Set-aside social housing is bad idea

The Irish Home Builders' Association will be right to oppose the Government's plan to require 20 per cent of private housing developments to be set aside for social housing.

At this stage, a lot of water is yet to flow under the bridge before this Bill (due to be published on August 25th) becomes law, is upheld as constitutional, is enforced and finally, some of the compulsory social housing is built. One year? Two? Five? Who knows?

There are many grounds to which to side, so far, with the Home Builders. Sympathy for builders and their plight of trying to make a few shillings out of building housing estates is not one. They are not the most popular of tradesmen or professionals - but come to think of it, which profession or trade is popular or respected much now? They don't need or want sympathy, I imagine. The Government's plan is bad in principle and on practical grounds. In principle, it does not make sense to seek to achieve desirable social goals by clumsy, indirect methods.

In seeking to provide medical services, it would be nonsense to require that every fifth patient a GP saw had to be a medical card holder. It is much better and simpler to achieve the goal of public health by providing a service direct to those who need it by way of adequate funding of public health services and adequate supply of medical professionals to cope with demand. This is not to suggest that all is well in the provision of health services, just that the method of their provision is not to allocate a mandated proportion of every doctor's work to poorer people.

This Government would not seriously entertain the idea that the provision of public education should be achieved even partly by requiring every private educational institution to take in as one out of five students a person who could not afford private tuition. A properly-funded education system is the answer, allowing also those who choose to pay more and those who choose to provide that service to do so. A certain proportion - often much more than 20 per cent - of our income is already set-aside, or taxed, for social purposes. This is the means to achieve socially desirable goals, and to emphasise our mutual responsibilities in society. It would be bad if the notion took hold that private sector builders, doctors or educationalists have a greater duty than the rest of us to achieve what should be common social goals. This could lead to a lessening of the sense of responsibility on the part of the people generally in society for the achievement of those social goals.

It would be similarly bad if tax policy were to relieve too many people of the duty to pay tax. Minorities, even well-off ones, should not be made responsible for the achievement of common social goals, relieving the majority of its responsibilities. If anyone has a duty to provide social housing, it is those of us, individuals and corporations, who can afford to pay taxes. This is the way to do things, but it is not necessarily a manifesto for spiralling taxes.

The provision of social housing is not a job to be loaded disproportionately on to those who make their profits out of house construction. Why not also make lawyers who advise property developers handle a certain proportion of conveyancing free of charge? Why not require auctioneers to sell a certain proportion of houses at reduced fees? Why not the architects and engineers too, the painters and the plumbers, the electricians and the plasterers? Why not force them all to do some good?

The reality is that the people who will be forced to do good and effectively pay extra tax will be the buyers of the other 80 per cent of houses in each new development. Without price controls - and we know Minister of State with responsibility for housing and urban renewal, Mr Bobby Molloy is opposed to them - one cannot stop additional costs being passed on to customers by builders who will seek the same profit margin as if the set-aside did not exist.

The most important of the practical problems with the 20 per cent set-aside proposal is that it will not achieve additional housing units as quickly as they are now needed. There is no reason to believe that it will get 38,000 housing units built any more quickly than the direct building and funding of social housing would. It will not solve the crisis in housing, a crisis which cannot, in fairness, be laid at the door of builders.

The bright idea of social housing set-aside needs a re-think before more time, energy and legal fees are wasted on it.

Oliver O'Connor is managing editor, Fintel Publications