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LAST UPDATE | 1 May
NAMA CHIEF BRENDAN McDonagh has told Housing Minister James Browne he is withdrawing his name from consideration for the role as the new housing tsar.
McDonagh told Browne while he is honoured to have been approached about the role that in light of the controversy that has arisen, he no longer wishes to be considered for the job.
He said he wishes the new office every success.
A significant controversy blew up around the role this week, in particular the €430,000 salary expected to be attached to it.
The housing minister announced the creation of a new ‘Housing Activation Office’ to operate within the Department of Housing earlier this week.
While McDonagh was yet to be formally appointed to head this new office, his name had been linked to the role in the media for the last few weeks.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One on Tuesday, Browne said McDonagh was his “preferred candidate” for the role.
Discussions took place at today’s Cabinet subcommittee on housing on the matter, with sources stating that Fine Gael “blocked” the appointment of McDonagh at the meeting.
Another source told The Journal following the meeting that McDonagh had “withdrawn” his name from consideration.
Browne and a number of other ministers sit on that committee along with the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.
A spokesperson for the Tánaiste said earlier this week that it was Simon Harris’s view that appointments of this scale “should be discussed by the leaders in advance of any name being made public”.
Following the meeting this afternoon, a statement on behalf of the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Browne said that housing is the greatest challenge the country faces and the Government is determined to tackle it.
“The Government has established a new Housing Activation Office to break down silos and drive delivery of housing.
“Minister James Browne will now progress the setting up the Housing Activation Office and report back to the next Cabinet Committee on Housing following consultation with Party leaders on all aspects.”
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin described the matter as “an absolute shambles”, writing on X that Browne, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste had shown “total incompetence”.
Labour housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan has said that the manner in “this nixer” was attempted to be “rammed through by Fianna Fáil beggars belief”.
“From the beginning of his appointment to the Department Minister Browne has acted with utter incompetence from the get go,” Sheehan said.
“The big question now is if Fine Gael have blocked the appointment of McDonagh because they felt he wasn’t the right man for the job, or because Harris is disappointed he didn’t get the hop on his colleagues in Fianna Fáil. Either way, this is no way to run a country.”
Social Democrats housing spokesperson Rory Hearne said it was “another housing mess”, posting: “The Government’s inappropriate and ham fisted plan to put ex Nama CEO into a gold plated post as their ‘Housing Tsar’ has fallen apart.”
During Leaders’ Questions today, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty said the mooted salary for the role was “off the wall”.
The government should be embarrassed that they are “prepared to pay someone nearly half a million euro to take up what is the main responsibilities of the Minister for Housing”, he said.
Doherty also referred to reports that Harris was blindsided by “this bonkers decision”.
He added: “There’s no blindsiding going on here. This appointment, and the name of Brendan McDonagh, has been flagged as the lead candidate for nearly two months now in the national media. So either you were very much on board or you were asleep in the wheel.”
As he gave his response Harris told the chamber:”We haven’t made any decisions in relation to personnel or pay. No decisions at all.”
He said that the Government will continue to engage on how best to staff the new office, stating that the overriding objective “won’t be personality”, but “getting the job done”.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik also raised the topic of the housing tsar during Leaders’ Questions.
A housing oligarch or housing tsar with the Russian oligarch price tag. You might call it a fixer-in-chief, or even a fixer with a nixer, and what an extraordinary nixer this is.
Bacik noted that it was “interesting” that Harris and Fine Gael colleagues were now “distancing yourselves” from the appointment.
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I’m an Irish programmer, living abroad, and would like to work remotely for an Irish company. (It’s always a good excuse for visiting home every now and then.) Even with the skills shortage, it seems that no employer is interested.
I’m also in a similar position (living/working in the UK), I like to check in every now and then with job opportunities in Ireland and it’s always 3-5 years industry experience. It seems to be case (to me at least) that you have to move abroad to get your experience before you can come back and apply for these jobs.
I think everyone can agree (having myself being in a similar position) that there is NO SKILLS SHORTAGE.
It is a shortage of desired experience.
Every company requires 3-5 years it seems. None are interested in investing in staff to train/mentor them.
My advice would be similar to other posters for those with no experience: learn how to build a phone app, or try to improve a piece of software from the likes of Sourceforge.net Then put that at the top of your CV.
Exactly – nobody cares if you got 86% in second year in Software Systems – they just want to know what you can do.
I don’t blame companies for wanting experience though – why take on a 22 year old when you can take on a 32 year old? Not like in 30 years time you’ll regret that the older guy is retiring sooner than the younger guy, in the software industry :-P
In my own case I have six years of industry experience with Java, but no one is taking the bait.
Spot on. If you don’t have a github.com account with some interesting projects or contributions, don’t bother.
Software engineering is one of the few jobs that you can MAKE your own experience. As someone who hires developers, I’d sooner hire someone with an interesting github portfolio than someone with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.
It’s pretty easy to spot people interested in building cool things.
You’re a dying breed Dave. Outside of google very few companies are looking for software developers who are in any way creative. However, they are increasingly looking for staff who are multidisciplinary. Agile is pushing things that way… especially devops.
Software companies want experienced engineers so there is the catch how can you have a constant flow of graduates when they can’t get jobs becuase companies want experienced people.
The other flip side the money is crap starting off.
Money isn’t crap starting off – it’s in line with most other jobs of similar expertise. Companies wanting experienced people is a nuisance though, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.
Software is one of those fields though where you can gain expertise without experience. If your CV has a link to your website, your GitHub profile or some mobile app you’ve worked on they shouldn’t care how long you’ve been working at it.
If you’re passionate about software and have the skills to match, you have the ability to convey this to an employer :-)
Sofware developers are the highest paid graduates of any field. They are even paid more than intern doctors and graduate engineers. Of course those fields catch up fairly quickly.
Is there a list of these vacancies/job specifications?
There is no skills shortage. There is however a bias towards 25-35 year olds, with 5 years experience in a very specific and narrow skill set.
The employers (HR departments) have absolutely no comprehension that a programmer is a programmer, that’s the “skill”, the programming language is usually pretty irrelevant.
If you are over 45 years old, then the employers pretty much ignore you and your wealth of experience.
Irish companies have become very Americanised in the practice of promoting (very) young people to managerial positions, who are then biased towards hiring people their own age.
So what skills are we short of? If it’s technical that’s something to work towards for our universities and students, if it’s language of course it’s going to be easier for people of other nationalities.
So half are picked by Irish residents !
Very poor CV screening, interviewing and technical tests result in a lot of false negatives. I was recently made redundant, and have just been through the process. I picked up a job pretty quickly, but I am genuinely surprised by the lack of opportunities for some of the more junior guys, given that I would be happy to work with all of them again and they have access to great references from everyone at the company.
I constantly see companies that are doing web-development asking about program complexity and solving scalability problems that they more than likely don’t have. If they do have these problems, they are self inflicted by people reinventing the wheel rather than using something off the shelf. Another thing I noticed is the asking of questions assuming knowledge of specific tools. Web summit insisted on degrees from Universities only, with a clear bias towards Trinity college.
I personally would prefer to hire someone with less experience of these kind of things, and the simple ability to do simple things correctly and take direction. I don’t think I would have a problem hiring in the current environment.
Given that we are in the middle of a tech bubble, we should not spend too much time trying to correct these problems at the expense of the exchequer and let the companies who have the problem deal with these self inflicted problems themselves.
I’m an Irish IT graduate with over 10 yrs experience. I’ve taken time out to raise my child. I’ve been trying to get back to work for the last couple of years & companies are unwilling to even respond to my CV. I understand the concepts, am easily retrained & willing to work. It’s not a shortage of skills, I think it’s that companies want an exact set of skills & aren’t willing to re-train people. I know I’m not the only one in this position.
You’re right. as an employer, it’s not efficient to hire someone that will take weeks or months to retrain. The onus is on you to skill up. Not your employer. Ad I’ve stated before, in IT, it’s very VERY easy to upskill and create your own experience in the form of personal projects.
I’m still shocked at those who don’t understand this. Nobody owes you a job and being out of work for 10 years means you’re practically starting from scratch anyway. But that doesn’t matter, it’s very easy to start and build something yourself to modernise your skill set.
I’d sooner hire a 17 year old who just finished their leaving with a decent github profile then someone with 3 masters and no effort put into keeping themselves relevant.
Too few jobseekers actualky put themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.
have your say