Independent TD for Waterford, Matt Shanahan, has blamed ‘bureaucracy over the last ten years’ for Ireland’s current housing problems.
Speaking in Dáil Éireann on Tuesday (October 8), Deputy Shanahan said the issue of house building in Ireland was a ‘crisis, and needed to be treated like a crisis’.
“We’re seeing bureaucracy right across the planning department. We’re seeing it with Irish Water, with access to ESB networks, roads, planning approvals, and then with the Planning Appeals Board,” Deputy Shanahan said. “I was speaking to someone earlier today in relation to planning and approved housing bodies, and they were telling me that, years ago, some of the applications they’d deal with were about eight to ten pages for a new scheme. Now, they’re running to about 80 pages just for the business plan. Imagine sitting down trying to compile it, read it, and then comply with it!”
Addressing the Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, Deputy Shanahan said the lack of new builders entering the market was also very noticeable.
“Despite all that’s going on with housing, and despite all the work that’s there for trades, just look around and see for yourself. Watch the vans on the roads and see how few new names are coming up as building contractors,” Deputy Shanahan said. “You don’t see them. I don’t see them. No evidence. And that tells me there’s a fundamental reason. There’s a lot of people happy to work in the trade, but nobody wants to get into building in a significant way because it’s so difficult to make money at it now due to the costs.”
Deputy Shanahan pointed out the difficulty for builders in accessing finance, with pillar banks refusing to lend to the construction sector and small builders having to source finance at rates of up to 14% APR. He described this as unsustainable ‘in terms of delivering viable housing’.
Regarding voids in Local Authorities (homes without legitimate tenants), Deputy Shanahan criticised the current system, where perfectly good homes remain out of service for 6-12 months, with the average turnaround adding another six months and costing €36k-€40k.
“And Minister, where does it make sense to go into a perfectly good house, rip out all the cabinets and white goods, and then give contracts to people to replace all of it—at the cost of the State?” Deputy Shanahan said. “And two years later, if that house becomes void again, the same process is repeated. Nobody in the private sector would tolerate that kind of waste. You need to ask the local authorities why I’ve seen perfectly habitable houses having everything ripped out and dumped. It makes no sense whatsoever.”
In closing, Deputy Shanahan highlighted the issue of downsizing in Ireland.
“I spoke to a lady who had a four-bedroom house. Her husband died, and her children had moved away. She wanted to build a smaller house on her land but was told she couldn’t because she didn’t meet the housing need, as she already owned a house. She had a family ready to move into that house. That’s the kind of policy dysfunction we’re standing over.”