A housing expert has claimed housing is like the Angola of the civil service and the Department of the Environment is putting up barriers that are slowing down building.
Lorcan Sirr, a lecturer in housing in DIT, was speaking on Newstalk Breakfast about a claim by Nama in its annual report that local authorities are turning down Nama properties.
Mr Sirr said there were many reasons for local authorities to reject Nama properties.
“Not all the houses are suitable, some are in a bad location, they don’t want to have them all together, some are in poor quality and others are not a suitable size,” he said.
“We have a legacy of really poor quality housing in Ireland. The Housing Agency will tell you that when they go to look at houses with pyrite all over north county Dublin, pyrite is only half the problem. It just goes to show the extent of poor building practices over the years.
“When they’re poorly built they’re going to cost local authorities a lot to maintain over the years.”
He said he had come to the conclusion that issues in housing are not financial. “It’s administration and ability rather than finance,” he said.
“Housing has never been seen as a proper profession in local authorities. Your architect and your planner are seen as professionals. Housing is seen as the Angola of the civil service.
“A lot of the people who have left have not been replaced. The local authorities themselves are up against it with the Department of the Environment quite often there’s a tense relationship between the department and local authorities.
“Last year, the Department of the Environment in its wisdom decided that all Part 5 negotiations (ten per cent social housing) have to be done in advance of putting in a planning application. That’s delaying property developments by at least six months,” he said.
“It takes a long time to get these people around a table so the Department is putting up barriers as well as a skills shortage. There’s also the issue of procurement, less than one quarter involved in procurement for the Irish state, that’s billions of euros of money, have any sort of training.”