Irish Examiner view: Government must draw on housing policies elsewhere
While solutions to this growing challenge are evasive and often tough, it may well be that answers can be found in countries where similar crises are being tackled.
With homelessness figures hitting record levels every month — there were 17,308 people in emergency accommodation in February — the Government is desperate to find answers.
While solutions to this growing challenge are evasive and often tough, it may well be that answers can be found in countries where similar crises are being tackled.
The Netherlands, for example, has one of Europe’s worst housing crises, with a shortage of 400,000 homes, rampant house prices, and a growing population. It has now appointed an Irish woman as housing minister.
Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan, who until recently was the top female officer in the Dutch air force, is new to politics, but she is a member of the D66 party which leads the government in the Hague.
She has been tasked with building 100,000 homes a year and breaking through a planning logjam which has stymied each and every effort to free up development land and repurpose it for housing.
The Netherlands, she says, must build like it did after the Second World War, and it must be prepared to make compromises in doing so.
Many European countries — Ireland included — are struggling with acute shortages of affordable houses, with punishing rents and sky-high property prices locking younger and disadvantaged people out of the market and proving divisive at the ballot box.
In the Netherlands, the problem is biting particularly hard. In a densely populated nation of 18m people, house prices have doubled in the last decade. In sought-after neighbourhoods, they have surged by 130%. A new build can cost 16 times an average salary.
Among the potential solutions Boekholt-O’Sullivan sees is the standardisation of building requirements nationally and halting an expensive patchwork of local requirements and objection processes.
She also intends to make planning permission quicker and set a target for two thirds affordable housing that still allows private developers to make enough to offset their risk. Her model also requires asking the people to give up a little for the sake of the wider community.
The Government will be paying close attention to the Irish woman’s efforts. It needs to.
A slew of recent elections across Europe has illustrated there is a strong bulwark emerging across the bloc against the rise of right-wing parties and politicians.
This is also evidenced by the massive “No Kings” rallies across America this past weekend and a huge anti-right rally in London. The biggest multi-cultural rally yet seen in Britain — organised by charities, campaign groups, and trades unions — heard calls to “defeat hate” and that it was time to “make hope normal again”.
The defiance of people in the US was replicated in cities and towns across the globe in protests against president Donald Trump, his policies, and his actions, with the self-stated goal of fighting dictatorship.
The rise of the right has consumed many of the world’s democracies in recent years, but there is now a palpable sense that a fightback is growing in momentum.
That was further underlined in last week’s local elections in France, a referendum defeat for Giorgia Meloni in Italy, a setback for Janez Jansa in Slovenia, trouble for Victor Orban in Hungary, and the establishment of the left block in Denmark as the country’s largest political force.
In France, while it is accepted that local elections are rarely a reliable bellweather for the forthcoming national vote, the national mood of the electorate ahead of next year’s presidential election appears to indicate little appetite for the far-right Rassemblement National.
Although the party won control of 60 small and medium-sized towns with more than 3,500 people, it failed miserably in the bigger cities it had hoped to win over.
Although it did take control of Nice, it missed the mark in Paris, Marseille, Toulon, and Nîmes, all of which were prime targets.
Suddenly, the strong polling of the party ahead of the presidential election doesn’t look as watertight as it had appeared.
Elsewhere, there was what might be termed a “Trumplash” against Europe’s populist far right.
The Trump-whistling Italian prime minister lost a high-stakes referendum on judicial reform which had been seen as a vote of confidence in her government.
In Slovenia, the centre-left incumbent Robert Golob managed a narrow win over the far-right nationalist Jansa.
In Hungary, Victor Orban is under such pressure, his allies in the Russian secret services thought a failed assassination attempt might raise some much-needed votes.
In Denmark, Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats suffered their worst result in 120 years but remain by far the country’s largest party and likely to head up a new government.
Seen as a trend, these events show it is not all doom and gloom for centrist and left-leaning governments everywhere.
Next year’s Ryder Cup in Adare, Limerick, will be one of the biggest sporting events ever hosted in this country, and it is vitally important that it is staged without incident or controversy.
The news last week that gardaí were issuing warnings to people wishing to attend the golf extravaganza that they should be vigilant against ticket scams ahead of the launch of general admission tickets in the coming weeks is worrying.
The warning came from Garda Superintendent Michael Fleming in a newsletter to local residents in which he highlighted the danger of fraudsters targeting not only ticket sales, but property rentals, accommodation, merchandise, travel packages, and “every other event-related activity you can imagine”.
The Ryder Cup will be a showcase globally for Ireland and an unparalleled opportunity for the country to put its best foot forward in an international context.
It is vital, therefore, that it passes off smoothly and without any unnecessary bad publicity.
Organisers have undoubtedly established gold-plated arrangements to avoid any such negativity, and the Government and the authorities will be putting their shoulder to the wheel to ensure its smooth passage.
However, the ingenuity and guile of fraudsters here and elsewhere cannot be ignored and the public will have to be keenly vigilant to avoid getting ripped off.
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