A new minister for housing without extra powers to help tackle the housing crisis would be a waste of time, Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has said.
Addressing the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness yesterday, Mr Kelly said he had no objection in principle to the appointment of a minister for housing. But if that person did not have access to the necessary functions and "levers", then it would be "pure tokenism".
He suggested the committee might make a recommendation that a minister for housing be appointed, but said just taking the current functions from the Department of the Environment role would be “a waste of time”.
It would also require taking some powers of taxation from the Department of Finance and functions from the Department of Social Protection and other areas. While there were children and families in emergency accommodation, it would remain the “headline story in terms of housing and understandably so”.
Supply issues
Mr Kelly said the situation was “a symptom of much deeper supply issues and can only be dealt with through increasing supply of social, private and rental properties”.
He said it was a simple fact the construction industry was not building enough houses to meet people's needs.He noted social housing in Ireland made up 9 per cent of households, compared with 15 per cent in France, 22 per cent in Germany, 20 per cent in the UK and 31 per cent in the Netherlands.
Private rented sector
“One of the effects of this is that there is a considerable reliance on the private rented sector for the provision of social housing in Ireland. It must be made clear that the share of social housing as a percentage of all households will increase substantially under the social housing strategy,” he said.
Local authorities needed to be encouraged and incentivised to invest for the future in preparing housing lands for development, he said.But the Minister said “Nimbyism” and an incorrect negative perception of social housing led to objections which delayed local authorities in their work.
We also needed, as a nation, to have a “serious think” about our attitude to renting.
Noting calls for a relaxation of Central Bank lending rules, Mr Kelly said this would lead to a return to past failures when families ended up paying €500,000 for a home and then "worried for 30 years afterwards how to pay for it".
He said a “grown-up” conversation on article 43 of the Constitution was needed to achieve a better balance between property owners’ rights and wider social needs.
