Barry Ward
speaker
554 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 7 Sep
Barry Ward’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And then you talk about local authority housing, which we know we're being renovated and putting back into use at the same time.
So what you're doing actually, Padraig, let's be honest, is scoring
political points.
Yes, we've had a housing crisis and the characteristics of this government is that constantly they are changing to respond to the various threats as they were.
This wasn't a problem 10 years ago.
Well, no, what Simon Harris has done in the other job is identified that it hasn't been happening, and that's why it's changing that.
But this is different.
This is something where it is important to have regulation in this regard.
It is important that you create a balance that means that you don't have lots of properties that are not available to house people locally, but that you also still require and retain a balance that's there to serve the tourism industry.
So you can't have a situation where there are no short-term lets available, but nor can you have a situation where whole places are taken over with short-term lets and not available to
for people, for housing.
So what this is about is striking that balance and trying to create the balance between the two things.
I don't have a concern, and by the way, I don't have a concern about local authorities generally delivering on their mandate.
There are resources issues, although I'd point out the Department of Housing has provided staff for them to carry out many of these functions.
But if it's the case that they're not doing it, then again, action will be taken.
But local authorities have the opportunity now to do this in the way that it's supposed to be done, and I have full confidence that they will.
It is a reasonable point, and I think there has to be penalties for them in tandem.
Padder says he doesn't know what they are.
Of course, I don't know what they are either because they haven't been decided yet, but that's what the process is about.
Yeah, that's right, Padder, because we can't just rush headlong into this and decide things overnight.
Showing 141–160 of 554 · page 8 of 28
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