Ronan Lyons
@ronanlyons
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Associate Prof @tcdeconomics , Director @TRiSSTCD and Data Lead @ceph_ie . Dad of 3, husband of 1. Housing, cities, history. Soccer coach (no badges!), rugby fan.
Dublin, Ireland
Joined December 2008
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Pinned Tweet
My online course on the Economics of the Property Market is back and we're looking forward to having lots of you on it in 2021! See link (and next tweet) for more details - and if you sign up, the discount code twtr2021 will get you a reduced rate...
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Crowd: "We would like to ride one of your unicorns."
Irishman: "I'm sorry, unicorns don't exist. Horse or rhino, take your pick."
[Repeat for 3 yrs. Eventually...]
Sajid Javid to crowd: "It's ok, I got this."
To Irishman, slowly: "WE WANT A UNICORN. WE HAVE (rubs fingers) MONEY."
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Ireland's over-60s: "Think outdoors this summer!"
Ireland's under-30s: "Sure. We're heading out for a few drinks."
O60s: "No! Not like that! Surely you can just have people round to the large south-facing garden at the back of the semi-detached home that you own."
U30s:
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"Why don't you write an article for us on Brexit, Mrs May? It'll be just you on the page... Oh, and our regular cartoonist above you."
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Remember, it's an irregular noun. "I'm an English expat", "you are a European migrant", "they are a flood of refugees".
Angela Merkel says 'nein' to Theresa May's calls for early deal on rights of EU migrants and British ex-pats
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It seems that Irish policymakers need to be reminded that 'an abundance of caution' is not an optimal basis for public policy. Decisions should be based on comparing benefits to costs/risks, not based on avoiding any risk whatsoever.
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Amazing map of which families, coloured by ethnicity, controlled which parts of Ireland at the time of Henry VIII. H/T
@simongerman600
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People of Dublin: "You know it would be great if the city put up lots of picnic tables, benches, bins and toilets along the canal and in places like Portobello Plaza."
Dublin City Council: "Or what about..."
Unfortunately Portobello Plaza is closed this weekend & we appeal to the public not to come here. We are aware of the importance of public spaces but some behaviour at this location in recent weeks has been completely unacceptable.
#Portobello
#Dublin
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Do I have this correct? Dublin is trying to rearrange how it travels and it seems the city only has space for two of the following three: trees, buses, cars.
And somehow this has been turned into "well, is it the buses or the trees that have to go?"
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Delighted be updating my Twitter profile...
̷D̷a̷d̷ ̷o̷f̷ ̷t̷w̷o̷ Dad of three (still husband of one - and she's still a legend).
Thanks to everyone in
@_TheNMH
for helping make this miracle of nature happen.
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Yes, it's about one tenth of the overall demand per year. And that includes returning Irish as net migrants. Next.
Are we allowed to even tentatively ask about about the impact immigration may be having on rental costs in Dublin, or is that out-of-bounds?
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I don't want to freak anyone out but Ireland's over-65 population is set to grow by ~70 persons *per day* every day for the next 30+ years and, among other things, Ireland has no strategy for their housing needs, like promoting independent living and assisted living developments.
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I worry about anyone who can look at these figures and think that the solution, in one of the world's least densely populated high-income countries, is fewer people rather than more homes.
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Delighted to be able to share that I'm now an Associate Professor of Economics at
@tcddublin
. It's such a privilege to be able to teach great students and work with amazing colleagues. I'm indulging myself with a short thread on the work I do, if you're so inclined...
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It's been quite the journey:
"Brexit will make us rich!"
...
"Brexit will not make us any poorer."
...
"Brexit won't make us *that* much poorer."
...
"Brexit won't make things so bad we resort to cannibalism."
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Maybe they think we can't see or hear them?
"You don't go to Brussels but you go instead to Dublin. You literally do a deal with the Irish, whether you bribe them or threaten them, one way or the other, to get them in the position where they drop their opposition to the backstop"
Alan Mendoza, HenryJackson Society
#Brexit
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Me/my family/Ireland/the world, as we head towards the finish line of 2020...
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With Ireland on the verge of scrapping almost all covid-related restrictions, let's celebrate the extraordinary collective efforts that have meant we suffered one of the lowest rates of excess deaths anywhere (~80 per 100k, 171st of ~220 per Economist calcs). Enjoy reopening!
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Is there any chance it could be renamed the "British border problem", especially in the English media? Might give them a sense of ownership... With apologies to
@BorderIrish
!
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Thinking of the many decades, from the 1840s to the 1990s, when Ireland was unable to offer a life for many people born here, it's so moving to see Ireland become a place that people from elsewhere choose to call home. Welcome one and all!
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@robdorrington
@spikedonline
I think you'll find that the people "still fighting the Battle of the Boyne" do not like being called Irish, even if that's what you think of them as.
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When elected Tyrant of Dublin some day, I will appoint a Director of Decluttering, whose mission will be to go through the city, street by street, and minimize the number of posts, boxes, signs, etc, on each one.
Make Dublin beautiful again!
Let's start with electrical boxes. No one loves them quite like our Council does! They're like mini Daleks that are multiplying like rabbits all over Dublin. In most cities an effort would be made to keep these underground & out of sight. But our council doesn't seem to care...
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Today's
@daftmedia
report has frankly shocking figures on the availability of rental homes around the country. In Dublin, for the first time on record, fewer than 1,000 homes are available to rent. Those opposed to the building of new rental homes in the city... why?!
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An excellent visualization of Ireland's sprawl. Swathes of dark blue - unsustainably long commutes - surround the major cities. The task facing policymakers over coming decades is to steer housing growth within the existing footprint of cities.
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Irish twitter hasn't been its best self the last couple of days so here's a baby smiling for the first time.
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Is there any good reason for people like me to be given a 2% pay increase this month? The State is borrowing huge amounts and those borrowings should be targeted at people who need it most (incl newly unemployed). Many public servants will just save this.
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Extraordinary queue - and right in the middle of exams - by
@tcddublin
students to get added to the supplementary register ahead of
#8thRef
- never seen the like here before (except on locker registration day).
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How on earth did we end up in a situation where the Dublin editor of Ireland's 'newspaper of record' refers to new rental housing as 'the indestructible cockroach' of Ireland's housing sector with its 'spores' spreading into the suburbs? Shocking tone.
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It seems that barely a day goes by now without news of efforts to stop new housing being built in Dublin. Yesterday it was building up close to the port, today the students.
Every new home built lowers housing prices.
Every new home not built won't.
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We did... We're number 1! Fair play to Mauritius, they put up a fight, but no country can match Ireland's skill at not building up.
Remember: all new housing supply lowers housing prices. By not building up, we are pricing up.
cc
@JasonBarrRU
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If you want to stop new homes being built in your area, it is only fair that - in a city starved of homes - you have to say which neighbourhood should take them instead. Your objection is not costless.
And this is particularly true if you're a Minister.
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Ireland, you're doing great! A lower covid case rate than every single one of 40 European and North American neighbours.
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So Ireland is going to solve the lack of rental supply by... wait, what... stopping professional landlords from coming into the market?
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An honour to serve on the newly established Housing Commission. Looking forward to contributing in whatever way I can - and to bringing in further expertise as we need it, given the substantial task ahead of us.
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Worrying headline. I suspect supply of new homes is more relevant but even if one were sure about the link, surely the headline should read something like: "Central Bank rules effective in keeping housing prices linked to real economy"
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Mandatory Statistical Education for journalists!
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Perhaps the image of the year.
(Two other countries conspicuous by the absence of their leaders.)
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Ordinary human and human with small children at home discuss their holidays after returning to work, January 2023
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Looking forward to reading the imaginative reasons why these particular homes shouldn't get built. (Especially from politicians vocal on housing shortages.)
Up to 5,000 new homes could be built on the grounds of Clontarf Golf Club if the site is rezoned for residential purposes, and if members of the club agree to move to a new course on the former Haughey estate.
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Ireland has, unlike most high income countries, seen a massive fall in inequality over the last two generations.
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On Sunday, I was the focus of a small group of not-very-bright racists (NVBRs), who decided housing was going to be their new angle for their anti-foreigner bile. It gave me a window into Twitter mobs and their strategies and also into how they think. (A thread)
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It's not financially sound to force 20-somethings to buy apartments, so every time DCC (or any other planning authority in Ireland) refuses new homes for renters, they are making things worse for Ireland's younger adults - already bearing the brunt of housing shortages.
159 homes in the most high demand part of the country? “No” said DCC, not if they’re for renters
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Those who believe supply can't lower rents would do well to look at the latest trends in Ireland's rental market. Supply up in Dublin, and as a result rents are down. Supply has worsened in many rural parts of the country, pushing rents even higher.
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In a stunning development, the demand curve for rental homes in Ireland apparently now slopes up! 1,614 new rental homes "would serve to push up rent prices as local landlords would pitch their rents at a higher level to match those of the new development"
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After the unrest in Dublin yesterday, if Ireland were indeed full - which it's not - I think most people know who should leave to make room for the rest of us. And it's not the 'foreign national' who stopped the attacker.
#FootlockerRiots
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As Dublin faces months with limited water, I'd like to thank residents who selfishly left their taps on - "just in case" - as well as the policy system, for messing up the chance to bring in the water charges that would have prevented this from happening.
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In 1921, and arguably as recently as 1991, the Republic of Ireland was too Catholic for Northern Ireland's unionists. Now, it seems that it is too secular!
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@hazechu
Curtail 'build to rent'? How on earth will that help the city's rental crisis?! They shouldn't be 100% of new construction, certainly - and they aren't. The rental crisis is a product of no new rental supply being built in the last decade. Please don't ban the solution.
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This is just down the road from me. From 57 storeys of housing to just 36 in the four buildings highlighted - and yet my local politicians will somehow try to describe this as a win, in a city starved of housing.
Today, Councillors received a briefing from the
@LDA_Ireland
on the redevelopment of St. Teresa's Gardens.
The LDA are carrying out this redevelopment on behalf of DCC.
Most significantly, heights across the site have reverted to the 2017 Masterplan.
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@NICKRITZER
@ezraklein
@BillSimmons
Might be worth reflecting on the fact that the US is the only high income country with this problem.
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Very concerning that anyone could be on the airwaves in 2021 arguing that more supply won't make housing in Ireland more affordable. Empirical research is very clear on this. Rural areas that saw huge oversupply still, 15 years later, have far lower prices than elsewhere.
The actual peak figure during the boom was 93k units a year and it didn't work because we'd a massive vacancy rate. To extrapolate and say supply isn't the solution is utterly deluded
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Hello to everyone except the four men abusing heavily pregnant women with their anti-abortion placards outside the National Maternity Hospital.
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Mind-boggling that some people could watch this and still somehow conclude that more rental supply is not the answer. More rental homes, including student accommodation, all across the country and now (well, as soon as practical) please.
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Updated headline should read: "UK MPs reject no-deal, reject bid to delay Brexit to prevent no-deal, reject deal, and accept deal that EU rejects"
In other words, the UK appears to have negotiated with itself and lost.
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Going to go out on a limb here and guess that this expert in not an economist.
An expert in public health has called for the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, to urgently introduce a minimum unit pricing on alcohol, in a bid to deter house parties
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Ireland being more like its European peers means have a *lot* more housing for young people starting out in life. If Ireland matched the Nordics, there would be 200k-250k more one-bed homes alone. (Ireland has ~2m homes.)
Living with parents till their 30s is not sustainable.
Across the OECD, Ireland has the second-lowest share of young people aged 15-29 years living in single-person households.
Latest data (2019 or latest available year) shows 1.1% in Ireland compared to an average of c.10% in the EU/OECD. The difference corresponds to 80k people.
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New evidence from the Netherlands: banning investor purchases of homes makes renting more expensive, pricing out younger adults (incl migrants) but does not help make buying a home more affordable.
🚨NEW PAPER 🚨: Do investors raise housing costs, crowd-out first-time homebuyers, and change neighborhoods?
My non-twitter co-authors and I study this question by tracking the impact of ban on buy-to-let investment. We can do so almost in real-time!
A 🧵(1/14)
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Honoured to receive a
@tcddublin
Societal Impact Award for my work on how to make a healthier housing system. Hoping to continue to contribute in Ireland - and indeed go global over coming years, with research on NYC, the wider US and Canada, to name a few!
Societal Impact Award - Dr
@ronanlyons
is recognised for his contributions to addressing the housing crisis in Ireland. Dr Lyons has made extensive analyse of housing affordability in Ireland and the greater Dublin region
@TRiSSTCD
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Ireland hopes to build 20,000 homes this year. Over 225 years ago, in 1792, when the population of Ireland (the island) was ~20% smaller than Ireland (the state) today, almost 22,000 new homes were built. (And that was when average household size was above six!)
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How depressing it is, if entirely predictable, to read all the councillors lining up to give out about a development changing from largely useless luxury family homes to many apartments, precisely the kind of homes the city needs.
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Magic potion = Land value tax, replacing rates and development levies, and done in conjunction with a well-funded [probably €2bn per year] cost rental system of social housing (which in turn will necessitate a review of costs and regulations).
Also, homes not houses.
"We need to be building more houses per year... If there was a magic potion that we could use to make it go quicker, I would use it," -
@campaignforleo
#Budget19
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Congratulations to Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, which is 100 years old today. With only 11 functioning democracies in 1941, and having lost Chile for a while after, it is one of the world's ten oldest functioning democratic legislatures!
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@NiallHarbison
Ireland was an economic satellite of Britain and consistently poor, relative to the rest of W Europe, until the Single Market (1990s). Since then, we've become one of the world's richest countries, essentially by offering US firms access to that market. That's why we're pro-EU.
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Get ready to feel old. This week, in my module on Ireland's economic history, I'm adding a new chapter, covering the recovery of the 2010s.
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Ireland needs tens of thousands of new homes every year for decades, from student rooms to assisted living complexes, to meet underlying need. If you're wondering we're having difficulty even scratching the surface, this story explains a lot.
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Ireland is top of the class for not building tall. The cost? More sprawl and higher housing prices.
Happy to report that my paper with Jan Brueckner and Remi Jedwab is now published in
@JUrbanEcon
We estimate countries' tall building stocks to see who builds above and below their "weight class."
Under-building->higher housing prices & more sprawl.
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Great to see this get approved, despite objections of wealthy local residents. Good reuse of Dublin's land, with a net gain of almost 90 homes. (I wouldn't be surprised if some of those wealthy local objectors end up downsizing into the new apartments!)
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The whole point of building new homes is to devalue the existing property. This cannot be used by a local authority as a reason to stop new homes from being built.
I don’t know enough about this development to say whether the rejection of the scheme, which included housing, was warranted.
But this caught my eye.
“…the council has refused planning permission after concluding the scheme would…devalue property in the vicinity.”
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This is concerning. College is not about comfort - indeed, it's arguable that one of the key things higher education does is push people outside their comfort zone, as part of the process of self-improvement.
Auditor of the Hist Bríd O'Donnell said tonight that the society would “not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members comfort above all else”
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Next time a politician calls to the door promising they'll freeze, lower or abolish property tax, feel free to mention the consequences of our already-very-low property tax regime: a €3.5m home is being used as a kennel!
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Great to see reform of Ireland's property tax. For what is a progressive wealth tax, the rates are very low in a global context - higher rates would allow us to reduce income tax and esp VAT, which is regressive. Beyond bizarre that Ireland's 'left' parties want to scrap it!
Confirmed: the new bands of Local Property Tax to apply from 2022 onwards
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A reminder to her and others thinking along those lines: through lack of building over the last 15 years, Dublin is missing something like 60,000 rental homes. Somewhere between 30k and 50k should get built over the next five years. And IMO this is good for the city, not bad.
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Parental pride is never in short supply so I try to post sparingly about the boys. But proud of this guy. In December, ahead of his 7th birthday, he started reading the first Harry Potter book. Last night, less than six months later, he finished the seventh and last one!
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How bizarre things are when, in response to the following new building being proposed in central Dublin, people are arguing against it, and not the dereliction and under-use around it!
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Anyone fancy taking the Dublin Metropolitan Police entrance exam from 1924? Four of its nine (!) sections are shown below. I'd love to read answers to "The influence of the picture theatre for good and evil". That geography exam, though... 😬
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Dublin homes were as cheap as homes elsewhere in Ireland until the 1980s. Why? Because Dublin was building as many homes as elsewhere. Construction in Dublin has collapsed since, relative to the rest of the country, and homes are now twice as costly.
Supply, supply, supply!
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Ireland has never overtaken another EU member state in population since it joined 50 years ago. But based on current trends, Ireland should surpass Slovakia in 2025 and Finland in 2027. (Denmark and Bulgaria would be next but probably not until the 2030s.)
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Ireland is the only country in the world* with fewer people now than 180 years ago!
(Latin America and Australia are the other end of the spectrum.)
* depending on how you treat the Vatican City
I love this map of population change from 1840 to 2021.
The world has six times more people now than it did in 1840. Most countries also have a lot more people. Ireland is an exception - it actually had more people in 1840.
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The latest
@daftmedia
report is out. It shows market rents at record highs, with inflation also at close-to-record rates since 2005. It also shows availability at a stark new low: just 850 homes to rent nationally on 1 May, vs 2010s average of 9,000. 🧵
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@NICKRITZER
@ezraklein
@BillSimmons
Yes, but my point is that the rates (per head of population) are much much lower in European countries. Not about getting to zero, it's about getting safer.
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I've a feeling Javier Milei might be somewhat disappointed when he finds out just how much the State here has grown over the last two decades, in tandem with prosperity, and how much redistribution the Irish taxation and social welfare system does.
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Celebrating ten years on Twitter today in the usual way - by offering a fully funded PhD scholarship at
@tcddublin
! The recipient of the scholarship will work with me, to develop a better understanding of what happened in North American housing markets since 1880. (1/2)
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"Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of our past decisions..."
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Apparently not a parody account. British journalists have a lot to learn about Northern Ireland.
DUP top priority will be soft border, saving Good Friday agreement and free movement across boundary. That absolutely rules out hard Brexit
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Countries not in the Paris Climate Agreement (updated, June 2017).
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3yo this morning: "I don't want to go out. I don't want to stay in. I don't want to go ANYWHERE!"
Clearly destined for a bright future as a Tory MP.
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Given today's developments, I trust the DUP will be dropping its goal of a lower 12.5% corporate tax rate in NI as well as introducing same-sex marriage & abortion there.
#regulatoryalignment
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As someone fond of Britain - home to some of the world's most famous cultural, educational and sporting institutions - the omni-shambles that is Brexit makes me wonder what on earth it did in a past life to deserve this.
*open history books*
OK, apart from (deep breath)...
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Who works where in Ireland? Wonderful visualization by
@CSOIreland
using 2016 Census data of where Ireland's 11 main centres of work get their workers.
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An incredibly depressing interview. Perhaps most depressing of all is her belief, clearly deeply ingrained, that politicians with different worldviews could not possibly also want what's best for people, communities and the environment.
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My take on the concrete levy. In short, making homes even more expensive to build is categorically the wrong way to go - and that this was even proposed is troubling as it indicates that there is little understanding of how central viability is in solving the housing shortage.
If the true cost of the levy is something like €4,000 per home, then the breakeven annual income needed to buy a home has been pushed up by €1,000. The government is making a generational crisis even worse, writes
@ronanlyons
.
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The only upside to the news that Ireland is on course to build the most expensive hospital in the world, paying 4x or even 5x the original €450m planned, is the Government can no longer claim - as it tried to even last year - the country doesn't have a problem with build costs.
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The latest Daft Rental Report is out and it shows once again an extraordinary shortage of rental homes available across the country. A quick thread on what it shows, the implications and how some commentators seem to be misinterpreting some of the headline stats. (1/)
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In today's piece, I review the latest EU data on younger adults' living arrangements and how it helps us identify Ireland's "housing deficit". As you can see, Ireland's change in the last decade is extraordinary (esp for 25-29yos). It points to >250,000 missing homes.
New data gives empirical validity – if it were needed – to the political anger felt by Ireland’s younger cohorts. Ireland has gone from on a par with Germany to having more than twice as many adults living with their parents in just a decade.
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What do we want?
A wealth tax!
How do we want it?
Well, not on the city's main form of wealth, obviously. Sure, it's €200bn or so and unavoidable if levied properly but think of the voters...
FF, FG, Sinn Féin and People Before Profit (!) vote to cut property tax by 15%.
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As a local, it's important to note that this campaign by was *some* local residents - many others wanted the new homes built, a nuance lost in the article. Three years lost but 1,700 badly needed new homes in a great area of the city are now on their way.
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