Sir, – Dr Rory Hearne and Phil Murphy (“We’ve talked enough about the housing crisis. Here’s a radical plan”, Opinion & Analysis, June 14th) are no doubt well intentioned, but their “radical plan” doesn’t hold water.
Their entire proposal is that if local authorities directly managed the construction of homes, as opposed to paying private firms to manage the construction of homes on their behalf, the housing crisis would be over in no time. To staff these new public construction bodies, they propose to offer lucrative financial incentives, including as permanent, pensionable public sector jobs, to tempt construction workers currently building houses in the private sector. Aside from increasing the costs of delivering new housing, it is never explained how having the same people building the same houses under a different employer will result in more houses being built.
They argue that construction workers should be employed by the State in the same numbers and same way that nurses and teachers are. This argument fails to take into account the temporary nature of construction projects, or the fact that the locations in which construction occurs change significantly in a relatively short period of time. Presumably they don’t really believe that the same workers will work on the same building site for 40-plus years, and presumably they don’t really expect workers to have to up-sticks every year or two with their whole families to follow State construction projects around the country.
Most importantly they fail entirely to mention the three actual greatest challenges facing attempts to build more homes – the chronic shortage of serviced building land, the chronic shortage of skilled construction workers, and the arcane and restrictive planning processes that delay and curtail almost every proposed housing project.
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The idea of having a co-ordinating agency that can develop master plans for the construction of housing on State land and that can fund the required infrastructure projects at scale is sensible, but is this not what the Department of Housing already exists for?
There is nothing “radical” in the Hearne-Murphy proposal; it is old dogma in new clothes. The same weary argument about the relative efficiency of using public sector staff instead of private sector staff to do the same work has been going on since the Kenny report. One can assume that if the answer still isn’t clear, then the difference is probably not significant enough to make much of a difference either way. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – It is premature to conclude that the house commencement figures from last year indicate market failure. The cumulative house commencement figures for the first four months of this year are the highest since the financial crisis.
It is not realistic to describe the current employment position of highly skilled craft workers as precarious, or that their situation would be improved by a public agency offering them permanent employment status.
There is no shortage of employment for any craft worker. Rather, it is relatively modest pay and in particular very low social status (schools who contribute the most pupils to apprenticeship and the least to university receive the lowest marks in the annual Irish Times assessment of the best schools) which is creating severe shortages among some craft workers, such as plumbers.
This situation will not be rectified by offering them public sector employment.
On the contrary, the public sector is currently experiencing difficulties recruiting craft instructors. If we really want to avoid shortages of highly skilled craft workers in the future, my recommendation is to give the relevant occupations degree status and improved remuneration.
It is irresponsible to lobby for housing to be considered a human right. In practice we have treated pensions as a human right and look at the result. Roughly half the population have not bothered to make any financial provision for their pensions. Why should they when they will receive a pension which is almost as high as the benefits-related pension received by those who worked all their lives?
I agree that the housing crisis is a national emergency, but the problem is complex, and it may involve the retrospective, relatively generous State subsidisation of houses built in certain designated areas and subsequently sold below an (affordable) price level. – Yours, etc,
JOHN McGRATH,
Ashford,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Dr Hearne’s and Phil Murphy’s plan to address the housing crisis with a new “State-owned national sustainable home building agency” is radical but not new.
For the last 27 of its 50-year existence, I worked for the National Building Agency.
A small band of building professionals – architects, engineers and project managers – delivered social and affordable housing to many local authorities, providing the same services and unit numbers as the proposed body above.
Following the crash of 2009, we were told that our services were no longer required – “there was too much housing in the country”. The private sector would step up to the mark in the future!
The pool of corporate knowledge was either redeployed or pensioned off.
Nevertheless, Dr Hearne and Mr Murphy are on point as to to a solution and I wish them well! – Yours, etc,
RORY E MacFLYNN,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Congratulations to Dr Rory Hearne and Phil Murphy for their superb opinion piece on the housing crisis . Their call for a State-owned national sustainable home building agency, directly building homes and employing all of the expertise required to satisfy our urgent housing requirements, makes perfect sense to me, and I for one will vote for any party that promises to implement their ideas quickly and efficiently. – Yours, etc,
PAUL TIPPER,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – The National Building Agency was established as a company in 1960.
Its objective was the provision of housing where the need could not be met appropriately by local authorities or private sector. It was a construction agency. The National Building Agency Act, 1963, empowered the Government to take shares in the company and to provide finance. So it was a State-sponsored body in the modern sense.
The agency provided houses for local authorities at their request, and also houses for industrial workers at the request of the Industrial Development Authority. House purchase loans were also made available. The agency completed almost 23,000 houses between 1960 and 1979 (Oireachtas Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies, Report No 12, 1980).
The functions of the National Building Agency were wound down in the 1980s as local authorities increased their own housing output.
This is an excellent model on which the proposal could be advanced. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN CALLANAN,
Limerick.