Sarah Harte: People are trying to figure out if they can live in a log cabin. How did we get here?

Do politicians seriously think this is what the electorate wants to hear about?

Is it technically a farce that TDs who openly plan to support the Government for its duration demand to be officially part of the Opposition? If you have the luxury of delving into that level of detail, it smells of noxious backroom deals and Machiavellian subplots that discredit the reformed Coalition government.

But thanks to this row, Dáil committees have been unable to get up and running. Our parliament has not been functioning correctly since November 2024. 

The unacceptability of this is compounded by the feeling that the world is experiencing a ‘polycrisis’. The word was coined by historian Adam Tooze in the 1970s. It refers to a situation where multiple challenges affect the world simultaneously, so there is an interplay of several challenges, both long-term and short-term, leaving us psychologically vulnerable.

To name but a few, the war in Ukraine, the massive human rights violation in Gaza, the regime change in the USA, the consequences of the new Russian/American axis, Europe’s place in the world, repeated warnings about reaching a tipping point with climate change, the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic, massive cost-of living crises and on it goes.

“Disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part.” This polycrisis pile-on means that we, the small cogs in the wheel, feel massively impacted personally.

If we shrink our world and avert our eyes from the international scene, a hard thing to do when we live in such a connected world, we still have problems that feel intractable. These relate to infrastructure and social services. 

One particular issue beats all: the broken housing system, which continues to maim the lives of Irish citizens. Within five days last week, I had had three conversations involving housing and the painful search for somewhere to call home. I’m no statistician, but that says something.

One person who runs her own business from home asked everyone they know locally to keep an ear to the ground for somewhere to rent as her landlord is selling up. The second person works in a local business, and her landlord is also taking back the house she and her partner are renting.

She received a phone call during the working day from her landlord telling her that she had to vacate the property. Such was her distress that when the call ended, she momentarily put her head on the shop counter. She spoke of having to move repeatedly and the terror of not finding anywhere to live. It was extremely upsetting to witness. Then she apologised because that’s the kind of person she is, professional and good at her job. 

What do the intricacies of speaking rights in the Dáil mean to her or the other woman?

Later in the week, I was talking to an old college friend. He was cautiously optimistic about the recent proposal to allow people to build a log cabin in the back garden, exempting people from planning permission. He asked me if I had any details on the proposal. I didn’t. He was tentatively hopeful that this might solve his housing problem.

Still, he worried whether he could fit a cabin into a particular plot of land and whether an ornery neighbour would complain. Part of me wondered how we got to the point where people were trying to figure out if they might be allowed to live in a log cabin.

Some people believe we fetishise private property because of our history. Others believe that’s rubbish and that we are living with the consequences of market failure, which other countries are not immune from, but which is particularly acute in Ireland. This sounds like a perfect debate for a dinner party.

Who cares where the causal truth lies except in how to fix it? Central Statistics Office figures reveal that the Residential Property Price Index increased by 8.71% year-on-year in December 2024 compared to December 2023, when prices grew by 4.09%. 

In plain English, there are not enough houses, massive demand, and prices and rents far outstrip average wages.

The time has come for big-ticket State intervention in housing and at home. This is one issue the Government should focus on as a national crisis in a non-partisan political way, as they did with covid-19. Not endless, highly insulting wittering about Dáil speaking rights.

We need to insert a right to a home into the Irish constitution and rebalance the right to private property with the public good of social housing. We have done this in the past and can do it again. Failure to address the housing crisis will have long-term consequences; it can’t not. 

A bigger question seems to lurk in the background. What ultimately happens if politicians flagrantly prove themselves out of touch with their priorities, shamefully focusing on issues like internal parliamentary processes? Does social cohesion incrementally break down until some tipping point is reached, and you wonder how on earth we arrived there?

‘The world feels on fire’

We seem to inhabit a time when the seemingly impossible becomes all too real. To take just one example, the results of the recent German election are deeply alarming. Who could have predicted 20 years ago the rise of the far right AfD with its nazi undertones, in Germany of all countries. The return of extreme German nationalism says, to me, that anything is possible.

What struck me most last week was how apprehensive people are — personally fearful. The ‘The world feels on fire’ conversation surfaced repeatedly in different social settings. 

On Saturday evening, in Fields Supervalu in Skibbereen, a lady at the checkout asked what I thought of what had happened between Trump and Zelenskyy the night before. Then, a colleague joined in, pointing out how the Trump-Zelenskyy encounter put the tin hat on the general fear factor. 

One political journalist told me that if he didn’t have his current job, he would stop following the news entirely, go into a bubble and only read fiction. A lawyer told me that she listens to Morning Ireland and then plugs out for the rest of the day in an act of self-care. 

This self-protective strategy is not uncommon. Many people I know are no longer engaging with the news cycle because they can’t handle the collage of craziness.

The White House visit looms, and on March 12 Taoiseach Micheál Martin will walk a tightrope as he hands over the crystal bowl of shamrock. We need politicians focused on pressing domestic issues but who will also do their best for us on the international stage. 

Parochial shenanigans like the speaking rights saga are a luxury we simply cannot afford. As Elaine Loughlin wrote on Saturday, do your job.