GOVERNMENT’S DELIVERY ON SOCIAL HOUSING IS OVERDUE

ON A good day, hope and history rhyme. Most of the time, however, they butt heads. Yesterday was a case in point. Just as the Government rolled out its big housing initiative, our new Garda Commissioner was chastising members of his force for wearing balaclavas during an eviction. Commissioner Harris was hauling officers over the coals for wearing “hoods” during a housing protest in Dublin. While he commended them for their restraint, he also stressed it was not correct to wear what looked to the public like balaclavas. The incident he was referring to occurred last Tuesday when housing activists were evicted from a property in central Dublin. He has also requested a report “to see what lessons can be learnt from the event”. The situation had grown heated, which is not surprising given the relationship between evictions and the Irish psyche. The wearing of hoods into such a charged atmosphere was therefore contentious and inappropriate, and Commissioner Harris is to be commended for being so forthright in his comments. His arrival at the head of the Garda marks a watershed for a force that has suffered from a culture of concealment. It stands to gain much more by being open and up front than by closing ranks and circling the wagons when it finds itself on the back foot. Protesters have an absolute right to orderly protest. Both gardaí and protesters alike ought to recognise that in a battle between force and an idea, the latter invariably prevails. Commissioner Harris has laid down a welcome marker that on his watch, things will be done openly and by the book; an approach that will serve both gardaí and the public best. For the Government, however, the episode was another reminder of how inflammatory the housing crisis could become. Maintaining the confidence of the community is critical to gardaí. The story behind why houses were being occupied in the centre of the capital and how the issue literally stopped the traffic, is just another chapter in a saga driven by a failure to deal comprehensively with the housing issue. In ‘Dubliners’, Joyce wrote of history “as a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. It is to be hoped that the announcement yesterday by Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy of a new State agency will mark the beginning of an awakening; the end of the nightmare for homelessness. It has pledged to free up land for 150,000 homes over 20 years. It will have compulsory purchase powers, and will amass land banks by both releasing State lands for development, and acquiring private land holdings nearby. All of this sounds positive. The need to fast-track the delivery of homes has been all too vividly illustrated by recent events. A meaningful intervention in the market by the Government has been long awaited. The State has the land, the laws and the largesse to deliver social housing: it now needs to get out of its way and get on with it.

It is to be hoped the new State agency will mark the beginning of an awakening