Two weeks, four U-turns and a vote against affordable homes
DARRAGH O’Brien, the new Housing Minister, must be getting dizzy. He is just two weeks in office and has already been forced to make, not one, but four U-turns. A 720 degree spin in 14 days must be a record, even for a Fianna Fáil Minister.
On June 10, during an interview with Pat Kenny, O’Brien was asked if the AIB blanket ban on mortgage drawdowns, applied to customers on the Temporary
Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS), would also apply to the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan.
The minister said he didn’t know, but committed to find out and block any such move.
Just days later, in a parliamentary question response, Mr O’Brien confirmed that a departmental circular had been issued to councils on July 6.
Under new guidance for successful mortgage applicants now on the TWSS, ‘drawdown would not commence until the applicants’ unsupported income post-TWSS has returned to the level specified in the original application.’
I don’t know about you but that sounds exactly like AIB’s blanket ban to me.
A few weeks earlier, as the government formation negotiations were reaching their climax, Mr O’Brien committed to extending the Covid-19 emergency ban on evictions for private renters.
The Irish Independent reported him as saying that the ban ‘had been helpful and has given peace of mind to a lot of people’. He went on to say ‘it would be useful to extend it for another three months.’
Fast forward to July 8. Mr O’Brien was asked by deputies whether he intended to extend the ban. ‘If it is justified,’ he said, ‘I will bring a proposal to Government accordingly.’
GONE was the unequivocal call for the extension. Instead, the minister would write to the Health Minister seeking his views on the matter and to ‘consider the economic situation as well’.
That’s all very well, but the eviction ban runs out on July 20, leaving a lot of Covid-19-impacted renters with little peace of mind.
Last July, Mr O’Brien was critical of a Government Infrastructure fund known as LIHAF. Up to €200m was made available by Fine Gael to private developers to unlock projects in return for houses being delivered at affordable prices.
Announcing the fund in 2016, the then Housing Minister Simon Coveney promised 20,000 new homes by the end of 2019 with
40% at discounted prices.
As the deadline approached, Mr O’Brien was rightly critical of the ‘effectiveness of the fund’ as it had only delivered 8% of the new homes by July 2019 with little evidence of affordability. He said LIHAF was ‘sinking under the weight of delays.’
However, speaking in the Dáil last Tuesday, during Sinn Féin’s private members’ motion debate on affordable housing, Mr O’Brien’s criticism of LIHAF had vanished. Instead, Mr O’Brien stuck rigidly to his carefully crafted departmental script, saying he would, ‘continue to encourage housing delivery supported by the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF)’.
The most dramatic reversal in position, however, was on affordable housing. During the election, Mr O’Brien promised 50,000 affordable homes at or below €250,000.
This was the centrepiece of his pitch to young aspiring homeowners locked out of the market by Fine Gael’s marketled approach.
In the days immediately after he had accepted his seal of office from the President, Mr O’Brien went further, promising homes priced at €160,000 to €250,000.
Yet during the Sinn Féin private members motion debate on affordable housing, the new minister’s central objection to our proposal was that we wanted to deliver affordable homes for working people at prices on or below €230,000.
The minister said: ‘The Sinn Féin motion calls for absolute limits on the selling price of affordable homes. It also places set limitations on the gross income of those who will be eligible to buy affordable homes. These ideas may be well-intentioned but, in my view, they are flawed and not ambitious enough’.
Gone is Fianna Fáil’s promise to deliver 50,000 homes at, or below, €250,000. Worse still, Mr O’Brien believes that affordable homes should be available to all, not just those first-time buyers locked out of the market by high prices.
Hundreds of thousands of people are unable to afford to rent or buy. Even young couples on good incomes are forced to live with parents or in cramped and overpriced private rental accommodation.
Sinn Féin’s detailed affordable housing policy, published in May, would deliver thousands of affordable homes to rent and buy every year. Our fully-costed plan would deliver rents at between €700 and €900 per month and homes to purchase from €230,000 downwards.
INITIALLY, access to these two schemes would be for single people with gross incomes of €50,000 or less and couples earning €75,000 or less. However, our policy includes a review of these thresholds, with a commitment to revise upwards if necessary.
Unlike Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, our proposals do not contain any hidden shared equity charge, which can add up to €50,000 to the cost of the home. Nor would it allow banks, land speculators or large developers to make big windfall profits.
Instead, by delivering high quality, energy-efficient, public homes on public land, we would ensure that working people of all ages could have access to affordable accommodation near where they work, study and play.
We would also scrap the failed LIHAF fund, extend the ban on evictions to the end of the year and ensure no blanket ban on council mortgages for those on the wage subsidy scheme.
Mr O’Brien’s first two weeks in office have been revealing.
Having conceded housing policy to Fine Gael during the government formation negotiations, he now has the unedifying role of breaking Fianna Fáil’s preelection promises while implementing Eoghan Murphy’s failed housing plan.
There is no doubt that there are many more U-turns to come. Unfortunately, the big losers are working people, paying excessive housing costs or unable to rent or buy because prices are just too damn high.
Eoin Ó Broin is Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing and author of Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer