Big developers have place but Government is key funder says SF’s O’Reilly
BIG developers ‘absolutely have a place’ in the housing market but it should be the role of the Government to fund homes, according to Sinn Féin frontbencher Louise O’Reilly.
‘The Government talks a lot about the private sector and big developers and big developers absolutely have a place here,’ Ms O’Reilly said.
‘But it should be the role of the Government to fund the council and approved housing bodies to build large scale social and affordable housing for working people to rent and buy. These are the targets the Government miss all of the time.’
The enterprise spokeswoman also warned the chronic shortage of housing now poses a serious threat to the wider economy.
‘I meet a lot with big business, with big tech firms, and they all say the same thing; housing is an issue. It is starting to stymie business,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘Housing impacts on everything. You get what starts off as a health representation [in her constituency clinics] and it turns out to be someone with a bad back who is couch surfing.
‘You may, for example, be dealing with a childcare case, and you find that the State’s capacity to deal appropriately with that is hindered by housing issues.’
Contrasting the experience of families today to when she was growing up, the Sinn Féin TD said: ‘There is nothing wrong with council housing. I was born in a corporation house.
‘Having access to that house and that stability meant that my parents on two ordinary incomes – my mother was a clerk typist and my father a car assembler – two people with normal jobs could set up their life and afford to live because they had somewhere they could afford.
‘That’s the stability that people want. I remember when my daughter was five, all I wanted for her was to know we could be somewhere permanently so I could pick a school.’
Today, by contrast, she says people in the private rented sector are at the mercy of a market where there is fewer places to rent.
‘The market is very tight. It is heartbreaking. People everywhere are stuck. People with kids coming out of a relationship, people with kids, people who are separated or divorced: they can’t start the next phase of their lives, people are stuck – they are working, they’re earning, but they can’t start that next part of their lives .’
Ms O’Reilly also strongly signalled Sinn Féin’s preparedness to work with big business if they are voted into power.
‘When it comes to private sector enterprise I’m not stupid; I understand we need business if we are to fulfil our ambitions for public services, for homes for working people.
‘I meet business. We need a strong business sector. We need to find out what works.
‘I go to meet them, I believe in the wisdom of crowds, I talk to people,’ she said.
‘My first year consisted of meeting people and doing what maybe I wouldn’t be famous for; sitting in a room keeping my mouth shut, listening, learning, and also getting to know people in the sector.’
The Sinn Féin TD and trade unionist describes herself as ‘an old-fashioned socialist’.
‘Of course, I’m a socialist... I am an old-fashioned socialist. I was a national nursing officer with SIPTU. I thought I would retire from that job. My dad was a trade union official.’
Recalling her father’s political influence, Ms O’Reilly said: ‘I remember as a teenager, I threw my eyes up to heaven and told my father: “All you ever do is talk about politics”.
He said: “Louise, everything is political. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the ground we walk on – it is all political”. And he is dead right.’