Deficit spending.
Thatās not a magic money tree.
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If it is then Sinn Fein are the right lads to chop it down.
The multi nationals who pay no corporation tax are at the same time funding the Irish health and public sector wage bill byā¦ā¦ paying unsustainably high levels of corporation tax.
You couldnāt make it up.
Itāll be interesting to see what SF actually do once they get into government.
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Itās the very definition of it.
Nah. What people refer to there is āwhy canāt we just build 100k houses for X billionā.
We canāt because we are at the mercy still of ECB rules, international markets and perception. Things like the Apple money is magic money tree because it is not ours and even if we did decide to take it, other European countries would be sending on an invoice.
Long term worries on corporation tax take are valid and underlines the point Iāve always made that Ireland collects a disproportionate amount and the idea that corporates get away with it here is laughable. But it is taxable income and it was long ago cited as a risk by the DoF, such that they were moving on employers PRSI.
The discussion point put forward is that āthere is a magic money treeā for business. This isnāt true- for Ireland to run deficit spending it had to be within the ECB fiscal rules (the General Escape Clause was activated during Covid) and the vast majority of money went to individuals. Similar to the ābank bailoutsā, most money went on normal people.
Of course anytime the Government gets involved there is waste- but thatās across the board and it certainly is not just business specific. I think itās gas that lads go on about big business and politicians- for years there was this meme on publicans and politicians, then the politicians closed down and blamed the pubs they supposedly protected. Politicians are ultimately answerable to the people and the easy win historically has always been to lob money to the public. What Fine Gael have yet to figure out is that giving money to people who will never vote for you anyway is political stupidity.
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I see Rory Hearne today is giving out about the subsidy to developers to build apartments.
In reality this is really tax neutral, and we are just foregoing the VAT, other taxes and subsidies we collect on property development.
Funnily enough when those lads quote the āreal priceā of building they will always exclude things like VAT. Itās okay there thoughā¦.because.
All of this is pass the parcel stuff to different tax payers.
Heās the guy who wants a new Irish semi-state company to build houses ālike the ESB rolled out electricity.ā
He doesnāt reference the semi-state that actually built homes - the National Building Agency.
The ESB are great, we all pay low energy prices thanks to their existence. 
Thatās all fine, but we should be able to build houses for people without being dictated to
No, thatās wrong, you just redefined the issue to suit yourself.
FFG spend the money from corporations and get lambasted. Yet the crowd who want to drive out the corporations would spend the non-existent money more efficiently 
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Is vat a cost to the builder or the homeowner? Vat materially circular for a builder Iād have thought
We had one of the cheapest electricity prices in Europe with the ESB. No other provider would come into the market. ESB were then ordered by Mary Harney to increase their prices so others would come in and we would have competition.
So we had to increase prices so private companies could come but at least we had competition at much higher pricesā¦
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Eh thatās what youāre doing here.
Weāre talking about a magic money tree, that is usually associated with people saying we should idly pay for X or Y.
Your complaint here is where we are spending money. You are of course saying that itās bad policy and that we should spend more on say building houses than the HAP. But the latter is current day, you canāt just stop it and itās a drop in the ocean in comparison to the long term capital required for building homes.
Thatās where the āmagic money treeā comes in. Whereby you can borrow to solve X or Y crisis. We canāt.
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Reality is @Tim_Riggins, you are dealing with an absolute simpleton here, who no doubt graduated from University College Mucksavage and thought this bestowed him a cosmopolitan education, with of course the inevitable segue straight into the civil service.
Heās worked his way up to middle management and has achieved midwit status, conflating this abomination of mediocrity with knowledge of the real world economy. Unfortunately Ireland is plagued with these useless bastards and this plays a big part in the many shortfalls we see in society today. A poor mans Helen Mcentee if you will.
58% marginal for these piss buckets. Itās a funny old world.
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5 year governments with control of their own currency, and a magic money tree, and no proportional representation are a very dangerous mix.
every market where thereās been a regulator appointed to make it ācompetitiveā has seen large price rises
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I disagree. The āMagic money treeā accusation is always simply that āwe canāt pay for all the things the opposition are promising where is the money going to come fromā. The fact that current spending on health and emergency housing has been out of control for a number of years is largely as a result of FG policy choices. Itās a perfect example of unplanned and out of control expenditure that hasnāt been budgeted for. FG have chosen to cover this current expenditure with money from the magic money tree, windfall corporation tax receipts.
We disagree on the definition of the wording but thatās it.
Government spending is inherently unplanned. Whilst there are capital spending plans, few adhere to them. Thatās the same all over, whether thatās for unplanned expenditures, unplanned windfalls or a change of government.
The government subsidise nearly 300k homes rental costs for example. The annual cost of this is tiny in comparison to building 300k units, it just is. It is talking about a magic money tree to say these should be built. They canāt.
I would personally like all public expenditure to be time limited and not just to be within Budget acts. If a new expenditure programme is launched, it should be time limited and CPI applied to it. If a new government comes in they need to get a new bill through to amend it before that time. The biggest mistakes that centrist governments make is not time limiting spending such that it has to be defended regularly and not just rolled forward in Budgets. New public expenditure can help short term issues and they also give governments a boost, but long term entrenched spending leads to bloat and quangos.
We are creating another class of them right now in housing with the charities. The Peter McVerry Trust for example has grown their balance sheet from a little over ā¬2m to over ā¬50m between 2012 and now. The State subsidises them to the tune of 10s of millions per annum in operating cost and millions more in capital costs, all the while the head of the charity criticised them. This happens with loads more charities where services are duplicated and the Government hands over the kudos to charities when they find homes. Itās politically and financially stupid.
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Government is inherently unplanned? Thatās simply completely wrong.
The charities that you criticise exist and are funded by government because the government refuses to meet the need. Theyāre largely a result of FG policy.