Irish Government Diagnosed With World’s First Case Of Socialhousingaphobia
HERALDED at a world’s first and a stunning breakthrough in the fields of psychiatry and neurobiology the Irish government has been diagnosed with a debilitating and terrifying phobia of building social housing, dubbed ‘socialhousingaphobia’.
The announcement comes shortly after the government is set to miss yet another housing target, this time failing to €2bn behind in its annual housing expenditure spend.
“Oh thank God, we’ve a name for it now. For a second there I thought it was our fault – like incompetence or just malicious dereliction of duty but it’s a condition. What a relief,” sighed Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien, a full 1,000 units behind this year’s social housing units.
Listed among symptoms are an avoidance of social housing targets, a refusal to spend allocated budget and night terrors involving horrific dreams of a three-bed in Dublin being sold for €200,000.
“The only known treatment currently is leaving everything up to ‘the market’,” explained a doctor treating the government, “a steady dose of asking developers and investors to tell you what to do certainly helps too”.
Treating ministers in an isolated unit in a specially built ivory tower wing of a HSE hospital, healthcare professionals work around the clock to help the government with their phobia.
“Leo, Micheál you can come out now, how can a social housing hurt you. Would you feel better by staring at Dublin rent prices or better yet at a chart showing only 89 homes out of a target of 65,000 have retrofitted their homes this year,” said a nurse coaxing the Tánaiste and Taoiseach out from behind a couch.
Elsewhere, local councils continue to refuse to spend their allocated funding for the provision of housing for the travelling community although that is called something other than socialhousingaphobia.
