O’Devaney Gardens - When Gombeens Do What Gombeens Do
The November 4th vote on O’Devaney Gardens was the first major test for the coalition of parties that took control of Dublin City Council after the local elections in May. Unsurprisingly, they failed that test abysmally.
The plan they approved will see close to 800 homes built on fourteen acres of public land by the private company, Bartra Capital Property Group. The proposed mix of housing tenure will be:
40% private housing - with half that number to be sold by Bartra for maximum profit and half to be sold as ‘affordable housing’
30% ‘social housing’ - that will be bought by the state from Bartra at a below market price
30% ‘affordable rental’ housing - to be funded by unknown means and operated by an unknown Approved Housing Body
In other words the single biggest category of housing on this public land will be private housing. By comparison just 30% of the housing will held in public ownership, a dramatic decrease from the 100% public ownership of the old O’Devaney Gardens.
The ‘plan’ foresees an Approved Housing Body funding and managing the remaining 30% as ‘affordable rental’ . But, incredibly, no AHB partner is in place and as a result no funding stream has been identified for almost a third of the development. But 39 Councillors still voted to back the plan.
Bartra Capital, which is owned by the developer Richard Barrett, has been mired in controversy over its plans to build modern-day ‘co-living’ tenements at a number of site in Dublin.
Deep suspicions surround this ‘affordable rental’ element of the plan, which only emerged days before last Monday’s vote. Up until that point Bartra was due to be given a full 50% of the development for sale on the private market.
The developer is alleged to have made a non-legally binding ‘offer’ to surrender 30% of the development for use as ‘affordable rental’ at the eleventh hour. Only time will tell if the ‘affordable rental’ element of the plan was genuine or an elaborate ruse to save the blushes of the Councillors that were being lined up to vote for the plan.
By any objective measure the O’Devaney plan represents a bad deal for Dublin City, a bad deal for the state and a bad deal for the Nation. At a time of unprecedented need for affordable public housing, a large publicly owned site in the heart of Dublin is set to be squandered.
The implications of the vote go far beyond the O’Devaney site. A critical precedent has now been set. Having voted for such an appalling deal once, it seems certain the same Councillors will back an equally bad deal for the last remaining large piece of public land in the Dublin City Council area, a site on Oscar Traynor Road in Coolock.
The O’Devaney plan has implications for the future development of housing on all public lands, including sites like the Central Mental Hospital site in Dundrum which is set to be developed in the near future. Éirígí has led the campaign for that land to be used for Universal Public Housing.
The implication of the vote will also resonate in councils across the state. Why would Councillors aligned to the same parties that backed the O’Devaney plan not back a similar deal for public land in their own areas? If it’s good enough for Dublin, where the housing crisis is at the most extreme, why would it not be good enough for Cork, Galway, Limerick or anywhere else.
As disappointing as the vote was, it came as no surprise to anyone that understands the true nature of the Twenty-Six County state and the Gombeen political class that rule it.
The Gombeen has been a feature of Irish life for centuries. Through invasion, plantation, starvation, deportation and every other imaginable oppression they honed their nefarious skills - turning every adversity into personal opportunity.
Speaking through both sides of their mouth the Gombeen often acted as a middleman between the coloniser and the colonised - providing the illusion of leadership for the native population while never openly defying or threatening the position of their British rulers.
The partition of Ireland and the creation of the Twenty-Six County state created endless opportunities for the Gombeen. Now the apparatus of an entire state could be manipulated and molded to advance their personal, political and financial interests.
Charlie Haughey pictured outside one of his properties. He gathered immense without the visible means for doing so, while also overseeing the privatisation of public assets and the creation of a tax haven for foreign capital
Political constituencies became personal fiefdoms, with the Gombeen TD as the local overlord. Resources from local and national government were deployed to create advantage for the local boss. ‘Playing the game’ became the ideology of choice. ‘Keeping the other crowd out’ the mantra to motivate the local party machines.
With each passing decade the idealism of the 1916-1921 revolutionary period became further diluted. The symbiotic relationship that once existed between the Gombeen and the colonial power was replaced by one between the Gombeen and Capital - both native and foreign.
The privatisation of public assets has always been at the heart of this relationship. For half a century or more the Gombeens have been systematically transferred public assets into private hands.
The rights to mine and profit from billions of euros worth of copper, lead, zinc and other minerals were thus handed to private corporation. Ireland’s oil and natural gas reserves were similarly transferred to foreign energy companies.
The wealth from Ireland’s rich agricultural land and fisheries too is ultimately harvested, not by the small farmer of fisherman, but by massive food processors and supermarket chains.
Housing, banking, insurance, healthcare, waste disposal, energy, telecoms and virtually every other area of economic activity and social provision has been handed over to the private sector by the Gombeen class.
And in parallel they have created one of the lowest corporation tax regimes in the world, ensuring the minimal profits are paid by the corporations that have benefited from the wholesale programme of privatisation.
The Gombeen exists to serve their own interests and the interests of Capital. Over many decades they have transferred virtually every Irish natural resource and other public asset into private hands.
This is backdrop against which Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour, The Green Party and the Social Democrats voted to hand public over to a private developer.
All of these parties, with the exception of Fine Gael, tell us the the current approach to housing is broken, that there has been an historic over-reliance on the private sector, that there is a pressing need for new models of housing and that the state must build large volumes of publicly-owned housing.
But when it came to vote on O’Devaney they all rowed in together to the giveaway of O’Devaney Gardens. The de facto two parties of government in Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and three ‘opposition’ parties, in Labour, The Green Party and the Social Democrats, voted for more of the same failed housing policies of the past.
These parties need to be judged by their actions, not by their soft words, their crocodile tears or fake opposition. The are all dominated by Gombeens that will always put their own interests and the interests of Capital ahead of the interests of the nation. When it came to O’Devaney it was entirely consistent for the Gombeens to do what the Gombeens have always done.