Our TDs want to be landlords, so why doesn’t the State?

Before he resigned, Robert Troy said he was “embarrassed” about failing to accurately disclose his property interests. But in his resignation statement he made it clear he is not embarrassed to be the owner or part owner of eleven properties and does not need to apologise for being a landlord. He is one of 77 TDs and Senators who are landlords or landowners, representing 35 per cent of the membership of the Houses of the Oireachtas. The most recent estimate of the number of private landlords in the State is roughly 166,000, about 3 per cent of the population, so there is no question of our parliamentarians being representative when it comes to property and land ownership.

At the core of our housing crisis is cost and shortage of supply, meaning far too many cannot own a single house, but many of our parliamentarians own several. The extent of the crisis has been constantly debated in recent years with those in power, including then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in March 2018, prepared to go on record in declaring it a “national emergency”. Housing policy experts have written numerous books underlining the long-term consequences of the shift away from social to private housing. As evidenced by this privatisation, those guiding housing policy demonstrated an increased reluctance for the state to become landlord, but that reticence does not apply to many of our TDs, 48 of whom own rental properties or land.

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In his 2019 book Housing in Ireland, Lorcan Sirr underlined the change apparent in the approach of politicians and civil servants, who by “focusing less on state provision of housing and more on inducing the market to provide for state needs, activity, plans and strategies have moved from managing a system (of delivering both private and social housing, for example), to try to manage a market”.

Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien defended Troy by insisting “every citizen has a right to own property”. But who, throughout this controversy, disputed that right?

As revealed by Troy’s defence of not declaring that he was in receipt of payment under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) during a Dáil debate that included discussion of the RAS in 2014, he believed that what constituted a “conflict of interest” depended on what he “felt” was a conflict. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien defended Troy by insisting “every citizen has a right to own property”. But who, throughout this controversy, disputed that right?

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True, Ireland’s 10 biggest private landlords own 17,000 houses and apartments between them, yet CSO figures from earlier this year suggested that of 173,000 private landlords in 2019, 121,000 rented out just a single property and 50.5 per cent of them had a net rental income of below €10,000. But surely it is reasonable to highlight the skewed scale of TDs’ property interests at a time when so many do not have the means to own a single house? Is it not the case that our politicians’ combined property portfolio reflects a deep inequality in the distribution of house ownership? Is the fact that many of our TDs are managing personal property portfolios at the same time as intense and emotive political debates about housing and the changing nature of household tenure not worthy of scrutiny? In 2020, the wealthiest 10 per cent of all Irish households had a net wealth – the value of assets minus debt – greater than €788,400 while the bottom 10 per cent had a net wealth of less than €600.

‘Aspirant Owners’

The Department of Housing published a research report in 2019 on the “housing aspirations and preferences of renters”, which emphasised that 86.5 per cent of respondents would strongly prefer to own their own home. The report labels these tenants “Aspirant Owners,” a group growing larger with the endurance of the housing emergency. 80.8 per cent of the respondents “when growing up, had parents who owned their own home, which reflects higher levels of home ownership in the past. Respondents’ aspirations may be anchored in the tenure experienced during their formative years.”

We have always exalted private property ownership, a legacy of the social revolution of the late 19th century that broke the power of the landlord class and facilitated large-scale transfer of ownership

The number of owner-occupied households fell between 2011 and 2016 (from 1,149,924 to 1,147,552) causing the overall home ownership rate to drop from 69.7 per cent to 67.6 per cent, a rate last seen in 1971 (it was over 80% in 1991). We have always exalted private property ownership, a legacy of the social revolution of the late 19th century that broke the power of the landlord class and facilitated large-scale transfer of ownership to tenants, and there was a strong tendency to equate political independence with the right to own land, but land hunger was never fully satisfied. The periodic housing crises of the past 100 years have meant the denial of an elemental need, with profound economic, social and psychological consequences. Since 2014, Irish family homelessness figures have grown by 350 per cent.

As for Troy’s explanation of his inaccurate disclosure, any citizen obliged to record their financial interests, with the Revenue Commissioners, for example, would be quickly disabused of the notion that they could, without serious consequence, make incomplete returns because they did not give their return “the due diligence it deserved”.