A semi-State for housing would solve absolutely nothing

There is no end in sight to the housing crisis. It is a crisis about far more than people sleeping rough or children in cramped private hostels paid for by the taxpayer. That would be bad enough on its own.

It is about young people who cannot buy apartments or houses; older people who cannot move on; about all those who want suitable homes. And it is getting worse. It is mainly an urban problem, which is perhaps one reason why the Dáil’s response has been so lame.

The crisis is a fundamental challenge for Ireland as an independent state. Promises of a new semi-State body for housing (reportedly "based on Irish Water", God help us) and of a new suburb in the wilds of west Dublin sound like more of the same old, same old.

We have a housing need far more urgent than is evinced by the Taoiseach asking a Minister to review current Government policy and tweaking it. This is a social emergency.

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Legacy problem

The legacy problem alone is daunting. Decades of planning that was at best inept and at worst compromised by the kind of corruption glimpsed during tribunal hearings, and by the narrow vision of local councils, marred rural Ireland with ribbon development and left cities with the sort of urban sprawl, visual desolation and transport problems for which the United States is mocked.

The result is a shambles of bad transport, construction creep, ugliness and low standards. And still too few homes.

The crash was a chance to change tack. Instead, matters have been made worse by selling off large chunks of property to foreign vulture funds at knockdown prices, and by the State’s failure to acquire enough land for homes cheaply after the crash.

Familiar voices are being heard again, with housing under the sway of those flatteringly termed “developers”. For too long these people have driven construction policy in Ireland. It’s far from Frank Lloyd Wright’s rubric of “buildings that are a grace to the landscape and not a disgrace”.

This week The Irish Times reported plans to build a new suburb of 8,000 homes for 24,000 people out in west Dublin, near the Dublin-Kildare railway line. Planning failures of the past would not be repeated, a spokesman for South Dublin County Council said.

The housing emergency crosses a variety of frustrations for Irish urban dwellers

But right there is one of the problems. There is no single planning body for the entire Dublin region, including Dún Laoghaire, Bray and Fingal. And who has ever answered for "planning failures of the past"? Planning should ultimately be national and organic.

Making matters worse, planning bodies have no control over public transport. Do Dáil Deputies who get paid to drive to work, and who get special parking facilities in the city centre, have any notion of what living in some suburbs is like?

If all Dáil Deputies had to park and ride from Dublin's outskirts, we would have a better commuter system. In Vienna the timetable for its metro trains during the night offers much the same frequency as the Dart during daytime. Trains run every four minutes there during the day.

Luas line

In Ireland, planners could not even ensure that the Luas green line connected with the Dart at Bray or with buses south somewhere along the N11. The line ends in the middle of nowhere. And for how long has integrated ticketing been promised, so commuters might make easy, cheap transitions en route to work? It’s not something Dáil Deputies have to care about.

Many commuters to work and school must pay high tolls on Dublin's M50. For them there is no realistic alternative, despite the fiction that this is an optional route. It is in fact a large, discriminatory expense for hard-pressed urban families.

The housing emergency crosses a variety of frustrations for Irish urban dwellers. It needs radical and co-ordinated Government action.

Rules on density, for example, may suit old Georgian suburbs. But, if we can ensure that far higher density accommodation will be completed to good aesthetic, spatial and technical standards as in some other European cities (by no means certain, given past Irish performance) then we should urgently build higher rises in Dublin docklands and elsewhere centrally.

Methods of funding councils from commercial rates must not militate against this option.

We need urgent Government action, not more recommendations, to build homes and to tackle related issues such as transport and banking practices (including the lack of bridging finance). Is Irish Water really the model for solving this one, Leo?