This is from 2018: TD Noel Rock was invited onto Niall Boylan to discuss a photo of a family being given their council home by the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in early November which he had published on Twitter. The photograph had received a negative r…
This is from 2018: TD Noel Rock was invited onto Niall Boylan to discuss a photo of a family being given their council home by the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in early November which he had published on Twitter. The photograph had received a negative reaction with people asking why migrants were being housed when there is a housing crisis in Ireland and Irish people needed homes. Noel told Niall that the family in question were Irish citizens and were being given a more suitable home with one child being disabled.
During their conversation, Boylan brought up a 2011 report in the Evening Herald which he had misremembered as being from 2013 titled 'Over Half On Housing List Are Foreign' . That report quoted a Fingal councillor from Noel Rock's Fine Gael party called Kieran Dennison who told the Herald:
"For the first time, more than half those on the waiting list for social housing in Fingal County Council are non-Irish nationals. A third are from outside the EU."
TD Noel Rock questioned the figure saying he didn't think figures about citizenship status were calculated in the social housing stats as they could cause legal issues. He said he didn't know where the figures came from. He also said that he believed that "broadly speaking the proportion of non-citizens on the housing list would broadly reflect the proportions in the country at large".
However, Niall then read out a tweet from a listener who told him that the government did in fact calculate figures for whether applicants for social housing in Ireland were Irish citizens, EU citizens or non-EU citizens.
In 2011, 58 % of applicants on the housing list in Fingal did not have Irish citizenship.
https://www.housing.gov.ie/sites/default/files/migrated-files/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/Housing/FileDownLoad%2C27864%2Cen.pdf
In 2017, 36% of applicants on the housing list in Fingal did not have Irish citizenship.
https://www.housing.gov.ie/sites/default/files/publications/files/summary_of_social_housing_assessments_2018_-_key_findings.pdf
However, the huge number of citizenships awarded to migrants mask real figures as migrants given citizenship are then counted in the figures for Irish applicants like the family in Leo Varadkar's photograph.
Over 110,000 people have been given Irish citizenship between 2011 and 2017.
http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/press-release-minister-citizenship-271117
Noel Rock who had already dropped the call when this information was revealed subsequently remarked on twitter:
"Honestly didn’t know the figures were compiled that way but there you go, every day is a school day"
https://twitter.com/NoelRock/status/1061974728880066561
Broadcast: The Niall Boylan Show ( the midday show) | 13 Nov 2018
