Darragh and Paschal bring the house down

Happily I’m not on the receiving end – well, not directly – of the Dublin government. That allowed me to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh on Monday night.

Katie Hannon had the housing spokesperson for each party on her panel and it was a sight to see. People Before Profit talked some sense. The Social Democrats talked some sense. Sinn Féin talked some serious sense. Fianna Fail struggled to get off the hook that they were a major part of the government in control of housing for the last four years. Fine Gael struggled wildly to get off the hook that they were a major part of government for the last fourteen years.

Katie got four different people to tell their housing tale, most of them tales of unmitigated woe and horror. Answering them, Fianna Fail Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien thanked them for telling their story (no, seriously), told them about the many things Fianna Fail and he personally had done for them, and looked as if he might come out from behind his panel and give them a big hug. Paschal O’Donohoe kept getting mixed up in the names of the housing victims,  said how moved he was by their tale, and looked as if he might vault over the panel and crush them to his bosom.

I could talk about the Labour, Social Democrat and Sinn Féin contribution to the debate, but the important thing was, none of those three parties were in government over the last four or fourteen years.  If you’ve seen a salmon on the end of a fisherman’s hook, thrashing and leaping and thrashing again, you’ll have a picture of Paschal and Darragh. They talked and talked and talked, with feeling and compassion, about what they were going to do. On occasion, they talked about what they had done. But at no point did they concede that they had been the government that had landed these unfortunate people in the ghastly mess they’re now in.

We all know that the Dublin government is very proud of the fact that the public coffers are bursting with wealth. Since they twisted it desperately away from it, they clearly were a bit uneasy about their bulging vaults and the 14,000 people in the state who are at this moment homeless.

Darragh and Paschal were full of housing plans, but at no point did they raise their grubby hands and concede that their policies were what had landed these people into the purgatory they were living. And they were just four examples of  the tens of thousands of young people struggling to pay eye-watering rent or living at home in their thirties.

Gee thanks, Darragh,thanks Paschal. You have done the state some heartless damage.

Sometimes you have to laugh in case you’d cry.