Could the GAA Solve Ireland’s Housing Crisis?

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2:10David McWilliams: How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast. The podcast today is coming from Air Square in Galway, John, where I am on my way further west. I told you last week. Go west, young man. Go west. Go west, exactly. I feel that I am one of these young men looking for my fortune. I don't think anybody really went to Connemara looking for their fortune. Not even Inishmore looking for their fortune, but I am on my way west. But last night I stopped in Galway and I was just listening to the radio about our presidential election. John, by the way, listener, this podcast is going to be all about the housing market.

2:51David McWilliams: We're talking about Ireland, but we're taking examples from Denmark, from Austria, from the UK. we're going to talk about the possibility of cooperative housing, a different model for housing to try and fix the affordability crisis. But more importantly, to try and align house prices with people's incomes rather than house prices with speculative behavior, with people's incomes to look at accommodation as a weekly cost in our lives. number one. And secondly, to look at community-based housing as a design idea, as a community idea, as a bottom-up idea, and as a cooperative where together you can create communities, 20 houses, 80 houses, 100 houses, where peoples are members of a co-op.

3:48David McWilliams: This is cooperative housing. We're going to discuss this, but John, I was listening to the wireless on the way down in the car. And obviously, the presidential election is on in Ireland. And Jim Gavin, the manager of the Dublin GA, very successful manager. Very successful. Is Fianna Fáil's man now for the Auris. Now, I was listening to this and I was thinking, cynics always said, well, the GAI is actually Fianna Fáil at play. So it's hardly surprising that these two foundational forces of the Republic coming together, you know, that's pretty much, at least for an outsider like me. It looks kind of, makes sense.

4:26David McWilliams: But I've been told from inside the organizations, things look kind of different. Oh, what do you mean? Like real diehard Fianna Fáilers feel that one of their own apparatchiks should have been picked. Okay. One of their own politicians, a guy called Billy Kelleher. And they feel that they kind of outsourced the responsibility to the GAA, meaning that Fianna Fáil is kind of smaller than the GAA and the GAA is a bigger institution. By the way, from non-Irish listeners, I'll explain all this in a second. However, I've also been told lots of people within the GAA feel that the organization is apolitical and it is home to lots of enthusiastic members from all across the political spectrum.

5:09David McWilliams: And therefore, Fianna Fáil appropriating the GAA isn't a good look for the association in general. So I think there's lots of sort of stuff behind the scenes. But be that as it may. I have to say that you know with the likes of Jim Gavin I know very little about him he's hugely successful he was a brilliant coach all that kind of stuff but I don't know what it is about all of that that makes him a presidential candidate and it feels to me that I'm not taken away from it at all but it feels to me that this presidential election in particular compared to other ones is more like a, you know, who's got talent kind of, you know.

5:54David McWilliams: Dancing with the stars, Johnny Boyd. Dancing with the stars. It feels a little bit like, it's a bit of a novelty kind of thing. You know, all these people throwing their hat in the ring, you kind of go, like, who are you? You're beginning to wonder about the credibility and integrity of the president. Well, I suppose it's a very bizarre thing. if you set up a constitutional role which is explicitly designed to be symbolic in an era of social media. So prior to social media and television, a symbolic president is you'd elevate some sort of crusty old fella usually. And that crusty old fella would represent the state and would sort of well-behaved, et cetera.

6:34So that's the Carol O'Dowley, Patrick Hillary sort of world.

6:38David McWilliams: When we were very, very young, these were the sort of presidents of art, even De Valera is like, it was kind of a, you know, you could see there was a continuity there. But I think when you create explicitly a constitution that is anchored in the political reality of 1937, which our constitution is, it's almost 100 years old. But you superimpose upon that the realities of the world in 2025 with media, television, with social media, with the internet, etc. And as you say, the emergence of these sort of superannuated beauty contests every Sunday night on televisions, whether it's Dancing with the Stars or, you know, Britain's got fecking talent or Ireland's got talent.

7:18David McWilliams: What you tend to do is you tend to besmirch the notion of the presidency to such an extent that it does become, you know, a beauty contest and whose smile is nicer and who can do this, that and the other. I mean, I don't know anything about Jim Gavin. As you know, you know, Dublin GA, not really my thing. He might be a great coach. in my world who's no Jackie Charlton, I'll tell you that, right? But, you know, and of course, if you're not a member of the GAA, which the vast majority of Irish people are not members of the GAA, then, you know, and you're not a member of Dublin GAA, which against the vast, vast majority of Irish people, you're like, meh, I'm not sure.

7:54David McWilliams: Like, give him a chance. Who knows? He might be a great guy. He might be a great guy. But one thing, it remains to be seen whether the GAA is the key to opening the gates of the Auras. But there is another thing, another massive issue, where I think the GAA, a national association with the GAA, could deploy its resources and could help solve a much more important concern in Ireland than the presidency, which is the GAA could be part of a solution for the Irish housing crisis in regional areas, particularly in rural areas, right? Oh, right. How does that work? Okay, I'll tell you, I'll stand back.

8:32So I was driving down yesterday through the country. I was driving to Sligo and then I did an event in Sligo and I was driving down from Sligo to Galway. So like through, you know, North Galway, South Mayo,

8:43David McWilliams: you know, deep rural Ireland, right? And as you're driving, every small village, I mean, this is not a unique insight. This is something people observe all the time. Tiny villages, almost townlands, almost crossroads, has a GAA pitch, which is perfectly flat. I can tell you somebody who's played football and to a late stage in my life, no football pitch in Ireland looks as good as a GAA pitch, right? Not one soccer pitch, right? Perfectly fat pitch, community centres, flags, the entire thing, even little stands in some of these places, you know, all built by volunteers, all built by cooperative members acting in trust together for the good of the community.

9:28But the GAA is the gel of the communities right across Ireland and always has been. And this is the opportunity, right? Yeah. A way to solve housing is called cooperative housing. And I'm taking the Danish model, right? It's been pioneered in Denmark. It's provided affordable houses to thousands of middle and low-income Danes. It is community-based, bottom-up, cross-country. Okay. Now, 7 % of all Danes live in cooperative houses. One third of all Danish people who live in Copenhagen live in cooperative houses. Okay, just explain what you mean by cooperative housing and what are they? So cooperative housing is a fascinating, low-cost, community-based approach to housing.

10:16David McWilliams: And what you need to build a cooperative housing infrastructure is an existing cooperative infrastructure. And the GAA, as you've just said, John, is an existing cooperative infrastructure. So if you could deploy the resources of the GAA to building, overseeing, organizing, orchestrating in the same way as they do when they're building GAA clubs, cooperative houses in small villages, you could change the entire complexion of rural Ireland and urban Ireland as well, but you could start rurally. So this was the idea is that the GAA is a massive untapped resource in the country. Housing is our massive social problem.

11:07Fuse the two together and you may well have a blueprint which we could follow Denmark, follow Vienna and create low-cost, low-maintenance houses for people on middle and low incomes. Yeah. Okay, let me ask you a few questions about this because I'm not sure if I fully get this. Cooperative housing was always a big thing. I seem to remember when I was in London, particularly in the 80s and 90s, you don't hear so much about it anymore, but how does this actually work on a practical level? I mean, the main thing, you're not talking about, obviously, building houses on GAA pitches. No, no. So how does it work in terms of land ownership and that kind of stuff?

11:53David McWilliams: Well, think about it. So the GAA, where those pitches are, in the middle of nowhere, that land was bought by the GAA from somebody. Yeah, but that was 100 years ago. No, no. I mean, a lot of these things are being bought all the time. Still now, they're buying land all the time. So that land was turned into, was rezoned recreational, was turned into recreational land, and the GAA and the members locally built it, financed it, organized it, designed it, etc., and delivered it, executed at cost, right, at a low cost to this greater organization. At the core of cooperative housing is something very similar.

12:35It's community ownership and self-management of housing. So instead of buying an individual property on the open market, residents come together, let's say 50 or 100, to form a cooperative association. And the co-op buys and develops the house, right?

12:52David McWilliams: So each purchaser, like if you join it, you buy a share in the co-op. So rather than buying a deed for a single house, like if you go out to buy your house, John, you bought a deed for the house, you were the owner. rather than doing that, you buy a share in the co-op. This means the co-op owns the land and the buildings as a whole, but the members have a right to occupy their own home because they're members. So therefore, the decisions on housing, the maintenance, the rules, the rents, the prices, new memberships are all made democratically by these residents' association on a one-member, one-vote basis, right?

13:25This is the basis of the GAA, the structure, okay? So it's already in place. And then the co-op buys the land and develops the land. So what you'd have is that rather than 100 individuals bidding against each other

13:42David McWilliams: to buy land off a developer, and the developer is taking a 25 % to 30 % margin at the end, pushing up the price to the buyer, as we talked about in the Cairns Homes podcast a couple of weeks ago. Yes. What you do here is you buy it together. and then you buy it what we call in a trust, right? So you want to keep this land off the market once it's bought and you create what's called a community land trust and this holds the land in trust and that ensures that once it's built, the land can't suffer speculation so it stays affordable for the long term. So you do two things. First of all, you buy it together as a co-op and secondly, you buy it in trust and because you buy it in trust, it means it can't be actually bought or speculated on by outsiders.

14:34Right. Can I ask you, though, when you are buying it, you are up against speculators. The co-op group is bidding against speculators.

14:47David McWilliams: It is, but that's where the state could come in, and the state could say that the local communities, the local councils could set aside a certain amount of local land, which they are, for example, due to sell in the open market, they might sell, set aside a certain amount to co-ops. So you're basically setting aside X amount of the housing stock for these co-ops, right, to give them a chance to survive. But equally, you may well be going up against developers, but, you know, 100 people together, that's a lot of heft. That's a hell of a lot of heft, financial and social heft, right? But the aim is to build communities.

15:23They share amenities such as creches. they build creches. You know, the members in the co-ops are not tenants. They are owners with a responsibility and they have a stake in the community, right? Right. So this is not a, you know, the kind of build to let type of... No, no, this is the opposite. Because you are, this is the absolute... So basically what you're saying to people is

15:43David McWilliams: you have a stake in the co-op. So for example, you think all over rural Ireland, farmers are members of co-ops, right? They all have a stake. They sell their milk. This was Horace Plunkett John. You may have remembered. Horace Plunkett from the Gaelic Association was unusual. Was a unionist MP for South Dublin, John, our neck of the woods. Right. And then became a nationalist or moved over to the nationalist cause. But he was very, very deeply involved in the Gaelic Association, number one, but number two in the cooperative movement to try and give farmers a chance to pool their resources, to give them more muscularity in the markets.

16:21David McWilliams: This is the same idea. So in Denmark, these communities are kind of intergenerational. So young and old live in the cooperative. This allows young people to afford houses, but it also helps something else, John, which is interesting, which is loneliness is so endemic amongst older people. Yes, particularly in rural Ireland, yeah. Yeah, and everywhere, everywhere. And if they're part of a co-op, everyone is in the thing together. Now, in the UK, they have one, I think it's called Hazelmead and Dorset, which is a very good example. Maybe Google it, listeners, if you're interested in this. and what they have is they've got community centers, they share kitchen facilities in certain areas, they share all sorts of things.

16:57So people are coming and going and they're trying to create a community rather than just an estate, right? And everybody has a stake in this community. Now, the international experience is fascinating this, right? 7 % of all Danes, as I said, live in co-ops. These things started in the 70s. They changed their laws, allowing tenants to buy buildings in co-ops, convert them into legal structures, into co-ops, right? Today, the result is a large sector of housing is neither privately speculative in Denmark or state-owned, but member-owned. That's the idea of being members, right? The co-ops provide, you know, hundreds of thousands of modest-income Danes with an alternative to private renting.

17:44They are members, they own their stuff. Okay, well, tell me how all this works then. It works in a fascinating way, right? So to join a co-op, you have to be a resident of the co-op to begin with, i.e. you were raised within the co-op, or you join a waiting list.

18:00David McWilliams: So there is nepotism involved, okay? There is nepotism involved because if you've been in first, you're still in, right? And the idea is to continue to build communities so kids can live close to their parents, grandparents can live close to their grandchildren, and you're actually building in the same way as rural communities always were. People always lived around each other. But what happens if you want to move on? You sell your membership. Right. But you don't sell it for a profit. Back to the co-op. Back to the co-op. They sell it to somebody else. At a set price? Yeah, you're not getting capital appreciation.

18:34David McWilliams: So you've got to forget the idea of you're buying this to become rich. You're buying this for a place to live. And that's how co-ops work. Yeah. Because they are cooperative, right? So you've got to take out that idea that I can buy for 200 grand and sell for 400. That's over. And this is exactly what the objective is, right? So this is not about investing in property. This is about the very practical measure of solving the housing crisis and a different way of looking at it. This is about building, not investing. So it requires a complete change of mindset for people. It's a change of mindset, but it's the same way as a credit union is not a bank.

19:13if you join a credit union, you're a member of a credit union, and credit unions could play a huge role here. So you're not a shareholder in Bank of Ireland. You're not hoping for capital depreciation. You're a member of the credit union, and what you're hoping is that you will be able to borrow money at lower rates of interest, and basically your money is washing around the local community. So once you're accepted, so basically in Denmark,

19:39David McWilliams: foreigners can't join, and private corporations can't join. So you have to be individuals. So once you're accepted, then you, let's say John joins it, you buy a share in the co-op, right? That's limited to one share per person, so you can't hoard shares. So one family can't, you know, own 10 shares, right? So this is all very democratic, right? Now, the share is usually equates to about 20 or 30 % of what the flat would cost to buy. So this is the key things, right? So let's say the flat is, for want of a better figure, 100 ,000 euros. Okay. So you want to join the co-op, you put in 30 ,000 euros.

20:15David McWilliams: In return, you get the share, right? That 30 ,000 euros goes into the pot, the co-op pot, right? And then the co-op borrows, right, based on the collateral that you have given to create, to buy, to execute, to build out the development, right? Okay. And the co-op then could borrow, in the case of Ireland, from the local credit union. because the local credit union is actually a local co-operative bank. So we already have that infrastructure. Right, okay. You can see this working logically, right? Yeah. So typically a co-op member in Denmark will pay a housing cost of about 800 euros a month. Now this goes towards paying the interest on the co-op's loan.

20:59It goes towards the maintenance of the entire estate, covering the overall co-op's mortgage. So everybody feeds into the general mortgage pool of the co-op. Now, what this means, amazingly, in Copenhagen, is that the cost of a share in a Copenhagen co-op might be 70 or 100K. Yeah. And the fees are between, on average, 500 and 800 euros a month. Whereas the equivalent private flat in Copenhagen costs 400 ,000 to buy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and the rent is$1 ,200, right? So suddenly you're changing the dynamic. Now, why are you changing the dynamic? Because there's no developers. So there's no developer margin.

21:46And developer margin is traditionally about 25 % of the final price. There's no selling cost. There's no marketing cost. When we talk to the estate agents, nobody's paying estate agents, right? And, of course, the local council can assign and loan land explicitly for the co-ops, keeping prices to a minimum. This all keeps those costs down. And if you want to leave, John,

22:05David McWilliams: you sell your share back at a controlled price. So there may be a 10 % upswing or whatever, but you're not looking for windfall gains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It keeps in line with inflation, I suppose. Exactly. But what about stuff like inheritance? There is no inheritance. The only inheritance you have is that you can, your kids can join the co-op. That's the inheritance. But can you pass on your share, though, to... No, it has to go back to the co-op management. And then the co-op managers decide, okay, well, you know, John's daughters have first dibs because the family. So basically the idea would be you pass on the share, which gives your children the right and the opportunity to live in the community.

22:52David McWilliams: But you're not actually making out and trying to create or acquire some sort of massive wealth. upsurge. You're trying to take out, the whole idea of cooperative houses, you're trying to take out of the housing market this obsession with making capital gain. And you're trying to look at the housing market as accommodation, place to live, but not just accommodation, as a community design, as building communities, as fostering intergenerational relationships, as building a nice place to live, all that sort of stuff, right? Now, this is the idea, but like all countries, all big movements need something more, which is the impetus, the people to make this happen, right?

23:42Now, to roll something like this out in Ireland, it could be managed by a nationwide association that already has a track record in cooperative development. And this is where the GAA come in. Yeah, but how would they work it? So the GAA, as you said at the start, has always been more than a sports body. Yeah. It's probably the most successful voluntary organization in the world. It's cooperative. It's a community-driven movement rooted in almost every town, parish, townland, village in the country. The clubs are built on sweat equity, really. Sweat equity from the people, people who actually have a stake in the club.

24:18David McWilliams: They're built on trust. And the simple idea that together we can do more than we can alone, that's the basic idea of the GAA. right? So imagine the GAA, if you took the existing networks of clubs and community leaders, those men and women who every single week, week in, week out, already marshal volunteers, they fundraise locally, they maintain the facilities collectively. I mean, GAA facilities are pristine, right? Imagine they were extended into a cooperative housing provision inspired by the Danish model. Just by tapping into their individual expertise? Their expertise, their local knowledge, their organization.

24:57I mean, it's so simple because the GA is so organized anyway. So all you'd say is we're not building a local football pitch next year. We're building 20 houses. But we're using the same people. But it's a different set of skills at the same time. I mean, you're talking about project management and tapping into a network. Project management, local credibility, being able to talk to each other, and the kids of people who play GAA would be members. So being a member of the GAA would be the intro into being a member of the co-op. Yeah. So you solder on sport, culture, Irishness, which we see through the GAA, into housing, accommodation, security, and dignity because housing is all about dignity.

25:48and you could imagine just as the GA built clubs and stadiums and clubhouses and gyms without profit, right? They're not looking for profit. They could spearhead a non-profit housing association. Now, this seems to me to be so obvious. Yeah. It's such a kind of a win-win situation where you're, you know, what I hate is that in Ireland we've decided to accept almost this kind of doom loop idea that our kids will never live here, They'll never be able to house. This isn't terrible. We throw our hands up the air. We blame this one. We blame the developers. We blame the banks. We blame the government.

26:24We blame the fat cats, blah, blah, blah, right? Right in front of our eyes, every weekend is the solution, the GAA. But as you say, it requires like a leap of faith and in particular, a shift in mindset, as we said, you know, away from the traditional way of looking at housing.

26:45David McWilliams: What I'm saying is you have an organization that is so good, you shouldn't be basically limiting your ambitions to nominating who might be president in a symbolic role. The GAA could be galvanized to do something amazing. When I look at the GAA, look, the amount of, in local clubs, the local estate agents, the lawyers, the solicitors, the bank managers, the builders, the developers, the mechanics, the electricians, you know, everybody's part of it. But maybe Jim Cameron will be the man to spearhead this. I mean, that could be his legacy. Well, wouldn't that be a lovely thing? Wouldn't that be a lovely thing?

27:27You know, and you hit two birds with one stone, but we're not going to,

27:30David McWilliams: we are not going to anoint a president on the Dave McWilliams podcast. We are apolitical, John. We will give our views, but we're not going to endorse. But my point is, why should the GAA limit its ambition to getting behind a symbolic person when in actual fact they could well be the solution to or the avenue through which we build a cooperative housing infrastructure like the Danes, like the Viennese. If you look at all the European cities and countries that have kept housing prices down, all of them have a significant cooperative element to their solution. That's the point. and all of them allow the cooperative to live side by side with the private market and side by side with the public social housing market.

28:22So there's a third way. So in Ireland you go private houses, public houses. There is this third way where you create members of people. So you're, for example, you're not an owner, you're not a tenant, you're a member. And that changes the way you think about the world because you have a stake. and you've a stake in building the community. And it's not about, when you say inheritance, which is passing on basically a chunk of wealth to your siblings to fight over. What this one does is it gives everyone a link to the next generation through membership. And it seems to me, John, that this is an absolutely obvious way of changing the housing market, number one, and two, an obvious way of reimagining the GAA for the 21st century, which is not just a cultural and sporting association, but a material association, a bottom-up, people-centred, community-driven association that could change the country in its hour of need by helping the country solve the housing crisis.

29:33Yeah, well, I mean, the housing crisis is the single most important issue at the moment. But also, Mike, what about the more extreme end of the housing crisis? Homelessness. Let's talk about that after the break.

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31:34You know, Michael, we've spent this episode digging into the cooperative housing. I love the idea. But let's now look at the kind of wider challenge of homelessness in Ireland. And by the way, this next segment is sponsored by Bored Gosh Energy because this is something they've been committed to for over a decade through their partnership with Focus Ireland.

31:55David McWilliams: And, you know, the thing about it, listener, is that partnership isn't just about a once-off donation. It's long-term, it's a serious investment, over 7.5 million euros so far, supporting more than 8 ,500 families trying to avoid homelessness. You know, they call it a partnership with purpose. And it lines up with what we've been talking about, collective action. When business, community and society come together, the impact is real. Which is why their support for Shine a Light, Sleep Out on October 10th matters. It's one night where leaders, workplaces and communities can come together to raise awareness and funds and stand in solidarity with people experiencing homelessness.

32:35So, Mike, give me a quick rundown of the state of homelessness in Ireland. I know that we were always shocked. I remember distinctly on the news, you know, there was the headline, homelessness has passed the 10 ,000 mark. We are now up at nearly 16 ,000. Yeah. The way I look at homelessness is people fall through the cracks. When you have a massively growing population and you have an inability or an unwillingness to provide houses, maybe because a small part of us, you haven't adopted that cooperative idea we were talking about, rents rise rapidly, prices rise rapidly, and availability contracts.

33:22So the way to look at the housing market, to homelessness, a way to look at it, is a shunting on process, right? So remember I said to you ages ago, something really weird is happening in Ireland, where the houses that were built for poor people in the 1930s, council houses in Dublin, were built explicitly for poorer people, are now being bought by rich people, right? And the houses that the rich people in Ireland used to buy are now being bought by foreigners. You know, like, for example, by very, very rich foreigners. So what you're finding is that... And vulture funds and all that kind of stuff.

34:00Big corporate funds, for example, the rents are being pushed up because corporate, let's say, CEOs are coming in. They're staying five years here. They have massive budgets. They're pushing up rents at the very, very top end, etc., right? So what you're seeing is this shunting on process where the houses that used to be for the middle class are now for the very rich. The very rich have become out of sight. The houses that used to be for poor people are now being lived in by the middle class. Stony Batter is a great example of that. Stony Batter, hipster area, incredibly expensive property. 40 years ago, it was very, very cheap, very affordable, but it's moved on.

34:40And so all the while, what is happening is you're shunting on, and that means the people who used to live in homes for the poor are being shunted off the housing market altogether. And they are ending up, depending on the state, and they are ending up depending on state agencies to provide homes. And they are ending up in hotels, and they are ending up in temporary houses, etc., etc. So what you're saying is this is why lots of people on the left say, we've got to build houses for the poor. Yes, we do. We've got to build houses for everyone. Because the market rebalances. You've got to build houses for rich people.

35:17All houses matter. All houses matter. So that's the idea of homelessness, is that the best way to look at it is in a dysfunctional housing market, the people who really, really pay are the poor people who used to depend on the provision of houses for those in low incomes. But because of the crisis, those houses are being bought by middle class professionals.

35:40David McWilliams: And that is pushing poorer people out. Now, in the Celtic Tiger, because we were building 86 ,000 homes a year, poorer people got pushed out away from old working class estates out into the countryside. That's what created the big commuter boom in Kildare, in Meath, around Dublin and Wicklow, same around the other cities. Because those houses are not being built, right? Because we're not building 80 ,000 houses, we're building 30 ,000 houses, there's a massive homelessness crisis. And then the state is supposed to come up with all the readies, But as we did in the Cairns idea, the state is building social housing.

36:17And by acquiring all the new houses from the developers, it's squeezing the middle class. And then they're squeezing the poor people again. So what you have is a situation that is unsustainable. But the victims are the homeless people. And once you lose your house, you lose your dignity. And once you lose your dignity, you lose your stake in society. And once you lose your stake in society, your kids lose their stake in society. And that is the rapid vortex to not just poverty, but endemic poverty and exclusion. And that's why housing matters, because housing isn't about money. It's about dignity.

36:53Yeah, yeah. And then you end up with, you know, like we have now, 16 ,000 people homeless, 5 ,000 of which are children living on the streets, you know, is just unacceptable. And then they have to depend on brilliant organizations like Focus Island. Focus, yeah. Yeah. And Focus Island can only do so much. And those kids, they don't eat well. They don't sleep well, John. They've nowhere to do their homework. All these people, they've nowhere to play. Imagine you're living in a hotel room. You've nowhere to play. Yeah. You've no mates. Yeah, yeah. Because you don't know who's next door. You've nowhere to do your homework.

37:30Your mom has nowhere to cook, so you're eating shit food. Yeah, and of course, then you're storing up these mental health problems for the next generation. More pressure on the health service, etc, etc, etc. Mental health, physical health problems, all these stuff, right?

37:44David McWilliams: So this is why, John, the Borg-Gosh initiative is so crucial, critical, and I think really worthy of our support. Yeah, absolutely. So at the heart of it, Borg-Gosh Energy believes that no child should have to endure the trauma of homelessness. That's why they're inviting businesses across Ireland to join the Shine a Light Sleepout on October 10th with Focus Ireland. So take part, raise vital funds and help give every child the secure future they deserve. Find out more at boardgoshenergy.ie forward slash shine a light.

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