May 12, 2010

The quantity of these uninhabited ghost estates (I had noted them in rural Ireland gouging into the land and tacking themselves onto villages) and the matter that the bulldozer may now visit them … Jeeeesus. Squint left, squint right — how’d we end up here again? Really wish they’d uploaded the RTE documentary on this last night. Hearing about it, and grabbing bits of it here and there. Just plain batty. And yet we saw it. It was happening everywhere you looked. And yet? And yet if NAMA owns them, then they belong to the tax payer and should be streamlined into social housing projects. The strange thing about them was you’d look at them twice and wonder who’d want to live in them, but you’d never contemplate there wouldn’t be anyone to live in them.

I remember the original stab at affordable housing during the boom years produced only completely unaffordable housing.