Fianna Fáil's former leader and Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has engaged in disgusting racism in Dublin Central, saying we have “too many” immigrants and saying, "The ones I worry about are the Africans", and that, "We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places." He said he worries about the next generation of Muslims. Bertie Ahern doing it makes the agenda very blatant: scapegoat immigrants and divide ordinary people. Why? So that nobody blames Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil and the landlords and developers Fianna Fáil has allowed to profit from the housing crisis. People from the Congo did not take corrupt payments from developers to blow up the property bubble. They were never found by a tribunal to have been untruthful in explaining how €400,000 in today's money passed through their bank accounts. Muslim children did not crash the economy, causing years of misery and austerity for ordinary people. Unlike Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, they never rolled out the red carpet for developers and vulture funds. They are not the ones who sowed the seeds of the current housing disaster and they were not the ones who refused to maintain council flats and then voted to increase council rents. All of this is an act of mass distraction. From what? From the horrendous conditions many people in Dublin Central are forced to face every day. Right across Dublin city there are council tenants living in conditions that nobody should be asked to live in. Yesterday, in Sheridan Court on Dorset Street, we met a single mother with two children with additional needs. She is three months living without usable water because it is scalding hot. She has to bring her children to her mother's house in Fairview to bathe them. Her bedroom is severely damp and mouldy. I am holding up a photo of her bathroom - we can see the mould. Another woman is sleeping in the living room as her bedroom has been rendered uninhabitable due to leakages in the ceilings and walls. This is a photo of the hole in the wall of her bedroom. Another resident's ceiling collapsed in places in January. Her flat is not in a livable condition but she has nowhere else to go. Her ceiling can be seen in this photo. The only work done for the people in Sheridan Court has been superficial. However, it is not just Sheridan Court; it is right across Dublin city. To add insult to injury, Dublin City Council has hiked these people's rents by 30%, an amount that many of them simply cannot afford. Councillors from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party shamefully voted against a budget amendment that would have stopped that rent hike. I have two simple questions for the Taoiseach. I want answers to them. First, will he commit to the residents of Sheridan Court and other flats around Dublin city that this treatment will not continue and that people in 2026 will not be asked to live like this? Second, will he support a reversal of these unfair rent increases in Dublin city and drop his agenda to hike council rents right across the country?
Sentiment score: -0.19
On Bertie Ahern, I will just say this. What people say when they do not think they are being recorded is actually more valuable than what they say when they know they are being recorded. It suggests a dirty game used on doorsteps by Fianna Fáil to divide and rule ordinary people, and to have them not blaming the people the Taoiseach represents - the developers, the landlords, the people who get rich from the housing crisis. Instead, it is better to blame the people from Congo or wherever else. Regarding the council flats and the rents issue, the Taoiseach cannot have it both ways. He is the Taoiseach; the leader of a party which has councillors. He has a responsibility and a connection with the votes, for example, to increase council rents. Does he stand over those increases or not? They are not doing that out of nowhere. It is a nationally driven project. We can look at the Government's programme for Government increasing council rents. We can look at this new programme, which has not been published yet, which points to massive increases in council rents. We can look towards the plan to merge cost-rental and social housing.
Sentiment score: 0.09
The other thing is the Department. The Department pulled the plug on Oliver Bond. It is the Department-----
Sentiment score: 0.00
-----that has pulled the plug on regeneration. The Government cannot wash its hands of it and just say it is the council.
Sentiment score: 0.00
You will not catch me saying racist things, even if you record me secretly.
Sentiment score: -0.61
I was never on a council.
Sentiment score: 0.00
It takes a lot of courage to increase rents on council tenants.
Sentiment score: 0.67