Housing of Cards - Village Magazine

July 2021 55

commuting. Mainly in cars. Which won’t do our

ambitions to combat our emissions much good,

and won’t help prevent the ﬁnes that come with

not achieving these targets.

The Department of Social Protection (minis

ter: Heather Humphreys) feels the brunt of poor

policy directly. From this year on, we will be

spending about €1.4 billion per annum on vari-

ous forms of rent support, needed because we

have a limited amount of social housing, and

little coming on stream. Last year, Dun

Laoghaire-Rathdown built no social houses

itself. Fingal directly built 24 social houses. At

that rate, the funding of social housing through

rent supports is going to be a Social Protection

issue for many years to come.

The Department of Transport (also minister:

Eamon Ryan) has challenges in emissions as

mentioned above. It also has issues of forced car

ownership (as there are limited public transport

options in many locations where housing is

aordable) and its associated potential poverty

impacts. Those who cycle and walk to work tend

to be those who live in wealthy areas, and are

therefore higher earners. Housing and transport

are always linked, as are transport choices and

poverty. His Housing colleague (minister: Dar-

ragh O’Brien) is busy foisting Strategic Housing

Developments in locations where there is no

suitable transport for the hundreds of extra com-

muters these developments will bring. Good

housing policy makes good transport policy

more viable.

Health has been to the forefront of many peo

ple’s mind this past year. Indeed, many of the

main developments in housing over the last 150

years have been driven by public health needs.

Better ventilation, clean water and sewerage

were developed in order to counter epidemics of

measles and TB, a lot of which was caused by

overcrowding. The Department of Health (min

ister: Stephen Donnelly) has recently been the

recipient not just of advice that didn’t under-

stand the importance of building aspects such

as ventilation, but is also looking at housing that

has been made smaller, internally ventilated and

potentially less healthy (think: co-living). This

has been bad for physical, but also mental,

health over the duration of the pandemic. A

small balcony, negligible in the context of the

construction cost of an apartment, but vital for

mental health when in lockdown, is no longer

required for any new building speciﬁcally for

rental.

You wouldn’t think the minister for Rural and

Community Development (minister, again:

Heather Humphreys) would have many housing

problems, but poor policy now knows no county

boundaries. One-size-ﬁts-all planning policy

and the centralisation of planning policy in gen-

eral means that there are now signiﬁcant

S PART of the fallout from the ‘rev-

elation’ that international property

investment funds were hoovering

up large swathes of new suburban

houses, housing minister Darragh

O’Brien said an “all of government approach”

was needed to solve our housing crisis.

Although late to the party on that idea, and

politically there may be an element of blame-

sharing, at least it is an acknowledgement that

housing is an issue that cannot be dealt with in

isolation.

Indeed, of all the various ministries it could

easily be argued that housing embraces the

issue whose contagion aects the most govern-

ment departments on a day-to-day basis. This

is why poor policy in housing and planning has

such negative eects across so many areas of

normal life.

A lack of foresight in housing, a predilection

for short-term thinking, and a reliance on vari

ous industries and markets responding in a

suitable fashion, thwart other government

departments in delivering their policies.

Let’s look at some.

In Enterprise, Trade and Employment (minis

ter: Leo Varadkar) high costs of accommodation

are the main reason why employees seek pay

increases. It should be noted, therefore, that the

cost of renting and buying a house has doubled

over the last decade. Hardly great for competi

tive Ireland. On competition, the use of tenders

restricted solely to companies with large annual

turnovers, is excluding Small and Medium Enter-

prise companies in the building sectors from

participating in housing delivery. This precludes

competition and such a lack of competition in

the market has been identiﬁed by the EU as a

signiﬁcant driver of price rises in housing in

Ireland.

In Environment, Climate and Communications

(minister: Eamon Ryan), the abandonment of the

city centre to institutional landlords who have

no interest in providing accommodation for fam-

ilies or in creating communities means they will

be ﬂeeing to the commuter counties. And then

By Lorcan Sirr

Poor housing policy is a contagion that affects

all government departments.

The cost of renting and buying a house has doubled over

the last decade – hardly great for competitive Ireland.

Housing

of Cards

OPINION

56 July 2021

conﬂicts between policy that might be applica-

ble to large urban areas and its imposition on

rural locations. Requirements for increased den-

sity on sites, for example, means that in more

rural locations, sites that should be aordable

at normal densities have now been rendered un-

fundable by banks because of unrealistic

density demands from the Department of Hous-

ing. Un-fundable sites means houses don’t get

built.

It is the tourism in Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gael-

tacht, Sports and Media (minister: Catherine

Martin) that comes under pressure from housing

policy. The rise of short-term letting has been an

issue in that it removes stock that has been used

for residential purposes from the stock. Legisla-

tion has been tightened in respect of what can

and cannot be now used for short-term letting.

The issue is that of enforcement. As of Septem

ber 2020, mid-pandemic no less, about

one-third of all housing identiﬁed as being ille-

gal short-term lets was still in use. In Dublin,

where the housing crisis is arguably worst, as of

April 2021 there were still over 2,500 units to

rent for more than 90 days a year on AirBnB.

The vogue for long department titles contin

ues with Children, Equality, Disability,

Integration and Youth (minister: Roderic

O’Gorman). Many children obviously have expe-

rienced hugely signiﬁcant negative mental and

physical health eects from being forced to

grow up in a hotel bedroom, as a direct result of

poor housing policy. In addition, under the

umbrella of equality, it is never raised that poor

planning and housing policy tend to discrimi-

nate against women.

Discrimination happens in the main because

in households women tend to undertake the

burden of what are known as ‘caring duties’.

Being forced to live further away from employ-

ment and services like schools and childcare

(because there is nothing aordable near these

services) means the job of undertaking multiple

trips to the school, shops, mother-in-law for

child-minding, and so on falls on women. And

then they go to work. The largest increase in sin-

gle-car occupancy in Dublin in commuting to

work is among females. This is dierent to the

rest of Europe where women travel less by car

than here.

It is mostly men who are responsible for urban

development and they design for men. Vienna

City Council has an oce called the Co-ordina

tion Oce for Planning and Construction Geared

to the Requirement of Daily Life and the Speciﬁc

Needs of Women in order to speciﬁcally counter

gender bias in design and development. They

have been doing it since 1992.

The Department of Finance (minister: Pascal

Donohue) has signiﬁcant inﬂuence on housing

policy. It is he who has to ﬁnd the money to pay

for policies such as Housing Assistance Pay-

ment and Rent Supplement. Due to a reluctance

to borrow money (probably minister Donohue’s

decision), he also has to ﬁnd the money to fund

the ludicrously expensive short- and long-term

leasing of housing to accommodate those who

would previously have got a council house. In

the ﬁrst three months of 2021, some 726 new

leases were signed for social housing at an aver

age of €15,000 per annum, or more than the cost

of building 726 houses over the 25 years of the

leases.

Policy is now also to lease Part V housing (at

an average of 24 years each) which used to be

bought at cost from developers in new sites.

This is housing policy by credit card, but seem-

ingly approved by the Minister for Finance. This

preponderance of leasing also drives up rents

for everybody else, leading to wage demands

(see Leo Varadkar, above).

We won’t go near the Department of Housing,

Local Government and Heritage (again, minister:

Darragh O’Brien), as they are at the epicentre of

the housing tornado and have been the subject

of many articles to date.

However, the Oce of the Attorney General

(incumbent: Paul Gallagher SC) must be casting

a wary eye on the legal antics emanating from

what can only be described as dodgy housing

policy. The rate of judicial reviews (JRs) taken

against Strategic Housing Development (SHD)

decisions by An Bord Pleanála is about ten times

the normal rate. The Bord is then losing or with-

drawing in over 80 per cent of

these JRs, which is hardly a sign of

well-written legislation and policy,

or conﬁdence in it. This is, how-

ever, what you get when you let the

development lobbyists write

policy. Other aspects of the SHD

process are now on their way to the

European Courts of Justice for deci-

sions. This is all a waste of time

and resources.

Ultimately, it is the Department

of the Taoiseach (incumbent:

Micheál Martin) who has to take

responsibility for the knock-on

eects from one of his depart

ments on most of the others.

Economically, socially and reputationally, the

buck stops with him. But it is probably politically

that it hits home most.

Fianna Fáil have serious electoral diculties

in Dublin, mostly because of housing policy and

outcomes – housing aordability is the issue

with both. Fine Gael have electoral issues too,

but not as many, because for many Fine Gael

supporters, current solutions and outcomes are

what they believe in: reliance on the private

market, large investors, lowered standards for

houses, and so on is standard fare. Fine Gael

dogma is what is has been since the time of the

Land Commission in the 1930s – a preference

for the large ‘ranchers’ over the ‘landless men’.

Neither have Fianna Fáil dierentiated them

selves greatly – or perhaps suciently – from

Fine Gael in housing, and in many respects they

are continuing their policies. Whereas the UK

Conservative Party seem to be the socio-eco-

nomic model Fine Gael likes to pursue, Fianna

Fáil could increasingly be perceived as being

Fine Gael-lite (or UK Tory Party lite-lite). This will

not end well politically. What Fine Gael see as a

positive in housing policy and outcomes, is fast

becoming baked-in by Fianna Fáil in the housing

hotseat making it ever more dicult to reverse

out of. This could well signal the demise of

Fianna Fáil as a major force in Irish politics. And

whatever one thinks about their policies or poli

ticians, that would not be a good thing.

Dr Lorcan Sirr is a senior lecturer in housing,

planning and development at the Technological

University Dublin and not a member of any politi-

cal party.

The Attorney General

(incumbent: Paul Gallagher

SC) must be casting a wary

eye on the legal antics

emanating from what can

only be described as dodgy

housing policy