Social housing policy has reverse effect

IT seems to me that the social housing development scheme has backfired. Far from meeting its original objectives, it has produced the reverse effect.

There are pressures on councils to grant planning applications where, in other circumstances, they would have been refused. Once granted, the developers then try to find ways of absorbing the social housing costs.

In one such case planning has been approved for a development at Malahide in Dublin. Most people would have expected this to be rejected as it involves serious deterioration of the green belt between Malahide and Portmarnock. But it was granted, and the net result is that apartments which are not subject to social housing have had their price increased to absorb the social housing costs.