Does anybody else struggle to take Rory Hearne seriously?

10 comments

  1. How does one get to the parallel universe where 1,000 construction workers can refurbish 500 derelict homes a month?

    —

    posted by [@pdosullivan](https://twitter.com/pdosullivan/)

    —

    The tweet is a quote of a tweet posted by [@RoryHearne](https://twitter.com/RoryHearne/).
    Please reply “!quote” or “!q” to see the original tweet

    —

    ^(If media is missing, please DM me with a link to submission url and tweet. I will do my best to solve the issue)

  2. I read one of his earlier, very popular articles where he alleges that the Irish government are purposefully keeping house prices high – but offers no evidence, or even coherent arguments in support.

    The article was so badly written that I skipped most of what I’ve seen from him after, as he struck me as a bit out of his depth.

  3. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rory ends up going the way of Dolores Cahill, he doesn’t seem to live in the real world.

    1000 people renovating 500 houses per month? So 2 workers per house? They must be working 24/7 or Rory’s been watching too many DIY SOS.

  5. He’s a grifter who’s just looking to make a name for himself so he can make money from it.

    He can say literally anything and those impacted by the housing crisis will lap it up.

    His takes are awful.

  6. A lot of these folks have never had a real job or considered real-world problems and complexities. It’s a typical very simplistic answer to a very complex problem.

    In an ideal world you could ask him to demonstrate how this would work in a small scale experiment and let him see for himself how it goes, but there’s no guarantee he would learn from it.

  7. I find him useful when he consolidates existing stats or whatever, but I feel like he’s left orbit when he comes out with stuff like this, and it’s deeply frustrating because a lot more focus needs to be put on the insane levels of vacancy and dereliction we’ve had here for ten years or more.

    There is, absolutely, much more that can and should be done on that front, but this kind of pie in the sky stuff makes the whole argument seem absurd.

  8. How would they hire 1000 workers in the first place.

    Are the state agency going to offer better wages than the private sector?

    Are the state going to take liability for all the work? One of the main reasons that contractors are used is all the risk is pushed off onto them.

  9. I don’t agree with a lot of what he says but anything that puts a continued spotlight on the issue of housing is welcome in my view.

    We need to get a handle on the issue.

  10. If we take a month to be 28 days, it’s not, but 4 weeks is often regarded as a month, take the 4 Sundays out of that as some construction workers work Saturdays, not all mind, but some. That leaves you with 24 days.

    500/24 = 20.833333, so round that up to 21 houses a day. Apply that 1,000 workers to 21 houses you’re taking 47.619047 workers per house. Could you see 48 workers for roundness’s sake, I don’t want the HSA on their case for cutting workers into fractions, renovating a house in an 8 hour day? Ignoring the fact that they’d be in each other’s way, because they would no doubt figure out a way to work best across a number of a houses every week. I mean maybe. That’s 48 workers at 8 hours, that’s the equivalent of 384 worker hours to renovate a house. Sounds like a lot.

    And they’ve recruited 1,000 workers, maybe they already have some workers employed and these are 1,000 extra. I mean it sounds like it could maybe be done but it would depend on the extent of the renovation works, and no two houses will probably be the same length job, so it’s probably Anglo style calculations, i.e. he pulled numbers out of his arse, round numbers at that, they’re probably easier to pull out of an arse, less edges.

Leave a Reply