic heroine who risked subverting the entire patriarchal social order?
But all was still to play for as the Labour Councillor spat his bloodied Perrier into his original Waterford Crystal™ flute with the blood of Irish rebels now visibly pulsating through his veins. As Bray Guevara strode defiantly from his corner, the poverty ref reminded him again there was to be no hitting below the belt, such as “I didn’t even claim half of my expenses last year” or “Labour has always been the party of the blue-collar worker.”
The Labour Councillor’s machismo swagger failed to conceal a nervousness that he was seriously in danger of losing his Béal Bocht crown and, in the process, destroying the Labour Party’s hard-earned moniker as working-class heroes. But Bray Guevara was quite literally saved by the bell as suddenly, out of nowhere and in true WWF/WWE cage match fashion, rogue wild card independent Cllr Mach SCHNELL!!! darted down the chamber’s entrance tunnel to the sounds of “If I Were a Rich Man” (not the Gwen Stefani and Eve’s noughties smash but especially Chaim Topol’s performance from the 1971 film adaptation).
Housing wasn’t always this unaffordable. A couple renting in 1989 would have had to save a quarter of their income, after rent and tax, over a year to raise a 10 per cent deposit. Today in Dublin, they would need to save 75 per cent of their disposable income to get a deposit. An utterly impossible task if you add in the wider cost of living inflation. In the 1980s, a young couple would have had to allocate just 15 per cent of their disposable income to cover the mortgage. Today, an average young couple would have to allocate close to 30 per cent of their disposable income to mortgage payments in Dublin (which is the definition of unaffordable housing costs).
Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About It,Rory Hearne
As he slid under the ropes, Schnell wasted no time landing a thundering Hadouken uppercut which surely awoke Zeus himself in this fascinating clash of poor-mouth titans:
“If anyone wants to look for €30,000 in my pockets to pay for this they’re more than welcome to root around there but there’s not €30, never mind €30,000!”
The poverty judges collectively orgasmed at such a display of everyman gusto. Were we witnessing this upstart to the Béal Bocht throne now becoming heir apparent? The rest of the gobsmacked councillors looked to the judges’ scoreboards for a merciful assuagement from the unfolding tension, but scorn was poured on such relief as the same pernickety poverty judge queried yet again whether Cllr Mach SCHNELL!!!, if the €30 not being present in this proletariat warrior’s pockets was in fact due to being destitute or the fact he carries no legal tender due to his adoption of cashless payments like even those barely evolved now do?
“I assure the chamber that I didn’t even have €30 to put in the tank to drive here today, having had to choose the Google Maps route with the most downhill gradients to roll my vehicle most of the journey here and I am willing to swear an oath on the Holy Catholic Bible,” SCHNELL!!! ferociously counterpunched just seconds before the chamber’s global cost-of-living clock ominously ticked ever closer to midnight.
Judges were satisfied with this and Cllr Mach SCHNELL!!! was declared the victor of An Béal Bocht Championships 2026, hoisted aloft triumphantly by his ragged band of emaciated voters (whose bellies were grotesquely swollen not from obesity but protein deficiency), but only briefly, as their malnourished frames could only sustain the weight of a wingless red admiral butterfly on the best of days.
A disconsolate Cllr Toil was visibly disappointed, citing the possibility it may have been her autumnal Brown Thomas wardrobe collection attire that failed the judges’ means test in the end as she pluckily declared she would be back next year “poorer and more bedraggled”.
Labour’s Bray Guevara was also bullish, stating “I thought if I went any lower than a 30k mortgage within the commuter belt of the capital then it would really stretch credulity, but I’ve already sacked my coaching staff and I’ll be back more impoverished than ever, have no doubts about that!”
The post-match entertainment included the newly formed supergroup boyband, The Carpetbaggers, consisting of aristocrats Malcolm Bryrne, Brian Brennan and Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin who ceremoniously conga-lined through the chamber in celebration of the whopping 150,000 shekels they recently procured from the national begging bowl. Some eyebrows were raised at Deputy Byrne chauffeuring this triumphant procession, but as was correctly pointed out by his supspiciously burly handlers, he is still currently holder of a full driver’s licence.
Special guest of honour Mark Zuckerberg also stuck his head in, ribbing our dear leaders that with one stroke of his digital stylus he donated the same amount to Waterford GAA as our newly minted TDs managed in two pathetic years of public service and thus, in the process, bypassed the entire local political system and, more importantly, negated the even more loathsome great unwashed who bother to vote in it in the first place.
The […] Minister for Finance, Ray MacSharry, announced in the 1987 Budget the ending of housing grant schemes and the cutting of capital spend on new building of social housing. The system where local authorities were able to borrow to build social housing was ended and replaced with grants from central government.
Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House, and What We Can Do About It,Rory Hearne
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” toasted Zuckerberg as his chamber of cheerful backslapping courtiers and courtesans posed for an official RAY-BAN Meta Skyler Glasses™ selfie with our technofeudal overlord, clinking their glasses as they swilled Dom Pérignon™ through their laser-whitened teeth.
For non-believers in any doubt, the true populism of our locally elected representatives can easily be verified by their published ethics declarations below, where, just like most of today’s youth, they merely possess a blank field instead of the green variety or, worse yet, the quill and ink to even write and submit their declaration of interest for the previous year in the first place!
https://www.wicklow.ie/living/Your-Council/Your-Councillors/Ethics-Declarations
