Cassandra Voices

Tag: Daniele Idini

  • Italy: Is Super Mario’s Party Over?

    Mario Draghi’s ‘technocratic’ government has fallen, or so we’ve heard. Now it feels like we are facing into the most important election in generations.

    According to the latest polls, a (far-) right coalition is on the brink of power. The spectre of international interference, especially coming from the East is (again) on the front pages and the distinction between information and propaganda – journalism and intelligence – has never been so difficult to discern.

    And as we approach two months of political campaigning in the middle of the busy tourist season (I suspect there are plenty of cancellations in 5 star resorts…) this could be the right time to ask: how are elections won nowadays. Is it only the votes that counts? Or does social media superiority, which is nothing less than the understanding of current communication trends and technology – often with outside interference – actually determining most democracies’ fates?

    With these questions in mind it is worthwhile reminding ourselves how we’ve got here.

    I can’t recall a time when Italians believed a government would last its full term. Italy’s apparently chaotic political life has become a cliché, like how beautiful everywhere is to visit, but try living there…

    Youth unemployment hit 49% as of Feb 10, 2021 in the southern region of Calabria, with the national average of 29.7%. Deeply entrenched divisions in wealth distribution between North and South and the ever more precarious nature of employment often determines whether an area or a community can lift itself out of poverty, or is the first to feel the weight of any crisis, whether it is Covid lockdowns, inflation, housing, energy or hunger. The latest available figures show that roughly 19% of the Italian population is now at risk of falling into poverty.

    Despite these bleak figures Italy’s economic recovery after Covid-19 was promising, but after the fall of the 5 Star and Democratic Party-led government thanks to a typical palace coup – compliments to Mohammed bin Salman best friend, the Saudi-funded, Matteo Renzi – again a capable leader is needed.

    At that point, the authority of a brilliant surgeon was called for in a code red emergency to save the country from spiralling doom. Someone who it was claimed saved the Eurozone from the apocalypse with three words. Someone whose position as Prime Minister seemed like a personal sacrifice, almost a burden to endure in the name of patriotism. In an atmosphere like a coronation, Mario Draghi came to power after the most prestigious career one can think of at the highest echelons of world finance and international banking.

    In order to avoid early elections, President Sergio Mattarella called “Super Mario” to the rescue, with a mandate to form a broad coalition of national unity.  I remember when Draghi first addressed the Senate as Prime Minister: “Today unity is not an option, it is a duty”, he said, as he prepared to lead one of the broadest coalition ever attempted in Italian political history.

    He indicated that Italy is doing just fine, will survive the operation, but that a long recovery period lay ahead. We just needed to be reasonable and support a government of “National Unity” where almost all the political forces were expected to support it from both chambers: Almost 90% from the chamber of deputies and 85% from the senate.

    Encompassing Matteo Salvini’s Far-Right Lega, Enrico Letta’s center-left  Democratic Party, among others, along with a dash of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the Populist 5 Star Movement.

    2018 Election Results.

    In case you are wondering, there is no definitive consensus as to whether the 5 Stars is left or right wing. This changes depending on where the criticism is coming from.

    Its leader, and deposed Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, had to share the cabinet table with Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva – the main instigator in the downfall of the previous government.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    The only remaining opposition came from a few small parliamentary groups, mainly independents, and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which is now the strongest far right political party. They are not fascist, or so they say, but it isn’t difficult to find nostalgic sympathy for His Excellency Benito, or even Adolfo, among followers, right up to some of the leadership, as was revealed by last year by FanPage, and is well explained by David Drover in the NYT.

    Mario Draghi was, and still is, the leader of a party that does not exist yet he retains extensive sway over how Italy is governed. One can almost recognize a cultist aspect projected by his persona, and now by his ‘agenda’, which has filled the void of political vision formerly filled by both left and right factions.

    Now a strange mix of old faces ranging from Enrico Letta, to the former leader of the 5 Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio – and even some ex members of Forza Italia – are his disciples available to spread the word.

    In very simplistic terms the unified message that triumphed with Draghi’s government is that the country would not survive without a broad, caretaker government, led by who knows, and that the vast majority of civil society has a moral duty to support him, “Whatever it takes”. Says who? Is that NATO on the line?

    The current crisis can be traced to what was the largest party in parliament – until its recent split – the 5 Star Movement, simply attempting to present certain amendments to the bill “Aiuti” or “Help”, to the government, that they deemed necessary in areas such as welfare, tax, ecology; as well as attempts to reconsider Italy’s role in the context of the war in Ukraine.

    A range of polls since Russia’s invasion reveal that about half of the Italian population does not support weapons being sent to Ukraine. It’s only natural that political factions seek to capitalize on popular opinions, as much as it would be naïve to believe foreign powers, be they Russia, China or NATO, wouldn’t be attempting to exert influence, especially at a point such as this.

    This approach by the 5 Star Movement was apparently ignored, leading to the government’s fall, and to the Lega and Forza Italia seized the opportunity to call for an early election.

    It begs the question: why shouldn’t the largest party in government demand reforms for which it has a mandate?

    This current crisis could actually be a long delayed awakening of a political system which has remained comatose, at least since Berlusconi’s time.

    It’s just a shame that an unholy trinity of Berlusconi’s FI, Meloni’s FDL and Salvini’s Lega may have the numbers to become Italy’s next government coalition. This is the equivalent of Le Pen winning in France, and will surely destabilise all of Europe.

    He’s Back! Berlusconi alonside Giulio Andreotti in 1984.

    By the way, I did say Berlusconi. Guess what? He’s back! With a pledge to plant one million trees, because his party has always been environmentally conscious after all. It’s a bad case of United States of Amnesia that Italian would consider Burlesconi suitable for the presidency of the republic.

    We seem to have forgotten that we already know so much about how his political ascent (and wealth) came about. At the age of eighty-five, he is looking forward to becoming President of the Republic, even while he is still under investigation for his past connections with Cosa Nostra.

    Then again, while he was Prime Minister Conte secured an EU Recovery Package worth about €220 billion, which is expected to flood Italy’s economy with money in the coming years. Who else should we trust to manage this if not the same people, or their disciples, over and over again?

    At all times, we may safely assume, with the approval, or background manoeuvring, of a foreign actor.

    Is that NATO (or the US government) on the line again there?

    We are an independent media platform dependent on readers’ support. You can make a one-off contribution via Buy Me a Coffee or better still on an ongoing basis through Patreon. Any amount you can afford is really appreciated.

    Feature Image is a work by Office of U.S. House Speaker from https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1446579056720416773.

  • The Brick Wall: Access to Justice

    I’m living in cloud cuckoo land
    And this just feels like
    Spinning plates
    Radiohead, Like Spinning Plates, Amnesiac 2001.

    Ten years on from the Irish Banking Crisis and the subsequent taxpayer funded bailouts, how are we faring in term of regulating the financial sector?

    In view of the possibility of another property bubble, it is surely vital to ensure appropriate access to justice, especially for those with limited resources.

    Prior to the Crash, banks through their own internal regulatory mechanisms – including risk management and third party auditing firms – were, essentially, allowed to regulate their own affairs, which unfortunately permitted a lax regime.

    On a rare occasion that a risk manager signalled grave breaches of conduct to the Central Bank of Ireland – as in the case of whistle-blower Jonathan Sugarman – he was largely ignored. And, even though thanks to his revelations we know a great deal more than we would otherwise about widespread banking mis-conducts, Sugarman subsequently had his professional and personal life destroyed. That message is surely not lost on colleagues intending to pursue a similar course.

    Back then, inadequate regulatory frameworks allowed underestimation of risk and outright profiteering in the banking sector. Yet there are reasons to believe that, despite the successes boasted of by the regulators, thousands of people are still being failed by the State.

    Despite concerns being raised in February, 2021 by Sinn Fein deputy Pearse Doherty that “2,865 complaints to the Financial Ombudsman remain unsolved for over 12 months” very little attention has been paid in the media to enduring dysfunctions in consumer protection frameworks, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of consumers of financial services.

    Regulatory Capture

    Regulators come in two types: smart and dumb. The latter are more likely to make mistakes, and the market will learn about mistakes when firms squawk.
    Ernesto Dal Bó in the Oxford review of economic policy, Vol.22, NO.2

    Could this be a subtle example of so-called ‘regulatory capture’, which is said to occur when a particular industry holds an excessive level of influence over a statutory agency designed  to monitor and regulate it?

    Ernesto Dal Bó offers two interpretation of the phrase:

    According to the broad interpretation, regulatory capture is the process through which special interests affect state intervention in any of its forms, which can include areas as diverse as the setting of taxes, the choice of foreign or monetary policy, or the legislation affecting R&D.

    According to the narrow interpretation, regulatory capture is specifically the process through which regulated monopolies end up manipulating the state agencies that are supposed to control them.

    Either of these descriptions could easily be used to describe successive Irish government’s cosy relationship with foreign multinationals. Witness how in 2016 then Taoiseach Enda Kenny unashamedly set out Ireland’s stall as ‘the best small country to do business in’. Attracting financial service companies to a friendly, relatively unregulated, environment appears to remain high on the government’s agenda.

    But insofar as this is a legitimate goal, the way it is achieved, for example, by perpetuating dysfunctions in regulatory mechanisms, have grave consequences for the public at large, especially in terms of access to justice.

    Ombudsman

    One mechanism to provide access to justice is embodied in the role of the Ombudsman.

    This word come from Sweden where its first use is recorded in the 19th century. Meaning “Commission Man”, it involved oversight over the abuse of power by public administration. The position evolved with changing times and industries, to become globally adopted, assuming the part of an impartial mediator between individual complainants and large, well-resourced organizations.

    To give a simple example with a bit more context: what if you have a complaint against the misbehaviour of a credit institution with which you have a resulting outstanding debt?

    In Ireland, anyone in such a predicament can avail first of internal complaint procedures within the credit/insurance/pension providers. If this proves futile, as often seems to be the case, you can either go to the Financial Services and Pension Ombudsman (FSPO), or for the better-resourced, proceed directly to the courts.

    The FSPO was established in order to provide “an impartial, accessible, and responsive complaint resolution service that delivers fair, transparent and timely outcomes for all our customers, and enhances the financial services and pension environment.”

    It’s role is crucial in ensuring basic standards of consumer protection especially in a sector such as financial services, which bears significant responsibility for a dysfunctional property market

    This article is not disputing that the Office has fullfilled aspects of it’s responsabilities to date, and recognises the challanges of the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office’s results are well presented in their annual digests of decisions, and were compellingly illustrated by the current Head of the FSPO, Ger Deering, in his Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee the 25th May 2021.

    What we are interrogating is why a large number of complaints, seem to have been closed in preliminary scrutiny on a narrow, legal interpretation of the Act. It is also unclear whether the FSPO is sufficiently staffed and organized to make use of the necessary banking knowledge in order to fulfil all its statutory duties.

    Boasting Figures

    Ben Hoey, an experienced ex-banker who founded Quartech services, a mortgage mis-selling advisory firm, has been assisting individuals with the filings of such complaints and has made us aware of some of the challenges encountered.

    Having submitted over fifty complaints over the last two year to the FSPO, as well as two FOI requests in June 2021 and most recently a judicial review, he also raises serious concerns over the ability of FSPO to carry out its duties.

    In an Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee, Mr Deering boasted: “In 2020, I am happy to report that, despite the challenges of the pandemic and remote working, we closed 6,193 complaints, an increase of 35% on 2019.”

    But thanks to Hoey’s FOI requests, we now know that 2,110 of these cases never entered the dispute resolution or investigation processes.

    Those numbers also slightly differ from the ones found in the annual report of 2020, and are presented in a way suggesting that 1,401 cases were actually sorted within a very short time frame.

    There are, undoubtedly, cases that were legitimately rejected as indicated in the Act. But in order to gain more detailed explanations for preliminary decisions, made in the first registration and assessment phase, the FOI requested documentation and records in relation to reasons for closure. Unfortunately, in this case the answer was ‘no records exist.’

    This is just the first stage of the complaint; the staff needs to interpret the Act and establish if the newly arrived complaint falls within the FSPO jurisdiction.

    It relies on training and guidance materials, which have also been released, and from this we see that when issues of jurisdiction arise, there is an over-reliance on the legal profession and a marked absence of the necessary banking expertise.

    In general, we know that if a complainant does not accept the preliminary rejection, and responds in writing, he or she receives a letter issued by the legal department. But in order to interpret and respond to this one would likely require legal advice.

    This doesn’t come cheap as the FSPO is well aware, since it spent €1.8m (46% of staff costs) on “Legal Fees” according to their 2020 accounts. By comparison the equivalent UK body filed no such expenses. Recall that the role of an Ombudsman is to be an impartial mediator between individual complainant and large, well-resourced organizations.

    Some of Ben Hoey’s clients received letters up to twenty-two pages long, containing dense legal terminology, supporting FSPO arguments not to investigate; rather than a professional financial analysis of the issue in question.

    Others have seen their complaints dragged out for years, stuck in the earliest phase of the “statutory complaints procedure”; which was established in order ‘to afford complainants an informal, expeditious and independent mechanism for the resolution of complaints.’

    From the point of view of some complainants, it feels as if the process of adjudication has been designed to keep their case out of the FSPO jurisdiction, thus keeping the number of cases that the Office investigates to a minimum.

    When the Financial and Pension Ombudsman positions were merged into their current form in 2018, the new organisation should have been structured, and staffed, to handle a increasing number of annual complaints. It appear from the latest annual report that this has been achieved, but when we get into the granular detail, we see that up to a third of these may have been inadequately handled.

    Given that a significant percentage of such disputes are in relation to mortgages and to a dysfunctional housing market, we can surely appreciate the importance of such an institution.

    The stigma attached to debt is a deep scar that afflicts many in an apparently prosperous country. Given that a level of responsibility lies with the lending industry, we should expect the Department of Finance to ensure that the relevant agencies such as the CBI and the FSPO that protect such individuals are adequately resourced.

    Yet the total count of full time employees of the FSPO is just 85 as of the end of 2021. That amounts to roughly twenty staff per million inhabitants in Ireland. By comparison, its counterpart in the UK employs double that with 3,000 staff, or approximately forty-four per million.

    A Stairway to Heaven

    Since Ger Deering was recently nominated by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath, to become Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, we expect that the position of Head of the FSPO will soon become vacant.

    We now have access to another FOI request providing insights into the recruitment of Ger Deering to the office in 2015/16, at a point when the Financial Services Ombudsman FSO and Pension Ombudsman were still separate bodies.

    A series of interviews were carried out with eight candidates on February 17-18, 2015 for the first round, and on February, 27, 2015 there were final interviews with the remaining three candidates, the “Board Members Guidelines” resembling a basic template for corporate hiring.

    All of the interviewers had impressive CV’s and expertise, including Mr John Hogan, then Head of Banking Policy for the Department of Finance and recently appointed as Secretary General.

    Revealingly, Hogan contributed to the “The Keane” Report on Residential Mortgage Arrears, which was criticised by Deputy Luke “Ming“ Flanaghan in 2011. The Report rules out the introduction of any scheme involving blanket debt forgiveness.

    Notably, the majority of complaints received by the FSPO pertained to financial and banking issues.  One would expect that any individual considered for that role – with powers to make legally binding decisions – would have extensive experience within the banking sector.

    By analogy, if one looks at the skills required of managers and other positions with supervisory roles, employed in the banking and insurance sectors that are imposed by the EU Single Supervisory Mechanism, we find clear guidelines in regard to required banking knowledge or one can even look up the job description for an FSPO Case Manager in PTSB.

    Yet in the advertised job description for The Financial and Pension Ombudsman we see theoretical banking or financial knowledge being “desirable” instead of “essential”, nor is there an examination process, beyond a standard interview.

    This is not to question Ger Deering’s managerial skills, nor his ability to adapt and learn, but when the job requires him to lead an oversight body over the banking, insurance and pension industries, his work experience is not what one would expect for the appointment.

    We know that the Office contains some banking expertise thanks to the qualifications of less senior staff, who have to deal with an enormous workload. But an appointment process for the top job focused on legal and managerial skills may perpetuate the current imbalance between the private and public sectors.

    In the forthcoming recruitment process for a position such as the FSPO, it is surely in the interest of the Department of Finance to appoint a person with more than generic managerial skills, and for some form of competitive examination to occur. Otherwise, it will be difficult to convince an increasingly sceptical Irish public that the government is genuinely intent on levelling the playing field between ordinary citizens and “too big to fail” corporations.

    Shared Responsibility

    One might say that appointing an ex-banker to the position creates a dangerous revolving door between banks and regulators, and is itself a recipe for regulatory capture. That argument is right to a point, but does not take into account that the necessary banking expertise might be found outside the banking industry itself, such as in auditing and accountancy firms; or by casting the net internationally to guarantee a greater degree of separation between the regulator and the regulated, especially in a small country such as Ireland.

    And, insofar as it is important to have sound legal advice, it is important that this is not set out in such a way as to intimidate complainants, and that the Office receives the same level of financial consultancy as the banks themselves.

    When we talk about consumer protection in the financial industry, we are really talking about the level field that the government promises, in relation to an industry administering one of the most powerful means of control, which is the complex socio-psychological phenomenon of debt.

    While some are celebrating that ‘The Boom is Back’, a significant proportion of the population is still struggling to overcome the effects that the previous boom and subsequent financial collapse actually brought; and, as in the period of austerity, the burden of bad choices is still carried almost exclusively by the most vulnerable and least resourced.

  • “Nuances”: Fellipe Lopes in Conversation

    “Nuances” is a work in progress by South American documentary maker Fellipe Lopes. Since May 2021, Lopes has been on the ground in some of the most notorious refugee camps in Europe, on the Greek island of Lesvos (Lesbos), just off the coast of Turkey.

    “Nuances” seeks to understand the ‘refugee crisis’ from the perspective of asylum seekers and refugees, and their relationship with humanitarian workers and volunteers living and working on the island. Lopes is soon to finish the interviews and the recording of the documentary. Until now, Lopes has been working voluntarily, at his own expense. He has now started a Kickstarter to crowdsource €7,000 for the next stage of the project, including post production and distribution.

    Last month, Lopes was nominated for the Irish Red Cross Humanitarian Awards for Journalism Excellence. In the same month, Cassandra Voices journalist Daniele Idini had the chance to catch up with the documentary maker.

    Fellipe Lopes by Daniele Idini

    Daniele Idini (DI): How long have you been in Lesvos now and what’s the situation like?

    Fellipe Lopes (FL): So I have been in Lesvos for the last six months and working on this documentary since I arrived. This documentary is a collection of interviews with asylum seekers, refugees, migrants explaining the challenges they are facing. It seems like they basically have only one option when it comes to work, which is basically to work as an interpreter. And this is not something that makes all the migrants and refugees happy because they are revisiting all the trauma through other people’s experience.

    DI: So basically, you are saying this work is, in a way, necessary for the camp’s operation, but is, in a way, preventing migrants from escaping the camp’s system,.

    FL: Exactly. These migrants are well suited to this kind of work, because they often speak the necessary languages – it might be Farsi, or Arabic, Lingala or French. They also can understand the struggles other refugees have been through, having experienced similar things themselves. On the other hand, however, they have ended up working in the humanitarian sector when they actually need humanitarian support.

    This is one of the topics covered in the documentary. Another issue, is the kind of social and legal challenges humanitarian workers are facing here. It’s about the authorities. The role of the police force and the army in regards to upholding the right of media coverage.

    The documentary is set with the island of Lesvos, and its capital Myteline, in the background. But the documentary centres on the stories that happen inside the camp, stories that happens outside of the camp, and the reasons and motivations for those asylum seekers coming to Greece. And as well, we have a really interesting part of the documentary that examines the pushback happening here in the Aegean Sea, which divides Turkey and Greece.

    We have a lawyer who’s been working around issues related to pushbacks for the last five years. We also have a German journalist who’s been covering all the pushbacks as well for the last three years. Obviously, the situation in Lesbos is so dynamic and things are changing rapidly. It’s been really challenging for me to keep up with this story. Things have moved so fast, and that’s maybe the reason I’m still here, and will stay a little bit longer, because these are stories that are developing.

    The dynamics in the camps are changing, which is new. They call this the new camp, which is where they’re trying to reduce the number of asylum seekers. Since the fire that happened last year, the government promised to build a new camp. But this never happened, basically because the local community are against new camps in the area. As a result, the temporary camps have become the de facto new camp.

    DI: So your documentary also tackles the relationship between the refugee camps and the local community?

    FL: Yes. I spoke with locals. Some are understanding of the necessity for a new camp. With that said, whether there is a new one or not, there are still 3,000 migrants on the island awaiting resolution of their cases. – building a new camp won’t solve the problem. they need to be processed

    Obviously, the freedom of these people is highly restricted.

    In the end, everything goes back to the camp. It isn’t a liveable reality. There are no schools in the camp and there’s only precarious legal and medical support.

    Last week, a woman passed away inside of the camp, for example. This is the reality that is happening in Lesvos. And everybody expects another massive wave of asylum seekers coming to Greece due to the situation in Afghanistan. Less and less will reach the Greek shore, however, because of the increased activity of the Greek coastguard and the European Frontex.

    Demonstration in support to Afghanistan.

    DI: Why should the general public support the making of this documentary?

    FL: It’s an overview of a situation that’s happening in Europe; it’s happening in Greece, through Greek laws, through the Greek system. But there are comparable problems in terms of the pushback between Bosnia and Croatia. The same thing is happening between Belarus and Poland. The same thing is happening in the Mediterranean Sea, between Libya and Italy, in Libya itself, and in Spain.

    This documentary shows that there is still a massive flood of refugees coming to Europe and obviously the policies in place are not facilitating those asylum seekers to claim asylum in Greece. This documentary is set in Lesvos, but it records something that is happening throughout Europe’s borders.

    People keep using this term a ‘refugee crisis’. This is a mistake. More than a refugee crisis, there is a policy crisis.

    What we’re witnessing is a series of legal decisions that are impacting the lives of those who are exercising a right to apply for asylum in Europe. These people are not criminals. The Geneva Convention guarantees them a right to apply for asylum. But this right is not being upheld properly. People are waiting one, two, three, or even over five years to have their claims processed.

    Interview edited for brevity and clarity by Ben Pantrey.

  • Interview: Father Peter McVerry

    Father Peter McVerry has been working with homeless people for over forty years. When he started there were about a thousand homeless in Ireland. Now, there are officially about eight thousand, with many others unofficially so. Last week, Daniele Idini caught up with the legendary social justice campaigner.

    Daniele Idini (DI): You have seen different types of crises related to housing in Ireland, but what are the constants?

    Fr McVerry (McV): What has been constant over the forty years is the attitude of decision makers to those who are homeless. When I started, the big issue was fourteen and fifteen year old kids living on the streets. When I opened my first hostel for those kids, the attitude was that these kids who kept running away from home were bad kids, and the solution was to call the police, pick them up and bring them back home again. The idea that there was huge abuse and violence and neglect hadn’t registered yet. So, the attitude was that we shouldn’t be reaching out and helping these kids. They’re just bad kids. Then the problem shifted to young adults with drug problems and again – the same attitude. Well, these are people that started using drugs. It was their fault. So, we shouldn’t really have too much sympathy for them. Then the issue became homeless families, and again, there’s a stigma attached to being homeless, and that stigma is accepted by some decision makers. What has been constant is this negative stigma that is attached to homeless people, and affects some decision makers’ thinking.

    DI: Where do you think this stigma comes from?

    McV: It permeates the whole of society. The only homeless people who are visible are the ones who are sleeping on the street and begging, and who generally do have a drug problem. This leads to a perception among the public that homeless people must have a problem, and that’s why they’re homeless. But the vast majority of homeless people don’t have a drink or a drug problem. The vast majority becoming homeless today are being evicted from the private rented sector, either because they can’t pay the rents, or because the landlord says they’re selling the flat.

    DI: Can we draw a connection between this and the economic policies that have been implemented in the last few decades?

    McV: Well, at an immediate level, when families become homeless, having been evicted from the private rented sector, there is no social housing to move into. In 1975, this country built 8,500 council houses. In 1985, and we were in a recession in the 80s, we still built 6,900 council houses. By contrast, in 2015 this country built seventy-five council houses. So the immediate effect is that there is no housing for those families to move into. They have only got one problem and it’s not drugs and it’s not drink. They don’t have enough money to be able to go out and afford alternative accommodation. 

    Now, why did that happen? It happened because of an ideology. The ideology that the private sector is supposed to solve all our problems. And so, low income families were pushed into the private rented sector, which no longer can cope. But it was that ideology. We’ve privatized everything. We’ve privatized childcare, and that’s in a bit of a mess at the moment. We’ve privatized care for the elderly. Most private nursing homes are privately run. We have privatized much of the health system and now we have privatized the housing system and it simply doesn’t work.

    The private market might build lots and lots and lots of houses, but only for people who can afford them. They’re in the business of making a profit. They’re not going to build housing for low income families. And so it’s the State that has to do that. The State has been very reluctant, over the last twenty years or so, to invest in social housing, and therefore they’re pushed people into the private rented sector. That wouldn’t be too bad, if we didn’t have a crisis in the private market where there aren’t even enough houses for people who can afford to buy them. It is estimated that we need between thirty-five and fifty thousand new houses every year just to keep up with the increase in population. Yet we’re only building in the region of twenty to twenty-five thousand. So there are lots of people who could buy a house, but can’t find a house to buy, and they’re being pushed into the private rented sector. So, everybody is being pushed into the private rented sector, and it can’t cope. Rents are going through the roof.

    DI: In Ireland, we still have relatively high home-ownership, but, especially after the crisis, there’s a rush into the new model of renting for life. This is a bit of a paradox, however, in terms of a neoliberal ideology which aims at protecting the right to private property; yet, in Ireland, owning private property has become out of reach for a significant percentage of the population. 

    McV: Absolutely, yes. So over the last twenty years, the State has failed in its responsibility to build social housing, pushing people into the private rented sector. They had to create a culture for that to happen. The State did two things. First of all, it looked at the continent. It looked at the rest of Europe and said: Well, most people rent. So, any progressive democracy and an economy which is growing must have a lot more people renting. The mistake there is that the rental market in the rest of Europe is totally different from the rental market in Ireland. Most rental markets in Europe are highly regulated: prices and rents are controlled, and you can become a lifelong tenant. Here, you can’t. You get a tenancy for maybe twelve months, or at most four or five years. You’re living with high insecurity, and the rents are increasingly way beyond your means. It’s a totally different rental market to the rest of Europe. But if you read the last government’s housing strategy, there is so much ideology in it trying to persuade us that the rental market is the way we have to go. The rental market has all of these advantages, and it is the only way for a progressive economy to go.

    DI: According to a recent Irish time article Ireland has the 10th highest rate of vacant homes in the world, with 183,312 homes classified as vacant. We have a society that does not regard it’s housing stock as a basic national infrastructure like ports, rail network, airports or the electricity grid.  

    How might the public become more aware of the benefits of a more distributed housing stock?

    McV: Well, I think the public are well aware of the empty homes that exist in every town and village. Ireland is blighted by empty properties lying derelict, often being used for antisocial or drug using young people. But there is very little political will to go after those properties. There is a lot of work involved in trying to identify the owners of some of those properties and trying to sort out any legal problems that may exist with relation to that. But we ought to be promoting compulsory purchase orders on properties that are left idle for longer than one or two years. It is a scandal. 1830,000, you mentioned. One of the issues was the Fair Deal Scheme, where if you go into a nursing home, the value of your home will be taken by the State when you die. Eighty percent of the value of your home will be taken by the State when you die to pay for your care in the nursing home. That meant that people in nursing homes couldn’t rent out the empty house they had been living in, even though they’re never going to go back to it.

    They can’t rent it out because most of the rent would be simply taken up by the nursing home to pay for their care. So, you had empty houses there that couldn’t be used. You had empty houses where we couldn’t find out who the owner was. 

    The government did make a couple of schemes such as a Repair and Leasing Scheme where the owner can benefit from a grant of, I think it’s now €60,000 to bring the empty building back into use and then lease it to the State for a period of up to twenty years. And there was a Buy and Renew Scheme where the State could buy the property and then repair it. But there was very little uptake of those two schemes. So yeah the amount of empty properties is a scandal.

    DI: What other measures would you suggest should be put in place to deal with the situation?

    McV: There are two problems at the moment. One is housing those people who are waiting for social housing. There’s an even more urgent problem, and that is preventing more and more people from coming into homelessness and needing housing. That’s the more urgent problem, and that can be solved overnight. 

    During the pandemic, there was a ban on evictions and there was a ban on a rent increase and the number of homeless people and families dropped by almost two thousand. We should extend that to a ban on rent increases and a ban on evictions for at least three years in order to try and get a grip on the problem. The counterargument will be that it’s against the right to private property. But I don’t buy that argument. I don’t think the Supreme Court would uphold that argument.

    So the solution involves passing a law banning evictions and rent increases and sending it to the President to sign. The President can send it to the Supreme Court and fast track a decision. Let’s do that. Let’s find out if it’s against the Constitution. If it is, you bring in a constitutional referendum on the right to housing and make that right at least place level with the right to private property, because every argument we present to try and address the housing-homeless crisis comes up against the argument that it is against the right to private property in the Constitution. Now, that right to private property was established in the 1930s at a time when Communism was expanding around the globe. And one of the tenets of communism was that you could not own private property. So, the idea behind it was to prevent Ireland ever having a Communist government. But now it’s being used to prevent Irish people getting their own home, which is absolutely absurd.

    DI: Isn’t it a paradox that a good percentage of the population does not have access to private property because we have to defend the right to private property?

    McV: Yeah, it is a total paradox. The Catholic Church, for example, supports the right to private property, but what is meant by that is that everybody should have access to private property because that’s our little security. That’s their little fallback if things go wrong. But the right to private property has been hijacked by the wealthy to hold on to what they have already acquired. And that was never, never the intention, certainly of the Catholic Church in supporting private property.

    DI: Is there space here for a discussion of morality? Is it morally right to continue pursuing economic policies which, as experience is showing, are causing unnecessary pain and suffering to a growing percentage of the population? How do indicators such as GDP relate to the percentage of homelessness? 

    McV: Firstly, GDP is a very ineffective criterion for the wealth of a country. Every time there’s a car accident, the GDP goes up because the cost of repairing the car and the cost of treating the victims all adds to GDP. And the more serious the car accident, the further GDP goes up. So, GDP is not a reflection of the wellbeing of a society. We can never agree on what is moral. If you own a big house in a nice area with a nice car what is moral is your right to protect those assets. But if you’re homeless on the street, your concept of morality is going to be very, very different. So, I don’t think we’ll ever agree on what is moral. This is a political question. This only way it is going to be solved is politically. We have to ask the question: who benefits from rising rents and rising house prices? The answer is three groups.

    One, the banks. The banks benefit because as house prices go up, they can lend more and more money out as mortgages and make more profit. And if they repossess a house, they will get more money for that house. They have an interest in a house and rent goes up. 

    Second, the big international investment funds. They also have an interest in rents going up. And indeed, many of them are leaving some of their properties empty rather than reducing the rents to what people can afford. 

    Third, the Landlords.

    But who doesn’t benefit? Almost all Irish people don’t benefit from rising house prices and rising rents. For most people it is a huge disadvantage. 

    The second question we have to ask is which side is the government on? The government is on the side of the banks, the big international investment funds, which they attracted in with extraordinary tax concessions, and it’s on the side of landlords. 

    In one episode Simon Coveney brought in a rent cap of four percent. Where did that four percent come from? Simon Coveney wanted to bring in a rent cap in line with inflation, which was hovering around zero at that time. The big international investment funds held a number of meetings with the Minister for Finance and told him that four percent was the minimum they would accept if he wanted them to continue being involved in this country. 

    So four percent it was, and since then the rents have gone up far more than that. In those five years, the rents have potentially gone up by twenty percent. At the same time the HAP payment which you received from the government if you’re on a low income hasn’t gone up in those five years. So now the rents are on average twenty percent higher than they were when the payment was introduced, and lots of people are having to pay top ups to the landlords. Anything between €125 and €200 is what I’m coming across. And you have a single person on social welfare who’s getting €204 or €205 a week, and they have one week in a month where they have to pay €200 to a landlord as a top up because the HAP payment hasn’t increased sufficiently. 

    People on low incomes are just being screwed, screwed by landlords, screwed by investment funds, screwed by banks, and the government is on their side, not on the side of renters or people paying a mortgage who are struggling to try and keep their heads above the water.

    DI: The inability of successive governments in dealing with this issue is more and more being perceived by the public as the result of either State corruption or pure negligence. 

    McV: I wouldn’t call it either of those. We have had conservative governments. Conservative governments are on the side of those who own capital because it’s the capital that develops the economy. So they’re on the side of capital, of the capital owners, which are the banks, and the large investment funds. And they don’t want to do anything which would frighten any of those away, anything which would make Ireland a less attractive place for them to operate. So I think there’s a conservative mindset which I totally disagree with. It’s not a mindset I would put down to malice or corruption or anything like that. I would put it down to what I would consider a very, very mistaken perspective on what’s happening in the country.

    For example, in Germany they have passed a rent freeze for the next five years on rental properties, and in Berlin, they introduced a referendum to take back from the big international investment funds all the apartments and buildings that they had built. Now, it probably won’t pass, but that’s the sort of thinking we need to do. That sort of thinking is totally absent in Ireland.

    The people who make the decisions here are doing very well. They’re on good salaries. They live in nice houses and nice parts of the town. Their children are going to third level education and in a few years time they’ll live in a nice house in a nice part of town. So they have a different perspective from somebody who’s struggling to pay the rent. They don’t understand somebody who is struggling to pay the rent. They say they do, but they don’t. For them the housing problem the problem of people on low incomes struggling to pay rents and mortgages. That’s a problem in a file on their desk. It’s not a personal problem for them, and it’s not a problem anybody they know is facing. 

    So for them it’s more theoretical. For me it’s real. It’s real because I’m meeting them every day and I’m frustrated and I’m angry. I want to see somebody with a passion for dealing with this. I want to see a decision maker who has a passion for dealing with this, who’s angry about what’s happening and who’s prepared to put their neck on the line. That’s what I want to see. I don’t see it at the moment.

    DI: And as we are coming slowly out of a pandemic, what lessons can be drawn in regard to emergency accommodation and homelessness? 

    McV: The pandemic actually had one positive feature for homeless people. They were able to get accommodation because a lot of Airbnbs came back into use as private residential accommodation. And because there was a pandemic, you didn’t have queues of people outside wanting to view them. So landlords were ringing us and saying, You have anybody that needs a place? And they knew we wouldn’t put in somebody who was going to wreck the place. They knew we would support that person. And if difficulties arose, we’d have to step in. So it was a Win-Win for everybody. 

    Now is the time to regulate and demand that Airbnb’s get planning permission and to regulate, inspect and ensure that those planning permission and regulations are enforced. That would bring a lot of Airbnb’s back into private residential properties and would be a big addition in helping the housing crisis. It could be a condition that anybody who wants to advertise their property on one of the sites, like Airbnb, must produce evidence of planning permission. That would get rid of a lot of Airbnbs and bring them back into residential use.

    DI: With tourism opening up again have you noticed any effects on homeless people, who were housed in hotels and hostels during the pandemic, and are now, again having to rely on shelters?

    McV: That’s already happening. The lease is now up on a number of hotels that were taken over as accommodation for homeless people, and they have been returned to the owners to be used as hotels. And it’s a real pity because homeless people love the hotels. You have your own en suite room. And now some of them are getting thrown back into hostile situations, and it’s very depressing for them. So yes, that was a feature of the pandemic that’s now disappearing. And it won’t come back.

    One option is to buy those hotels, buy them back, buy them from the owners and use them as accommodation for families and that, but that’s very expensive. They’re not going to do that. 

    One of my ideas for homeless hostels is that everybody should have their own room. Homeless hostels are often unsafe. Many people get assaulted. People’s belongings get robbed. I’m arguing that every homeless person should have their own room all the time that provides security and safety for their belongings. 

    That’s expensive, and they’re not going to do it. It’s much cheaper to get a house and put four people into a room with bunk beds than to provide four separate spaces for homeless people. So, they’re not going to invest the money in that. But to my mind, what we offer to homeless people sends a message to them, and the message is, this is how society values you. This is what society thinks you’re worth. So when you cram them into rooms and bunk beds, some rooms without even a window in it, they’re getting the message. And that message is very negative. But that is the message that many of our decision makers don’t mind giving to homeless people because that’s the attitude that they’re coming from. This is good enough for them. I heard one person ringing up the free phone number to try and get a bed for the night, and he was offered a bed in a hostel. And he said, I can’t go to that hostel. It’s full of drugs. I don’t use drugs. And the answer I overheard was “beggars can’t be choosers.” And that’s the attitude I think that many people have towards homeless people.

    It is an attitude that has political ramifications. Why else would we have reduced our building of social housing? Whenever the state tries to build social housing, you’re going to have huge objections from all the neighbours. And the local councillors who have to approve of social housing in that area are looking to the next election. And if they are alienating the people in the area where the social housing is going to be built, they are not going to approve that social housing for fear that they will lose out in the next election. So, we have this attitude that anybody in social housing is undesirable. Anybody in social housing is a problem, has a problem and therefore we don’t want to be anywhere near them. And the political system has to go along with that because of our democracy.

    With editorial from Ben Pantrey.

    Featured Image by Gareth Curtis