He’s no longer tipped to be our new housing tsar, but the question surely remains as to how the man who was in contention for the job earns a salary of over €430,000 paid by the state. This amount isn’t just more than the taoiseach earns, but is almost as much as the salary of our own head of government and the UK prime minister combined.

Brendan McDonagh, the tsar that never was, already takes home that much money in his job as chief executive of Nama, the state’s bad bank, which was set up after the economic crash in 2009. It just doesn’t seem to have been noticed. It’s an amount that doesn’t just significantly outshine the taoiseach’s salary of almost €250,000, but even when you combine that with what is paid to Sir Keir Starmer — about €202,000 — McDonagh’s salary isn’t far off. It sure is nice work if you can get it.

Now practically the entire country knows, and has an opinion on, the salary that is lodged into the McDonagh bank account each year. That was the amount tipped to be carried over into his putative new role as head of the government’s new Housing Activation Office (HAO). It’s yet another opinion to add to the many that make up the overall picture of how Irish people view the government’s general performance on the housing crisis. In a word — dismal. So the notion that someone was going to be brought in, and given huge bucks to knock heads together to build more houses, but without any real powers to do so, simply serves to sour the already bad taste on the national palate.Fianna Fail, more specifically the newbie housing minister James Browne, did not go well about his business on this one, significantly and understandably annoying coalition partner Fine Gael.It was last Thursday when we heard that McDonagh no longer wished to be considered for the role of heading up the new unit to be based in the Department of Housing. By then the damage had been done. Earlier in the week Browne had opted to make it known McDonagh was his “preferred candidate” to lead the HOA.If you attempt to encapsulate what we were told this newly appointed individual would be tasked with, it was someone who would go through the entire system like a dose of salts and sort out those utterly recalcitrant parts that have stubbornly failed to up their game in making housing construction a priority. Heads would be knocked together, water and power connections sorted and other building barriers blasted out of the way.Browne described the job of the person to be appointed as “kicking the doors down to achieve housing delivery”. So clearly strong powers of persuasion were required. But the missing bit surely is what actual powers would be granted. After all, success with housing is something that has spectacularly eluded our government, made up of our elected representatives, not to mention the mass ranks of others involved in attempting to shift the logjam for nigh on a decade now.When new cabinet appointments were announced Browne was seen as an interesting choice in the housing brief, given his lack of experience in a senior ministry and the complexity of the task at hand. Word was that Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, thinks very highly of him and would also be guiding him closely. It is relatively early days, but the signals have not been encouraging in terms of the perception of the Wexford TD. Tuning in to him when he is attempting to talk up his plans, the listener is not left with a sense of confidence that the job is finally in the right hands. Contrast that with another minister, also in their first senior brief, but who has managed to give a strong impression of competence. Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, as health minister, is in a department long viewed as toxic, but is making a good fist of it so far. And Jim O’Callaghan in justice is sounding like he owns the job already.Browne made the rookie error of stating on radio, and confirming the speculation, that McDonagh was his “preferred candidate” for this job. Yet Martin stressed at every turn that “no decision has been made in terms of any individual”. But the horse had bolted. So much political capital has been burnt on this issue and it has created significant tensions between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Simon Harris, the tanaiste, is entirely justified in his annoyance at not being consulted. It’s been a good week to be in opposition with the open goal that was presented in the poor way all of this was handled.We had a general election only back in November, so there is potentially five years left for this government to be in power. But even this early on there is a definite sense of unease, of not ever being able to actually make significant improvements on housing. Credibility took a big hit with the huge porkies told during the general election campaign on housing completion figures, shamelessly flagging 40,000 new homes when it was almost 10,000 fewer than that.Latest figures show that 15,418 people are living in emergency accommodation, almost a third of them children. Then we have the missing of the target on new-build social homes. There had been 9,300 promised in 2024 but only 7,871 built.The search will begin now for a more modestly remunerated housing tsar. It’s another problem for this government that has just reached its milestone of 100 days in power, but not yet really managed to get out of the starting blocks. It is only a relatively short period of time, not enough to give a considered judgment, but there is a danger of a certain mood being set.