Kilkenny County Council

Allowing people in over the borders, in my opinion, without the proper paperwork, etc., I think was an absolute disaster for this country and they're going to pay a price for that.

But having said that, These figures are constantly being bandied about with regard to Kilkenny County Council.

I hear them on a regular basis because I do a lot of work with housing.

So I asked the question, I asked, did we have the figures that Could I have the figures in public meeting? I want to know what percentages and what the percentage breakdown was.

Now, I haven't got the full figures in front of me because I asked for them to be sent out.

But the headline figure for me certainly was that 80 to 82% of those people on the housing list and get houses in Kilkenny County Council are Irish.

So, I mean, that in itself tells a huge story.

You know, like we can examine the figures, we can go through them by all means.

And I have a number of men joining us on the show now to explain the story of the event and what's going to be happening on the night.

Joining me in studio, Cahirlock of Kilkenny County Council, former member of the Defence Forces himself, Cahirlock Joe Malone.

On the line, we've got Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey, retired, and the coordinator of the event, Eugene Doyle, also joining us as well.

Gents, good morning to one and all.

Um, we had a pre-budget meeting yesterday.

I mean, Kilkenny County Council are looking at an increased budget again.

Everybody wants to spend more money, but the, the, the role of government is to make sure that you do that in a sustainable way.

And the, the, the challenge for, for Jack Chambers and Simon Harris is, today, is that you have 11 billion euros worth of, um, uh, of, of income coming from 10, um, foreign direct investment companies who are effectively filtering their European profits through Ireland, and we are getting the tax take for Europe, which is coming through Ireland.

But this is the important thing, for people who are worried that this might change overnight for them.

This is a master plan.

It hasn't been adopted by Kilkenny County Council, and even if it is, the HSE haven't actually decided that they're, they're going to do anything with this as, at this point in time.

So I think this master plan, while it will be passed in due course, I think it could be some years before we'll see anything happen on that piece of land.

I have lots of learning around that to share with any services that want to know.

I have to again acknowledge Kilkenny County Council have been superb and I believe probably leading the country in their willingness to work with us in sourcing and securing homes and the flexibility of tenancy, tenancy agreements and how many people were to live in arrangements.

So I We couldn't have asked for more than what we had in terms of support from Kilkenny County Council.

And that is still true today in terms of their responsiveness and willingness to learn, their flexibility to build beautiful, universal design plus homes that serve people well and that will enable people to age in place and age in their home as they go.

So the housing bit, although I know there's probably going to be people screaming, it's podcast saying it's not easy, Selena, was the easy bit.

And this is why I still work in media, John, because it's a public service and I believe in public service.

But at the time, Kilkenny County Council actually honoured us for our work at the time as a thank you afterwards.

But like you've mentioned water, you've mentioned the air code, other things that maybe you might not think about, like having a list of important phone numbers, having a printout of any medications that you and a family member may be on in case you need to manually organise things like that for ourselves.

A lot of this really could fall under the category of good housekeeping.