Irish Examiner View: Too much housing stock tied up in regulation

We can agree that President Higgins’ comments on housing are unexceptionable, but a new approach to solving the crisis may be needed.

Isme said the flight of landlords from the rental market was 'no longer in question — it is a fact'. 

The problem with having a symbolic head of State is that they are sometimes tempted to become a talking head.

Last week we had Prince Charles criticising his country’s plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda as “appalling”. Now President Michael D Higgins has described Ireland’s housing crisis as a “disaster” which represents this country’s “great, great, great failure”.

Neither of these observations is strikingly original. People have said this before, and they will say it again. 

Yesterday, the Taoiseach declined to be drawn into a debate on the President’s comments while, at the same time, robustly defending his Government’s record and pointing out that the State is now the “single largest actor” in house building.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar didn’t feel quite so constrained, saying that “some” of what Mr Higgins said was “quite true, frankly”. Housing was a “disaster for a lot of people” and many couples with “decent jobs” are now unable to afford a home. But blame for this could not be laid at the door of Fine Gael. They were not responsible for the construction bubble and the housing crash and “all those things”.

Sinn Féin finds itself in a win-win on housing. It wasn’t in power when decisions were made and it’s not in power now to implement the solutions. Easy, therefore, for Mary Lou McDonald to describe the intervention as “noble and honourable” and a recognition of the scale and seriousness of the problem.

We can agree that Mr Higgins’ comments are unexceptionable and agree, also, that there was no party-political component to his remarks. 

So we might conclude that ministers raising concerns about constitutional probity are perhaps deflecting from the issue at hand. What needs focus is delivery, and providing the engines and levers to achieve what are looking like increasingly stretching targets.

The Government is currently committed to spending €4bn annually to expand the housing stock, including a higher level of social projects, including around 8,500 this year, before reaching a threshold of 33,000-35,000 units per annum.

The list of obstacles is not becoming shorter. 

Inflation is racing away, taking project estimates on a flight of fancy with it. Our population is growing. Building materials are in short supply and State agencies have been slow to nominate State-owned land for rapid home building. 

What was traditionally viewed as a useful safety valve when the homes market becomes overheated — private rentals — has become so heavily regulated that potential landlords will not risk the consequences of opening up properties that they own.

Under recent legislation, tenants, which can include licensees over which landlords have little control, who have been in occupation for six months can claim a new right to remain forever in a rented property unless the owner can demonstrate a limited number of reasons for requiring vacant possession. Other onerous rules exist for the provision of furnished accommodation and the replacement of fixtures and fittings.

In its pre-budget submission, the small business organisation Isme has spotted the flaws under the latest rules which have compounded previous dissatisfactions with the way the sector is operating. 

Isme said the flight of landlords from the rental market was “no longer in question — it is a fact”. It says a 96% decline in rental stock over the past decade “cannot be considered as anything other than abject policy failure”.

Mr Higgins is correct in his conclusion that the basic needs of people in a republic include food, shelter, and education. 

Building homes is what is important. It’s not to be a star performer for the speculative sector internationally, or anything else,” he said.

Ireland has been, among other things, a nation of builders. If it cannot meet its current housing targets, which are subject to variable pressures and a volatile labour and supplies market, then it must consider other short- and medium-term propositions. 

One of these may be decreasing the levels of stultifying regulation for rented properties while ensuring that sensible protections remain for tenants.