Aontú candidate agreed €10,000 for association to end blockade of social housing development

by Storyboys

19 comments
  1. Irish politicians try not to extort developers challenge (impossible)

  2. Extortion seems to be absolutely rife in our planning system. This is just one of the reasons why it’s so hard to get developments underway in this country.

  3. Peadar is so desperate for validation that he’ll accept anybody into the party.

  4. That’s blackmail plain and simple.
    Always thought there was laws to block this but obviously their either too lax or not specific enough.
    Planning objections shouldn’t be allowed by people living outside the area and objections cannot be resolved with bribes or favours etc, if such occurs the money should be confiscated and given to charities and they objector given jail and a fine to the amount of the blackmail.
    If those were enforced you’d have a lot less objectors

  5. Not to go full judge dredd but crimes of this nature should be punished severely with decades in prison.

    It seems no matter what crime you commit here you can expect a slap on the wrist. There’s no disincentives to commit these crimes.

  6. Why am I only seeing this kinda thing being reported by The Ditch? There’s been a lot of these lately in the run up to the election but I’ve seen our heard nothing on mainstream news. And most people I know probably haven’t heard of the Ditch so have no idea any of this is going on.

  7. Gosh, I remember this time last year when saying that politicians were cynically blocking housing for their own gain was a conspiracy theory.

  8. I’m sorry but offering or accepting money to not sustaining planning objections should result in mandatory jail time.

  9. “I mean, look, I would do things differently now, obviously,” he said.          Cos you got fucking caught you mean .

  10. How widespread is this? If news about various local councillor candidates comes out as often as it does it begs the question how many ordinary people are involved in this extortion.

  11. And did he pay tax on that? I highly doubt it.

    I wouldn’t consider that a gift, I would consider it an exchange of goods/services, because he had to do something to gain the money.

    Edit: I’m actually going to report all of these to revenue just because I am so pissed off by it. He mentions others received cash / etc as it was distributed, but d’you what? Fuck that.

  12. We all know that baby Jesus loves a bit of bribery.

  13. Despite the dubious nature of this type of obstruction for profit, it’s appalling the amount of political personalities involved in it.

    This must be the third or the fourth case of this in the last month alone.

  14. “The money is for the association, it was used to improve the appearance of the local area”

    *Moments later*

    “The residents had no knowledge of the money”

  15. There’s a HUGE difference between making a developer pay for access ramps and other stuff for the community *at no personal gain*, and shaking down developers for personal gain only.

    I don’t like the first version, but in a way it is just because the County Council are not doing their job – the second version is pure corruption and personal greed.

  16. As someone who lived through the 2008 crash I find unusual that property developers can be presented as injured parties but that is what happens when you give too power to stop progress and sadly it is individuals doing it in this case. And as awful as all of extortion around the developments are: how is the process not able to throw out what is obviously bogus objections. If the laws and guidelines are that complicated and open to interruption then we have another and possibly bigger problem. The fact that the planning system is so slow compared to other countries is already a problem.

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