The Dingle peninsula in Co Kerry is set to become one long row of houses unless the growth in housing is managed, the conference of the Irish Council for Social Housing has been told.
Already most approvals for single dwellings in the Dingle electoral area in recent years were for buildings along the main roads, mostly on the scenic south coast of the peninsula and Slea Head, the Kerry county manager, Mr Martin Nolan, said yesterday.
At a conference in Tralee, Mr Nolan said some 1,000 extra homes would be required in the next number of years on the peninsula, many of these holiday or second homes.
A decreasing household size as a result of smaller families, an ageing population and the demand for holiday homes were all contributing to the demand in Dingle. "If unmanaged, the expected growth will continue to spread along the main roads," he warned.
The difficult task in Kerry and in rural counties was to develop ways of creating local employment in small towns and villages to sustain population. New social housing in existing urban areas was the answer to serious urban decay, he said.
An estimated 27 per cent of new household formations in Kerry would be unable to buy a house in the next number of years because of high land and house prices. Under the council's preferred growth strategy, these houses would mainly be provided in village and town areas.
The assistant city manager with Dublin City Council, Mr Brendan Kenny, said the Dublin housing situation would resolve itself if the private sector was allowed to continue as it was.
A cap on land prices or other interventions would run the risk of developers pulling out of housing and moving into office-building, or worse, moving into the country. "The last thing we need is to stop that \ activity."
He said supply, not land prices, was the main reason leading to high prices for housing in Dublin. Houses were being sold now for €300,000, €400,000 and up to €500,000 and they were built on land acquired some years ago at low cost. "It's the sheer demand that's making house prices so high."
However, opening the conference earlier, the Minister for Housing and Urban renewal, Mr Noel Ahern, said: "One of the main aims of this Government is to address the issue of the cost of land required for development and affordable housing in particular."
The price of land accounted for a third and in some cases half of the price of houses, Mr Ahern said. "The price of doing nothing means more and more people will be looking for social housing. It makes sense to help people on a certain income bracket who are prepared to buy their own houses."
Housing was not just about prices, it was about affordability, Mr Ahern said. This had to do with general taxation, income and mortgage rates. A cap on land prices was one approach, there was also the possibility of expanding on the Part V provision of the Planning and Development Act 2000, under which 20 per cent of private developments went to social and affordable housing.
Mr Kenny told the conference that Dublin City Council was reducing its social housing portfolio. "The city council is no longer in favour of managing large numbers of properties spread throughout the city," he said.
A combination of sales to tenants, transfer of existing estates to housing associations and co- operatives, plus mechanisms to enable private developers to become social housing landlords was envisaged.
Ms Karen Murphy, officer with the Irish Council for Social Housing said social housing organisations now provided a quarter of the new social houses built each year. This year associations such as the Iveagh Trust, Cluid and the St Vincent de Paul and other local bodies would provide 1,700 houses. They were well on their way to meeting the National Development Plan target of 4,000 new homes a year by 2006.
However, Mr Donal McManus, executive director of the council, cautioned against putting social housing in the hands of private landlords. He was surprised at the scale of the sell-off and the intention of introducing profit-driven private developers.
"There is a question as to how this best represents the interests of already marginalised tenants," he said.