The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) and Sinn Féin wouldn’t be natural bedfellows. One represents the construction industry, the other has, at various times, castigated the Government for giving in to lobbying from the construction industry.
Both, however, are on the same page when it comes to the State’s housing requirement. In a submission made as part of a public consultation process on the Government’s draft National Planning Framework, the federation calls for an annual housing build-out of 60,000 units based on stronger-than-expected population growth over the next decade.
The figure matches the promise made in Sinn Féin’s recently published housing plan.
The party pledged to deliver 300,000 houses over five years across the social, affordable, private rental and private purchase categories at a cost of €39 billion.
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On the need to effectively double supply (it was 33,000 last year), Sinn Féin and the federation are in agreement also on the need for wholesale planning reform to make it easier to build but that’s probably where the ideological harmony ends.
As part of its plan, Sinn Féin said it would drop the Government’s Help to Buy scheme (where the purchaser of a new home can claim back income tax to fund a deposit) and the Government’s First Homes scheme (where the State buys a share in a home to help homebuyers with the cost).
The party claims both schemes are inflationary (a viewpoint shared by the Central Bank and the Economic and Social Research Institute) and in many cases help the wrong people (people who can already afford to buy).
The federation is adamant that the initiatives are necessary to elicit more supply from a sector already grappling with high costs and banks that unwilling to lend to developers.
If Sinn Féin leads the next government and makes good on its plan to abolish these help-to-buy perks, the industry backlash promises to be big.
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