In recent years, much of the political conversation about Ireland’s housing crisis has calcified around the plight of first-time buyers and renters. That’s understandable, given the bleak situations facing them. Yet perhaps the least defensible aspect of the State’s failure on the issue – one that underlines wider problems in the market – has been its inability to deliver public housing.
This week’s Construction Industry Federation (CIF) annual conference in Croke Park didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Government’s approach or sense of urgency. As part of a panel discussion at the event, Conor O’Connell, CIF director of housing and planning, said that delays in funding streams have caused worrisome blockages in the pipeline of public housing.
While the Coalition and its predecessor made plenty of headline funding announcements, money is barely trickling down to the approved housing bodies (AHBs) that actually spearhead the development of the much-needed homes. In turn, this “drip, drip, drip” effect means there is a lack of “clarity in relation to the pipeline of projects for builders”.
Fiona Cormican, managing director of consultancy FionCor, which advises AHBs, said the situation is damaging relationships between the bodies and the contractors and developers they engage to build units. She said the system had been working well until recently. “Projects were getting delivered. They knew the funding was coming [ ...]. Now all of that is shot to ribbons.”
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At the heart of the matter is the Government’s concern about rapidly rising unit costs against a backdrop of searing construction cost inflation in recent years. The Coalition effectively pulled the funding plug earlier this year on close to 3,000 social homes, most of them in Dublin, citing concerns around delivery costs. They have a point, Cormican said on Tuesday. But “they’re also adding to the problem by causing delays”.
Paralysis is the word that Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s comments on the decision bring to mind. If the developments had gone ahead at the stated cost, he said in June, Minister for Housing James Browne would have been hauled “up before the Public Accounts Committee”.
All of this at a time when successive governments have missed annual social housing targets, a situation that appears likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the relationship between AHBs and developers isn’t the only thing that has been “shot to ribbons”. Ireland’s social housing model also appears to be in flitters.
