Cianan Brennan: Government again misses the chance to score on housing open goal
The new Housing for All plan aims to create 300,000 new homes by the end of of 2030.
To say the Government is under pressure in terms of its new housing plan would be something of an understatement.
The penny finally seems to have dropped with the administration that housing is social issue in Ireland just now.
In terms of housing, even some Fine Gael voters might think twice about their allegiance in a coming election if things don’t improve. Certainly, if they have children who they hope will eventually be able to move out and afford a property of their own without first mortgaging a kidney. As for Fianna Fáil, its vote may already be irrecoverable.
Nevertheless, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has been touting his €20bn Housing For All bill hard since its launch last Thursday. He has spoken of his utter conviction that it will serve to solve the country’s housing crisis for once and for all by creating 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030, while at the same time refusing to debate it with the opposition.
Last weekend, a report in the revealed the Government has committed to exempting land bought between 2015 and 2021 from a requirement to allocate 20% of houses for social and affordable homes.
Instead, the figure will be 10% social housing, provided planning is granted on those lands between now and 2026. To put that in context, a developer could have bought land in 2015, could apply for planning in 2025, and still be in a position to build on land without a need to provide affordable housing up to 2032.
The difference between the two figures is estimated at the equivalent of roughly 10,000 fewer affordable homes being constructed.
Why the discrepancy? Mr O’Brien, who is understood to be deeply unhappy with the scrutiny being applied to the exemption, insisted it was necessary to include it in his plan on foot of “very strong advice” he had received in order to stave off legal challenges from disgruntled developers, or to address any “potential viability issues”, as his department put it earlier this week.
Well, if there were challenges looming then surely the minister and his officials must have taken legal advice to that end? From a solicitor, a barrister, perhaps even the chief law officer of the land, the Attorney General?
The this week asked the department – three times – specifically whether it had taken such legal advice regarding the matter. It declined to answer, stating only the advice it relied upon had come from the Housing Agency – which is subordinate to the department itself – and from its own officials. Read into that what you will.
Meanwhile, it has now emerged that any legal challenges to the 20% rule have, apparently, already been ruled out as ineligible by a 1999 Supreme Court decision concerning Part V of the original 2000 Planning Act, which first enshrined in law the responsibility of a developer to construct 20% social and affordable housing.
Further, it has been suggested that the 20% ringfencing for social and affordable housing may not even materially impact a developer’s bottom line, given that in providing State-backed leases at guaranteed high rates amongst other things, the Government is essentially de-risking the investment.
The opposition hasn’t been slow picking up on the exemption issue. Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin has already launched a bill to remove the exemption from the new housing plan, describing it as “another example of bad policy from a Government which clearly doesn’t understand the urgent level of housing need out there”.
His fellow spokesperson in the Social Democrats Cian O’Callaghan meanwhile called on Mr O’Brien “to clarify if legal advice was sought by his department regarding this exemption”, and for that advice to be published.
So, to summarise, the Department of Housing has exempted developers from creating thousands of affordable homes in order to avoid legal challenges which would have no chance of succeeding. Even if legal challenges were viable, what a statement it would have been by the Government to impose the 20% requirement anyway, stamping “things are different now, those who need a place to live are the priority” all over the narrative.
It puts something of a dampener on the gung ho nature of Housing For All to know that it goes out of its way to put developers first.
The real problem here is the State’s seeming endemic unwillingness to think radically about the housing situation, which has been allowed to fester for 15 years now.
One of the most recurring criticisms of Housing For All is that it appears on the surface to be merely a turbo-charged respray of its forebearer, 2016’s Rebuilding Ireland, the brainchild of embattled Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, largely seen to have been an abject failure.
In the current circumstances, more of the same is not good enough.
A broken system needs an utter overhaul in thinking. Fianna Fáil has had 15 months to work that out. Fine Gael has had more than 10 years. It should have been an open goal for the Government.
If they haven’t made the connection by now, will they ever? Do they even want to?
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
