Hello and welcome to this Friday’s Inside Politics newsletter, your recap of the week in politics.
It doesn’t rain, but it pours. It has been the opposite of a dry January (weather-wise, at least), and after weeks of downpours, the political levees broke this week as residents and business owners on the east coast counted the cost of flooding. The real human cost to lives and livelihoods paints the failure of successive governments to put adequate flood-protection measures in place in a bad light.
Of course, it’s not just the politicians who are to blame - there is a collective responsibility to be shared when improvement works are bogged down and delayed in interminable planning processes, or when nature-aligned solutions aren’t pursued. But the buck stops with those in power. And it’s not just the immediate flood damage - it also makes clear the scale of the challenge of mitigating, and paying for, the effects of climate change.
Minister of State at the Office of Public Works (OPW) Kevin “Boxer” Moran was on the sharp end of admonishments from washed-out citizens when he hit the road to visit flood zones on Thursday.
READ MORE
Moran is a canny operator whose political brand is steeped in flooding. When Athlone flooded in 2015 he built something of a national profile, and rode the wave (sorry) to a Dáil seat early the following year. In 2020, after losing his seat, he was filmed stripped to the waist and knee-deep in floodwaters attempting to fix a water pump in Athlone. “I nearly got sick with the smell of it. There’s one sure thing, she won’t kiss me tonight,” he said at the time.
This week, Moran pleaded that the issue of flooding shouldn’t become a political football. Chance would be a fine thing. With more bad weather inbound for the bank holiday weekend, there’s every chance the flood won’t become a trickle of bad news for the Government, but a torrent.
Our live flood coverage continues today, you can keep up to date here.
Meanwhile, transport expert Brian Caulfield says the bad weather exposes our rickety transport system.
Also, in his column today, Diarmuid Ferriter says hope is no strategy when facing the deluge.
Housing, always housing
Government Buildings radiated pleasure on Thursday when the CSO published its housing completion figures for 2025. It could hardly be worse than 2024, when a dismal out-turn showed the outgoing coalition had overegged momentum in the sector on the eve of a general election in 2024.
In truth, the figures are about as good as could be hoped for. Most analysts were predicting in the 33,000-35,000 range, including the Department of Finance. So beating that counts for a good day in housing, something recent governments have rare experience of.
They will be further buoyed by telling themselves that the interventions on tax, planning and rent reform which they made in 2025 won’t have had an impact on things yet, and might yet provide another fillip. Davy Stockbrokers, who got their predictions very close to correct for 2025, estimated that the target of 300,000 homes by 2030 is achievable. One year in, the Coalition is still in the scrap on housing - for now, at least.
But the Opposition - correctly - was quick to point out that had the Government not given itself the benefit of removing its annualised targets, it would have missed them by some 5,000 units. There was also a troubling report from consultancy Mitchell McDermott, showing less than 40 per cent of approved housing estates are being built.
Meanwhile, the Government is now facing at least the risk of another legal challenge to one of its flagship reforms (one is already subject to High Court challenge), as we reported on our front page today.
These kinds of things tend to have a chilling effect, even if they ultimately are unsuccessful.
The targets, of course, have been criticised as an underestimate of the true level of housing need out there. Today we got our monthly reminder of the sharp end of this crisis when the homelessness figures were published. Meanwhile, legislation enabling the above-referenced rental reforms still hasn’t dropped (as of Friday lunchtime), meaning it will be a breakneck sprint to get it on the statute books in time for the March 1st implementation of the new regime - with attendant criticism from the Opposition when the inevitable guillotine is lowered.
There may be a glimmer of good news for the Government on housing this week, but the crisis is something that people feel, and live. There will be no dividend until citizens start to feel that crushing weight ease - and its lasting effects on our politics will be telling. On this front, UCD academic Mick Byrne was in our podcast studio this week. His insights into the political economy of the expansion of rent, both on the podcast and in his new book, are really worth your time.
