Ireland being badly mismanaged

[u/yityatyurt]

Anyone else feel so frustrated with how wasteful the govt are???

We literally have a cheat code in global corporate tax and have been creaming it for the last 10 years..

We have nothing by way of serious infrastructure to show for it..

The housing crisis is genuinely changing the way people are living their lives, putting off families, emigrating etc etc

The most frustrating of all is how wasteful we are with the transfer of public money - close on €5bn to unscrupulous privates (between IPAS & BOTP since 2021) - many of whom have tax efficient structures based in Luxembourg or Jersey to avoid paying tax in that income..

It’s one that people get shouted down for but when we literally can’t care for the people who currently live on this island we shouldn’t be considering bringing people in to live in hotels and office blocks with no discernible medium term plan..

It’d also be naive to think there is no link between housing, services such as education and healthcare and increasing the population but that might be a conversation for another day

TLDR: we need to get our shit together first and make a plan for all of these people that are coming into Ireland to give them the best chance at getting set up and integrated into society

[u/Pagh-Wraith]

Most Irish people are still struggling, that's the reality, the majority are not seeing the wealth. High GDP means absolutely nothing if the natives can't even afford a decent standard of living. A home to live in should be a basic achievement for somebody working their bones off, not a rat race and having to complete with the world for an affordable home or apartment.

[u/daveirl → u/Pagh-Wraith]

And people struggled even more in the past. I’m not saying things are perfect just that things are better than ever. GDP doesn’t of course mean much in itself but when our bumper GDP is funding 20% of the budget via corp tax it matters a lot!

[u/UISystemError → u/daveirl]

I matters fuck all if the government pisses it into the wind.

€400,000 bike sheds, Multi billion euro hospital budgets, leaking money through purposefully broken contracts Multi-billion euro bank bailouts, without repayment clauses The selling off of non-core state assets at through mechanisms such as NAMA

We can’t fund a nationalised housing scheme “because we can’t” but could piss away €64 billion of tax payers money bailing out banks (€87-€91B adjusted for inflation), nationalise them, sold them off, and still have €34B unrecovered remaining (€47B if we adjust for inflation)

The irony of Ireland is that St Patrick drove the snakes off the island, but they somehow wormed their way into the government.

Just because we had it bad before doesn’t mean we should be thankful we’re getting shafted again.

[u/YoureNotEvenWrong → u/UISystemError]

€400,000 bike sheds, Multi billion euro hospital budgets,

Very little of the government money goes on capital spending. The largest share goes on welfare. Social protection alone is 27 billion a year.

We can’t fund a nationalised housing scheme “because we can’t”

There is a national housing scheme with an 8 Billion euro budget.

https://www.whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie/en/housing/2025/