Varadkar will need more than ‘hope’ to make

‘HOUSING was easily the biggest challenge we faced in the year gone by,” that’s according to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar – and that should be put in context.

There were other serious issues on the Government’s agenda in 2018. These included tough Brexit talks and crises in health like the cervical cancer scandal, to name but two.

But Mr Varadkar identified housing as the biggest challenge the Fine Gael-led minority Government had to deal with last year.

It’s not hard to see why. More than two years after the Government launched its Rebuilding Ireland plan, it is still struggling to get on top of an issue that affects tens of thousands of people.

And it could well be what trips up Fine Gael when it comes to the next general election, pencilled for early 2020 under the extended Confidence and Supply deal with Fianna Fáil.

Property prices continue to rise as couples hoping to get on the property ladder face an uphill battle to save mortgage deposits. This is compounded by the cost of rent. The numbers on waiting lists for social housing around the country remain high.

And then there are the almost 10,000 homeless people in emergency accommodation, whether it’s hotels, hostels or family hubs. The homeless figures are perhaps the most clearcut example of how the Government has so far failed to tackle the housing crisis.

The numbers in emergency accommodation have increased by more than 50pc since July 2016, when they stood at 6,525.

That’s the month former housing minister Simon Coveney launched Rebuilding Ireland, but the numbers continued to increase under his successor Eoghan Murphy.

The most recent statistics, from November 2018,

Housing could well be what trips up Fine Gael with the voters

recorded 9,968 people in emergency accommodation, including 3,811 children.

Here’s how Mr Varadkar summed up that particular element of the challenges in housing at his round-table interview with journalists.

“Numbers in emergency accommodation have been in the 9,000 to 10,000 range now for a number of months.

“I hope we’ll look back on 2018 as the year in which the number of people homeless, living in emergency accommodation, stabilised and 2019 is the year in which the number falls,” he said.

Mr Varadkar will need more than hope if his Government is to make a serious dent in the housing crisis.

His subsequent comments show that he knows this.

Mr Varadkar added it “remains to be seen” if there will be a fall in the numbers and “a lot of work is still to be done on that to increase the supply of housing in particular”. He also said there are “a lot of challenges in rents and affordability”.

Earlier, he had trotted out the well-worn statistics the Government uses to defend its record. He said 20,000 homes were being built in a single year – the highest number for a decade – and that didn’t include student accommodation and vacant homes brought back into use.

He also said the social housing stock would increase by 8,000, more than half of which were new-builds by councils and approved housing bodies.

But all of that is cold comfort for those who can’t afford their own home or are still in emergency accommodation.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin may have given Mr Varadkar some reprieve from the electorate by agreeing to extend his party’s deal with Fine Gael due to Brexit.

The Government has always argued the housing crisis can’t be solved overnight. It has little over 12 more months to make the massive progress necessary before voters will ultimately judge its success or failure.