Pass the buck Minister, and you will rue it
THERE is no quick fix. That is the mantra of Fine Gael when challenged on the deepening housing crisis, and it was repeated this week by the Taoiseach when interviewed at his party’s think-in.
Mr Varadkar and Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy have been in place only for a year, we are told, and we must give them time. The party, though, has been in power for over seven years, and it made promises, under the Rebuilding Ireland umbrella, that simply have not been kept. When Simon Coveney was housing minister, he set a deadline that looked very like a quick fix. If it wasn’t delivered, it’s hardly the fault of those who point it out.
This week, Mr Murphy decided to appear tough and sent a letter to county councils warning that if they did not build social housing at a faster pace, he would remove some of their powers. Superficially, that might appear a welcome move, in the week we learned that Kerry and Mayo councils have built more new houses in the past year than all four Dublin local authorities combined.
On closer inspection, it is nonsense. Councils cannot build without the assent of central government, and that assent is not forthcoming. For example, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown says it has two sites for upwards of a thousand apartments but it cannot get the go-ahead.
Trying to deflect the blame should be seen for what it is, an attempt to pass the buck in advance of what might be a snap general election. The problem is not the councils. Or finance. It is ideological. Fine Gael does not see the provision of housing as a function of government. Instead, it sees it as a function of the market.
This conviction means it doesn’t understand how important the housing issue will be in an election campaign. Far from being sidelined and branded a failure of local government, it will be front and centre as the biggest failure of national government, and very likely a fatal one.
Social housing is needed not just for those who are homeless, but also for those in low-paid jobs who never have a chance of meeting the salary multiples needed for mortgages.
The vast council estates built in previous generations were not built for what Fine Gael would see as scroungers, but for families in which men and women worked hard and paid rent.
From the Thirties to the Eighties, we may not have had a quick fix, but at least we had a fix. We built houses, hundreds of thousands of them. We must do so again, or Fine Gael will surely see the quickest fix of all when the electorate also passes the buck to someone else.