On June 21st, 2022, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien was asked a reasonably simple question in the Dáil during his allocated time for questions, by Independent TD for Laois-Offaly Carol Nolan. Had the Minister or his department, Deputy Nolan asked, conducted any impact assessments on the impact of Ukrainian refugees on the Government’s ability to deliver services including housing?
The Minister did not answer the question. We were never told, in his answer, whether the Government had, or had not, conducted such impact assessments. Instead, the Minister delivered a blistering attack on Deputy Nolan, accusing her of “undermining social cohesion” and alleging that she was calling for, in effect, “a cap on immigration into the country”.
Fianna Fáil were so pleased with the Minister’s performance that they posted it to their Youtube channel, where it has been viewed, at the time of writing, some 620 times in two years – which does not say much for the FF social media team. Anyway, please watch it before reading on – it’s subtitled if you are at work:
I mention this video, of course, because here was the same Minister Darragh O’Brien, speaking yesterday:
Immigration is “a factor” contributing to the number of homeless people in emergency accommodation, according to Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien.
Simon Harris faced Opposition criticism after comments where he suggested immigration levels are having a “real impact” on homeless numbers.
Mr O’Brien backed the Taoiseach’s position on Monday.
During an interview with the Sunday Times Mr Harris said: “People understand the fact that homelessness numbers are heavily impacted by the fact we are seeing many people seek protection in our country, seek asylum in our country, and many people come from abroad hoping to have a new future in Ireland, and immigration, it has many, many pluses, but it has had a challenge there.”
This is, you will note, the precise opposite of what the Minister said in the Dáil two years ago. Speaking then, he said that accommodation for migrants was “in addition” to the Government’s “very robust” housing plan, which is a very clear way of saying “we can deliver housing for Irish people and separately accommodate the migrants we are taking in”.
On a very basic level, the Minister is now saying that this turns out to have been untrue: That immigration and asylum is making a challenging homelessness situation more challenging. So, the immigration housing policy is not, actually, “in addition”, but is in fact impacting the core plan.
Or to put things in more plain terms: He either knowingly lied, two years ago, or was very confidently and arrogantly wrong. There is no other explanation. The two statements are in such direct contradiction to each other that there can be no other explanation.
Of the two explanations, it is of course more likely that the Minister is fundamentally incompetent on this issue than it is likely that he brazenly lied. In addition, I’d happily say that outside of politics, the Minister is a decent and honest man, and I’ve no reason to think he’s a liar. Further, the confidence with which he speaks in the clip from 2022 is the confidence of a man who has listened to his civil servants and received assurances that his critics were wrong, and that the Government could easily accommodate a few hundred thousand extra people with no difficulty. The fact that Fianna Fáil felt good enough about the Minister’s moment to attempt (very poorly) to make it go viral on Youtube is a further indication of that.
There is little more to say really: We are either faced with a moment of breathtaking political dishonesty, or a moment of breathtaking political incompetence. I’ve picked the latter, but you could be forgiven for choosing either.
The true villains here, for what its worth, are in my view the opposition parties (Deputy Nolan excepted) and the media, who both allowed the Minister to get away with such transparent bluster then – not even answering the question – and who will simply treat this new position as an “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” moment.
Good policymaking requires, at a very minimum level, the knowledge that poor policymaking has consequences and will have to be answered for. That is the central deficiency in Irish politics, and has been for many years: The Government in this case made bad policy just two years ago, but did so safe in the knowledge that if it ever was exposed as bad policy, the media would simply treat the bad policy as a thing that just happened rather than a choice that was made.
In a functioning democracy, and a functioning parliament, Darragh O’Brien’s (working) life would be being made very difficult around about now, as he was asked to explain why an outcome he assured us would not happen is now the very outcome he is using to excuse his own failure. Instead, predictably enough, the opposition is attacking him for the admission of failure, rather than the policies that led to the failure to begin with. Meanwhile polls show the Government on course for re-election.
The only certainty, therefore, is that there will be more bad policy, because there are no consequences for it. As ever, in Ireland, it is the person who points out the problem who gets attacked, while the people who caused the problem get to continue to pose as the adults in the room.
We deserve all we get, in truth.