Government policy and property prices are making life impossible for young couples. Is this the type of pressure that we as a society want for fledgling families, asks Father Joe Mullan
When you are talking about the price of a house, €3,810 doesn't seem like a lot of money. Yet friends of mine sold their car to get the last €3,500 they needed to buy their first home. The abolition of the first- time buyers' grant hurts a specific grouping in our society, those who are not yet homeowners.
In Ireland we place a great value on owning a home. To become a homeowner, people make significant sacrifices to save for the elusive deposit so that they can approach the lending institutions. They take on a level of financial commitment that is crippling and they often mortgage for up to 30 years.
Who does this? Mostly young people who have jobs, may soon want to get married, raise a family and live in Ireland. Their willingness to enter the housing market is admirable. They know that builders make a lot of money; they've heard about the planning scandals; they accept that it will cost them an arm and a leg to repay their home loan, yet they dream of a home of their own. They deserve all the help we can give them.
I work full-time for ACCORD, a pastoral agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland which provides marriage preparation courses for engaged couples. In Dublin alone we facilitated courses for 1,345 couples last year. Every couple's circumstances are unique, but there are common threads running through our courses, and one of these is housing.
No couple can escape the reality that they are going to have to put a roof over their heads. Given that many couples have been working for 10 years or more, one or other or both may already have an apartment or a house, bought with the assistance of the grant. Many others will have faced the housing issue while they have been engaged and started to save for their deposit. Still more live in rented accommodation and find that paying rent makes saving for a deposit almost impossible. Couples talk about these issues on our courses and they nearly always factor in the hope of having a family and the cost of children. They know that if buying a house stretches their joint income to the limit, when their first child is born it will be difficult to make ends meet. Is this the type of pressure that we, as a society, want for fledgling families?
If you visit the developments that have transformed the urban landscape in the past 10 years you'll see that communities have sprung up. For any pastor, an invitation to "bless the house" is most welcome. You drive into the development, try to remember the instructions, turn right, third cul de sac on the left, down at the end on the right, number 234.
From the outside the houses look the same, but not so when you pass through the front door. Every home has the unique imprint of the couple who live there.
Home ownership seems to contribute to responsible citizenship. The argument made by the Government in recent days - that we don't have enough housing in the rental sector - seems to imply that it is all right for people to pay rent rather than to own their home.
It may be true that we have a higher proportion of home ownership than some of our European neighbours. So what? We have good reason to want to own our homes. We build community around neighbours and locality, schools and shops, clinics and churches. We put our money into the environment where our families grow up, where we have the primary relationships that sustain and enrich our lives.
The pressure our politicians can expect in the coming weeks is welcome - it reminds those who make policy that the people whose lives they affect are citizens with hopes and expectations of the State and politicians. Perhaps the needs of those who are not yet homeowners will be addressed in the Budget.
The Minister for Finance has shown a capacity for thinking outside the box, as the SSIAs demonstrate. Well, how about a new savings scheme which would support those saving for their deposit? Maybe giving something approximating to the €3,810 to those who have saved €5,000 towards a deposit might be of real assistance to the aspiring homeowners of tomorrow. Surely we are not going to further increase the pressure on the over-stressed, highly committed, hard-working young people who are struggling to provide security and shelter for their families?
Joe Mullan is a priest of the Dublin Archdiocese and works with ACCORD Dublin, the pastoral agency for marriage and the family.