Housing Minister Strongly Rejects Claims He Is A Nincompoop

THE MINISTER for Housing has rejected, in the strongest terms, assertions that he is in fact a nincompoop WWN can reveal.

Presented with the evidence in the form of his entire time in charge of the housing brief, Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien contested the nincompooped nature of policies which at the time of implementing were identified by the minister as key to easing supply and bringing down housing prices but have had virtually the opposite effect.

“Now just hang on a minute,” said O’Brien from a housing conference populated by property lobbiyists as he gathered his thoughts, the full minute of time proving enough to see house prices rise by several percent.

The ‘nincompoopification’ of housing strategy includes tax relief for landlords on fridges, tax breaks for developers to ‘activate’ 70,000 idle planning permissions, €144k subsidies to developers to finish apartments they are already building and further inflating house prices by extending and expanding the Help-to-Buy scheme.

“This isn’t a problem we can solve overnight,” explained O’Brien, unwittingly highlighting his nincompoopery by uttering the Mona Lisa of nincompoop excuse-making.

In addition to the accusation that he is a nincompoop, others with a working knowledge of Irish housing have called O’Brien a ninny, nitwit, goon, pudding-head, lamebrain, doofus and all round ding-dong.

These names O’Brien rejects, even allowing for the fact only 50 landlords have applied and been granted short-let planning permissions despite over 16,000 landlords eligible and legally obligated to register. O’Brien denied this is yet another sign of a government, from top to bottom, utterly uninterested in enforcing the law when it comes to landlords and developers.

“The tenor of these arguments are juvenile in the extreme,” offered the minister, as his juvenile solutions address none of the root causes of high rents and low supply.

“What?” concluded the minister, when told ‘nincompoopssaywhat’ very quickly in a hushed and hurried tone.

Fed up with our line of questioning, the minister make a quick getaway by walking face first into a nearby wall.