The latest bid to help tackle the housing crisis is starting to cause something of a headache for the Government.
As the Opposition criticises the mooted €430,000 salary of the expected new “housing tsar” Brendan McDonagh, there is unease within the Coalition about how it is all playing out.
Minister for Housing James Browne has publicly backed the current Nama boss as his preferred candidate to head up a new Housing Activation Office.
Mr McDonagh’s name has been publicly linked to the role at the Housing Activation Office (HAO) for some time, but Mr Browne’s intervention led to a thinly veiled rebuke from a spokesman for Tánaiste Simon Harris.
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A post-Cabinet briefing for journalists on Tuesday was told that Mr Harris’s view was that appointments of this scale “should be discussed between [Coalition] leaders in advance of any name being made public”.
As Jack Horgan-Jones and Marie O’Halloran report, while plans for the HAO were signed off on by Cabinet, Coalition leaders stopped short of endorsing Mr McDonagh for the role.
The matter is set to be discussed further at a meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on housing on Thursday.
Coalition spokesmen were not able to give a firm timeline on when the appointment would be made or when the chief executive of the new office would begin duties.
Within Fine Gael there is some concern over the political capital being expended on the matter, while a Fianna Fáil TD privately urged the Coalition to get on with making decisions that would have an impact on the building of homes.
In the Dáil, Taoiseach Micheál Martin insisted there would be no additional salary cost for the role of director of the new office because the appointee would be seconded from within the public service.
Mr McDonagh is seconded to Nama from the National Treasury Management Agency, and it is expected that were he to be appointed his salary would be unchanged.
Mr Martin confirmed in the Dáil that the Cabinet had approved the establishment of the HAO, but said no decision had been made on the person who would head the new agency as he faced criticism from Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and others.
She called the mooted pay for the job an “extravagant gold-plated salary” and Ireland’s “most expensive job-share” of the role of the Minister for Housing.
Elsewhere in our coverage of this issue, Niamh Towey has an explainer on what the Housing Activation Office - heralded by the Government as the great unblocker of the housing crisis - will actually do.
She reports that the aim is to pull together various stakeholders in local authorities, utility providers and the construction industry to get more houses built faster.
Are you a builder looking for Uisce Éireann to service your site? Call the HAO. Are you a local authority with land primed for housing lying unused? Then the HAO might call you etc etc.
Today’s print lead story by Emmet Malone and Jack Horgan-Jones sets out how the bosses of commercial State bodies are in line for significant pay increases after the Government signalled it would update rules to allow a “market rate” to be paid to chief executives.
Cabinet agreed yesterday to implement recommendations made by the Senior Posts Remuneration Committee which would lead to pay reviews and possible salary increases worth tens of thousands of euro for chief executives of almost 30 commercial State bodies.
Though unconnected to the HAO – which is not a commercial State body – the Opposition criticism of the plans for the office and the expectation that Mr McDonagh would keep his €430,000 annual salary if chosen to lead it was the backdrop for the announcement.
Best Reads
The defamation case being taken against the BBC by former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams began on Tuesday. Fiachra Gallagher reported from the High Court on day one of the case. The case arises out of a 2016 BBC Spotlight programme and a related article, in which Mr Adams claims he was falsely accused of sanctioning the April 2006 killing of informer Denis Donaldson. The BBC denies that Mr Adams was defamed.
Miriam Lord outlines how Mr Adams took jurors on a very long stroll down memory lane as part of setting the context for his court action and testimony to come. It included his formative years in west Belfast “from the influence of his Granny Adams to passing his primary school 11+ exam at the second time of asking,” Lord writes. Mr Adams told the court: “My biggest ambition was to win an All-Ireland with the Antrim hurling team.”
Harry McGee has an interview with Sinn Féin MEP Kathleen Funchion on the sentencing of her ex-partner under harassment law. She outlines how she was trying to keep her head above water as if nothing was troubling her even though her life was a nightmare due to Seán Tyrell (39), who has been sentenced to four months in prison. A separate four-month term was suspended for two years.
On the opinion pages, Kathy Sheridan asks whether commuters should have to put up with interminable phone conversations, bursts of TikTok and blaring music?
Playbook
The Dáil kicks off at 9am with an opportunity for TDs to raise topical issues.
The Labour Party has a motion on special education which will be debated from 10am.
Leaders’ Questions is at noon followed by Other Members’ Questions – a chance for some Independent TDs and Coalition backbenchers to pose a question to the Taoiseach.
Government business in the afternoon includes a motion on the final draft of the revised National Planning Framework from 3.13pm.
The committee stage of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill, 2024, is scheduled to start at 6.13pm.
The weekly Dáil votes are at 9.13pm.
Commencement matters in the Seanad is at 10.30am.
Government business (from 1pm) is a debate on the Finance (Provision of Access to Cash Infrastructure) Bill, 2024.
Private members’ business is the Protection of Retail Workers Bill, 2025, with a debate on the proposed legislation at 3pm.
The Select Committee on Subsidiarity (European Union Legislative Scrutiny) meets at 2pm.
The full Dáil and Seanad schedules can be found here and here.
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