Solve a housing crisis the O’Leary way: be decisive

I’M NO fan of Michael O’Leary but I have to say that of all his brazen initiatives over the years, his latest wheeze – snaffling up most of the houses on a new development in Swords – strikes me as inspired. It’s the first case I can recall of the Ryanair supremo’s self-interest overlapping with the interests of his workers for their mutual benefit. He may even be in danger of emerging from under his carapace of buccaneering, pennypinching boss as a benevolent, paternalistic employer from the Victorian age. Who would have thought it?

O’Leary has solved the chief problem employers face today, of a dysfunctional housing market landing them in the midst of a recruitment crisis and crippling their businesses. In the process he has made the lives of his cabin crew a lot easier.

Ryanair cabin crew are hardly envied for their pay and conditions. More often they are the butt of the joke, mocked for selling scratch cards and for their garish uniform. But from now on these people, who work unsocial hours, will have access to a room for rent only a bus stop away from Dublin Airport. Who could begrudge them that?

YET because O’Leary is a hate figure – and often deservedly so – he has come in for some trenchant criticism from predictable quarters like socialist TD Paul Murphy and local politicians who moan about him undercutting the rental market or dashing the hopes of local families. You’d swear he had thrown up jerry-built shacks for his crew along the runway, rather than buying decent houses on the open market.

It’s true that the ruthless entrepreneur may seize on this opportunity to squeeze a fast buck out of his tenants. He might already be figuring how to maximise his bulk buying spree by charging for every little extra. Will he bill his tenants for every suitcase they bring into the property, or for every time they use the loo? Time will tell.

He shows the same problemsolving ingenuity of 20 years ago, when he bought a taxi so he could avoid gridlock by using the bus lanes. But this is not cocking a snook at ordinary drivers or lording it over the little people – it’s just a practical measure to solve a business problem that actually helps the little people. Nor did he go cap in hand to the Government for special favours, or try to weaponise the housing crisis for his own agenda.

It’s not as if there is no precedent for businesses investing in housing for their employees. And there are signs that it is becoming an accepted practice again.

Where I live on the northside of Dublin, the most handsome streets were originally built for the public service’s top tier in the 1930s and ’40s. Fifty years earlier, Guinness began building houses for employees close to the brewery in Dublin and later set up the Iveagh Trust to build social housing for the poor. In the mid-1800s quaint residential squares cropped up in Inchicore for the families of workers in the Great Southern and Western Railway.

Meanwhile, Shannon’s Atlantic Aviation Group’s purchase of a vacant property in Clare for co-living accommodation for newly hired staff so soon after the Ryanair news suggests that the era of major employers giving workers a roof over their heads may about to be restored.

INDEED, the way forward for tech and Big Pharma may be to build entire housing estates for their workers, rather than lose them because of spiralling property prices. The housing crisis is complex but let’s not pretend Michael O’Leary has the solution. Businessmen like him care mainly about the bottom line and are answerable only to shareholders. Governments, by contrast, must consider the common good, social cohesion and fairness – as well as the threat of annihilation at elections.

The only thing Michael O’Leary can teach the Government is decisiveness – to build all the houses it can quickly, rather than let the problem fester by releasing developments piecemeal and operating at half-capacity.