Granny flat plan ‘may offer €15k grant’

DISABILITIES Minister Finian McGrath has said the Independent Alliance’s proposed ‘granny flat’ scheme is a ‘good idea’ and may come in the form of a grant of up to €15,000.

The Independent Alliance, of which Mr McGrath is a member, has proposed the idea ahead of Tuesday’s Budget. It would see an elderly person receive a sum of money to help with the costs of converting their home or property into a separate unit.

Mr McGrath explained: ‘The Independent Alliance proposal is, if you have a woman in her seventies or eighties that’s living in a huge house where there’s extra space, why not give them some sort of grant, some sort of a tax break, some sort of a financial reward, if they agree to the conversion of the house into a second unit?

‘And you could have the senior citizen who is on her own in a big empty building and have a young family upstairs. Two issues – it would make a contribution to the housing crisis, and there would be a bit of company for the senior citizen that’s on her own.’

Mr McGrath added: ‘I would see the conversion grant in the region of €10,000 to €15,000. That’s basically the figure I’m thinking of. But of course it’s an idea, it’s on the table for discussion…’ When it was put to him that one architect had suggested it could cost €50,000, the minister said these conversions would not be full renovations to homes, but rather a ‘slight adjustment’.

WHEN my parents were in their early 80s they began to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the family home wouldn’t be suitable for their needs ‘when we get older’. Oh, they were fine at the moment, of course.

They could still climb the stairs (normal staircase, on to a return, then another half dozen stairs) to the bathroom and their bedroom without too much discomfort, they said. (My father had a knee replacement at 85 and, despite being a great walker all his life, was riddled with arthritis for years before that, so ‘discomfort’ is obviously a relative phenomenon.)

My mother, who worked outside the home until she was nearly 70 but never employed a cleaner in her life, was still ‘perfectly capable’ (her words) of doing her own hoovering, helped by my father, and dusting and tidying the house on a daily basis.

Their home was my parents’ pride and joy. Over the six decades that they lived there, they ploughed their heart and soul into it. My father constantly painted and decorated, they converted two living rooms into one large one when I was a child, they built on a sun lounge during my teenage years, and my father was always up a ladder somewhere outside, repairing bits and pieces here and there.

Garden

And then there was the garden, another source of great pleasure for both of them. No roses were ever better tended, no border more thoroughly weeded, no grass more perfectly coiffed.

And woe betide any dandelion chancer that thought it might get free rein to multiply on Jim Leighton’s front lawn; once that speck of yellow was spotted from the comfort of his chair by the window, my father was up and out of the traps, and the offending dandelion was swiftly sent packing.

My parents loved their home. Which is why those mutterings when they were in their early 80s about maybe having to think to the future never came to anything. They simply soldiered on, albeit with an increasing level of support from my sister who lived close by at that time, and from me, on my frequent weekend visits.

Then, three and a half years ago, aged 94, my father was coming in through the garage, on his walking stick, having been out to fill the birdfeeder in the garden, when he fell. It was the beginning of the end, and the end finally came three months later, in early August.

By Christmas my mother had sold the home that she loved and was living in a small apartment complex – a set-up that is deemed to be an ‘independent living’ arrangement, whereby the 25 residents can come and go as they please but have all their meals, laundry and cleaning services provided for them.

It seems ideal. It’s a lovely place, with a garden and brilliant staff. All of which my mother, now aged 98, would acknowledge to be true. She loves ‘the girls’, and they love her. The food is great, she gets her hair done, on the premises, every week, and her accommodation, although small, is bright and pleasant.

But it isn’t her home. And in the three years that she has now lived there, she has never stopped yearning for what she once had. Even though she decided herself that she would sell the house back in 2015 after my father’s death, her desire to be back there has never left her.

It would break your heart. She talks about it constantly, and has been gathering up photographs recently, not because she wants to look at the people in them, but because she can see her living room, or her kitchen, or whatever part of the family home the backdrop happens to show.

Defeat

‘Look,’ she’ll say, squinting and pointing at the photograph, ‘there’s that coffee table that we bought from Albert in McConkeys.’ Or, ‘I always loved that pale green sofa’, or, ‘there’s the chair that my mother always sat in when she visited us’.

She kept some of her furniture, of course, but not a lot because she simply doesn’t have the room. And despite being three years in her new lodgings, she has not yet allowed us to hang any of her paintings. They are boxed and wrapped in sheets and stored under her bed. I can’t quite work that one out, but I think that, even though she knows she is not ever going ‘home’, to hang her precious pictures on her walls would be to admit defeat.

Now, if someone had suggested to my parents when they were still ‘only’ in their 80s that they should sell up and downsize, they would have been given short shrift. Leave their home? Don’t be ridiculous.

But, if there had been a scheme equivalent to the ‘Granny flat’ grant idea, as proposed by some of the Independents this week, well, that might have been a different matter.

Although it obviously needs a much more detailed and costed explanation, I think that this idea is worth serious consideration.

To divide a family home in a way whereby the elderly occupants can retain rooms that they know inside out – the ground floor makes sense – while the rest of the house becomes an independent unit, to be rented out, is, essentially, a good idea.

Any additional accommodation in the current housing climate has to be a positive thing.

Pension

Meanwhile, while elderly couples, or single people of advanced years, may be mortgage-free, many are existing on a small pension and so the additional rental income could really improve their quality of life.

Additionally, apart from the comfort factor of still being in their own home, it would help to keep some elderly people out of nursing homes, thereby freeing up beds for those in genuine need.

It makes both economic and practical sense.

For me, however, dealing with my mother at the coalface of her sadness over the loss of her home, I can’t help but focus on the comfort that such an arrangement would give elderly people at the time of their life when they are at their most vulnerable.

Every day now, I know that my mother walks through the rooms of her house in her head. From looking out the front window at her garden, and waving to people she knows walking up and down the road beyond, she retreats through the living room, looking at the pictures on the walls, and takes the two steps down to the kitchen, with its blue-and-white curtains and its window to the flower-filled patio to the rear of the house.

If she could do that still, in reality, perhaps then wandering through to the sun lounge, now converted to a bedroom with en suite, while also knowing that someone was coming and going close by, in the old part of her house, making her feel less isolated, then I know that my mother’s final years would have a contentment that, sadly, currently eludes her.

It would enable her, in these last years of her long and happy life, to once again find the happiness that she lost on the day she walked out of the door of her home for the very last time.