Frank McDonald : Coveney housing plan shows modest ambition

According to Minister for Housing Simon Coveney, Rebuilding Ireland – Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness is a "really ambitious and far-reaching initiative by Government to provide homes for people" over the next five years or so. But it is also an implicit admission of the abject failure of successive governments to meet this basic human need for decades.

The “multi-stranded, action-oriented approach” now being adopted includes several new initiatives to tackle the twin problems of homelessness and lack of affordability by prioritising social housing, making it more attractive to rent (rather than buy) housing and identifying sites in State ownership where mixed-tenure housing estates could be built in the short to medium term.

Yet the aim of increasing the overall output to at least 25,000 new homes a year, from all channels, by 2020 is quite modest given the rate of population growth and the current level of need. After all, at the height of the boom, housing output in Ireland reached 90,000 units, although most of these were built in the wrong places and left us with numerous “ghost estates”.

Widespread homelessness

It was the emergence of this widespread problem of vacancy and abandonment that fixated planners so much that they neglected to notice there was an underlying housing crisis that would need to be addressed. By the time they acknowledged this, very late in the day, widespread homelessness and the lack of supply of new homes had reached emergency proportions, especially in Dublin.

Now, against this backdrop of political negligence that stretches back to the late 1980s, the latest plan with its “84 time-bound actions” aims to “accelerate all types of housing supply – social, private and rental” so that young people seeking to rent or buy, families looking to trade up or down, students who need accommodation, older people and those with disabilities will have access to housing.

“We may not have all the answers to address every issue right now, but the actions, funding and structures that we are announcing today have the potential to make early and very substantial progress on the journey to fixing our broken housing sector,” Coveney said. One notable area that is not addressed at all is the increasing phenomenon of “entire homes” being used for short-term holiday lets.

Minister of State for housing and urban renewal Damien English was right in saying that "supply must keep pace with economic and population growth". That is the most useful yardstick, and it should apply right across the board – whether to cater for multinational company staff seeking places to live or providing for homeless families now being accommodated in entirely unsuitable hotel rooms.

Many local authorities have become so unaccustomed to building social housing that they no longer have the skills to do it. As a result, a much wider role for the voluntary sector – housing associations such as Clúid, for example – should be part of any plan to provide more social housing. Their role is recognised in the latest plan, but it does not go far enough to tap into the skills they have developed.

Modular units

Given the scale of the current emergency, there is a commitment to expand the “rapid- build” housing programme, involving the provision of modular units, to provide 1,500 homes for families living in hotels or guesthouses. A more hands-on role for the

Housing Agency

is also envisaged, including the procurement of 1,600 vacant units as well as design services for new housing schemes.

There is some recognition of the need to avoid mistakes made in the past, notably the construction of vast single-class social housing estates that have taken decades to “mature”. But it is regrettable that the Government didn’t have the courage to reinstate Part V of the 2000 Planning Act, under which up to 20 per cent of any private housing scheme should be for social and affordable housing.

Retrograde step

Bypassing local authorities by referring all housing schemes of more than 100 units directly to

An Bord Pleanála

, with the aim of “fast-tracking” approval, is a retrograde step. As the

Irish Planning Institute

has pointed out, there is no guarantee that the appeals board will adjudicate on such plans any quicker than local authorities and certainly will not be able to do so without significant additional resources.

This aspect of the action plan in effect sets aside the democratic process of city and county councils zoning land in their own development plans and further erodes the already limited role of local government in Ireland.