Record rents reflect huge inequity: Turning a deaf ear to alarm bells

The way a government uses its authority is always compromised by circumstance or ideology. The use of democratically-mandated power is an unforgiving juggling act. Good governments try to balance opposing needs.

Good governments try to protect the vulnerable, sometimes constraining one sector while encouraging another in a neverendinghire-wire act. Good governments stand between citizens and the excess of powerful forces, especially that over-indulged catchall, the market.

If politics is the art of the possible then that possibility must be reached through a maze of compromise. How that juggling appeases conflicting interestsdefines the jugglers’ prospects of re-election. Simple as.

An assessment of how our Government is balancing fundamental needs was published yesterday. It must, or at least it should send a shiver down the spine of any Government TD, and their soulmates in opposition, who hopes to be returned to the Dáil after the looming election.

Property website Daft.ie reported that the average monthly rent in Dublin has, for the first time, crossed the €2,000 threshold. Anyone on the average wage of €38,878 — or even double it when the taxman is appeased — cannot hope to rent or buy a home in Dublin.

Though general inflation fell to 1% in May, rents rose by 6.7% nationwide in the year to the end of June. This pushed an average monthly rent to almost €650 more than it was in late 2011.

Rents are not the only cost out-of-kilter with 1% inflation. The Mercer Marsh Benefits 2019 Medical Trends Around the World report records our healthcare costs are increasing at six times the rate of inflation. They rose by 4.2% in 2018 compared with general inflation of 0.7% in 2018. This summer’s 6% increase in VHI premiums reflect this.

That housing, medical and insurance costs are so out of line with general inflation, wage inflation, and pensionincomes too, suggests Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s Government is far more comfortable with exploitative inequities than it should be if it hopes to be re-elected.

This suggests Mr Varadkar should use the summer to reread Declan Costello’s 1965 Just Society, a manifesto that championed a far fairer, more even society. Though seemingly forgotten it is more valid than it ever was.

Though it is impossible to prove it is not hard to argue that this tolerance of ethics-lite capitalism, of well-above-inflation increases leads to the kind of neocon horror advanced by the British Tory thinktank, the — oxymoron alert — Centre for Social Justice this week.

That body suggested raising the UK’s pension age of 65 to 70 by 2028 and 75 by 2035. It may be easy to dismiss this red rag but those forced to rent rather than buy may have to work until they drop as even the best pension is unlikely to cover a €2,000-a-month rent.

This is just one example of how our world is changing for the worse and by tolerating this major shift Government is tacitly endorsing it. It is time to confront this winner-takes-all concentration of wealth or prepare for the kind of disruption and instability that history suggests that, in these circumstances, is inevitable and all too often bloody.