THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
It would be laughable if it were not serious. I think of The Three Little Pigs, the story I tell my granddaughters, and how the Big, Bad Wolf “huffs and puffs and blows their house down”.
There was a lot of political huffing and puffing when the Government published its umpteenth housing plan the other week, which does away with annual targets and instead aims to deliver a minimum of 300,000 new homes by 2030. Heads in hard hats, boots steel-toed and ‘Government of Ireland’ high-vis vests – that’s the puffing – hanging from the hard necks of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, and Minister for Housing James Browne.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin promised “boldness, ambition and determined action” in delivering the five-year plan. That was the huffing, but even Minister Browne conceded that 300,000 units by 2030 was not necessarily guaranteed.
Housing builds actually fell by 49 per cent in the third quarter of this year, according to the latest report from Construction Information Services (CIS). The number of sods upturned and diggers dug is at its lowest since Covid-19, in part because of the policy turnabouts the Government conceded, as it tried to boost construction activity before the last General Election. By introducing waivers on connection charges and development levies, it persuaded builders to start on 69,060 units. But, while those are still being ‘completed’ – why so long? – there is less room to start new ones. Government policy may well create artificial spikes in house building, but it cannot maintain anything near a steady and ongoing increase in new housing.
The lack of qualified tradesmen is not helping, with so many of our carpenters and plasterers gone abroad. And we have yet to pencil in an increased ageing population who will still need a roof over their heads. As house prices have risen, the Central Bank says the country needs 68,000 homes next year to meet demand. It’s a sobering scenario to say the least, and one requiring more than what is, effectively, a repackaging of existing policy.
After five years of housing under Fianna Fáil and a decade before that under Fine Gael, the Opposition has accused the Government parties of a lack of ambition at best and neglect at worst.
The bullet points in the plan include an expansion of the Land Development Agency, bringing the total budget of the State’s affordable housing delivery to more than €8bn. Financial incentives will also be brought in to encourage local authorities to deliver an average of 12,000 social homes every year. (We really need a return to more State-sponsored home building like back in the 1950s and ‘60s).
Meanwhile, the State waits to see if its move to reduce apartment sizes, make changes to Rent Pressure Zones and cut the VAT on the sale of new apartments will boost development in the private sector. And, while a somewhat ambitious plan to help and protect homeless people is to be commended, the lack of commitment to ending this continuing crisis any time soon is a crying shame. All this while there are 16,350 people homeless, 5,300 of them children. One wonders what their little minds make of the Big, Bad Wolf – and his huffing and puffing?
When my parents bought the three-bed terraced house I grew up in back in 1952, my father’s clerical annual wage was €1,135. N0. 15 cost a little in excess of €1,880 – let call his pay 60 percent of the cost of the home. When I bought my three-bed semi in 1981 – 20 miles from Dublin – it cost me €24,000. My earnings then, as a journalist, were a good few bob above the national average – mine, a little under €18,000. A couple today earning, say, €140,000 can expect to pay, in Kilkenny, upwards of €349,000 – if they’re lucky. The national average for both at €94,000 – forget it!
You do the sums! Even ‘affordable housing’ at, say, €90,000 less doesn’t make for good, safe housekeeping.
No more annual targets may well buy the Coalition some time in the hope that the array of mechanisms, housing schemes and related measures put in place in recent months to “increase supply” will come into play at election time – wouldn’t you know! – in late 2029.
If all fail to give us the number of homes the country needs, our ruling politicians might as well go home and close the door behind them, and concede that not all have a home to go to.
James Browne telling the kiddults in the box-room to “hang on” to see how his plan unfolds isn’t good enough…
