Oh, to Have a Little House

Lovely weather, isn't it? Yes indeed, the butterfly floats in upon the sunbeam, and the fair tanned face of June, the nomad gypsy, laughs above her widespread wares . . .

That's enough out of you, Ledwidge, any more of that language and you're barred. Go on out of that, finish up those drinks and off home with you, yourself and your nomad gypsy.

Home, is it? When an ESRI economist suggested recently that a property tax should be introduced to penalise homeowners with empty rooms, we heard all over Ireland the sound of hackles being raised (a very strange sound: a little like lard being melted, with half an onion, over a very hot griddle). People have reacted badly. They have recalled the ancient windows tax. They have been upset.

Most economists spend their lives being misunderstood, and Dr Tony Fahey is no different. In reality he was referring to so-called empty nests, and the desirability of people trading down from houses which have become too big for their needs. Unfortunately, the market doesn't really cater for this kind of customer.

Yet, following the latest Bacon report, the whole housing market continues in turmoil. There is probably a need to get back to basics. It is well known that private house ownership in Ireland is among the highest in Europe, if not the world. But why this obsession with owning our own homes?

It is partly a cultural thing. We could rightly put a lot of the blame on our poets.

It's all very well, for example, to sympathise with the plight of Padraic Colum's Old Woman of the Roads, weary of the mist and the dark (and the crying wind and the lonesome hush). "Oh, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all . . ." But someone should have kindly pointed out to her that in a depressed Irish economy, and with a visibly poor credit history, her home ownership fantasy was wildly optimistic.

As for W. B. Yeats, when he was failing hopelessly to integrate in his community in London, he formed a demented but determined plan to return to Ireland and build a small cabin in Innisfree, without any reference to planning permission in an area zoned as high amenity.

His proposed materials (clay and wattles) and lack of any subcontracting plans were also severely frowned on by the Celtic Builders Association of the time.

Eileen O'Leary was another we could fairly censure, leaving the da's house to run off with Art, just because he was able to give her a detached home with carport, conservatory, garden deck and every mod con.

All of this dreaming by our leading poets certainly helped to fuel the property-owning fantasies of simple Irish people, desires which now have us in the mess we are in.

However, the Society of Chartered Surveyors has now suggested that families and individuals with spare rooms in their homes, even pensioners living alone, should be given special tax incentives to take in lodgers, so as to relieve pressure in the private rented sector.

This is the first bit of common sense we have heard for some time in the increasingly crazed debate about housing.

The lodger once held pride of place in Irish life. He was a crucial element of our culture. And the relationship between lodger and landlady was one of the core values of our civilisation.

Not all that long ago, many thousands of our young men and women (but principally men) were departing their idyllically safe rural backgrounds to work in our cities (principally Dublin) with all their lures and dangers; and the most important thing was to secure good lodgings. Finding a respectable landlady was paramount. Finding one who also served a wholesome and substantial Evening Meal was extremely difficult. To be in "good digs" was to be in luck.

Once again we can usefully consider the cultural implications and background. Just about everyone in Joyce's Dubliners was in digs and clearly lived interesting social lives: few of them ever wasted time on the impossible dream of actually owning a house. Myles's character "The Brother" famously lived as a lodger, with a most tolerant landlady.

Of course, one had to be careful. Landladies were sometimes unscrupulous characters, in the business for dubious reasons, which often included an unhealthy romantic interest in lodgers themselves. To put it bluntly, some of them were sexually voracious characters who regularly took advantage of the young men in their care.

For example, many of us will not easily forget a certain infamous establishment, referred to only by its number, on a Dublin northside boulevard. It is long gone now, but as an old fellow lodger of mine at the same address remarked to me the other day, who fears to speak of 98, who blushes at the name?