As the smoke begins to clear from the havoc wreaked by the pandemic, the provision of housing will more and more take centre stage, with a huge mountain to climb before we get to a situation where supply comes even close to meeting demand.
Insider has serious misgivings about the ability of the State to step up to the task that lies before us, with red tape and a Department of Housing that is living in the Stone Age, delaying and hampering housing provision in Galway city.
Unless serious steps are taken, and taken immediately, to remove some of these unnecessary obstacles, we will find ourselves standing still in terms of a shortfall of supply to meet a growing demand for the next decade and more.
Around this time last year, Insider remembers Darragh O’Brien, the Minister for Housing, Local Government, and Heritage, promising to make real changes to the delivery of houses within 100 days of taking office.
Well, he and the rest of Government have been in office now for a year and he still has not even managed to put his affordable housing scheme fully into operation yet.
Red tape
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One obstacle to housing provision the Minister really needs to pay attention to, and sort out ,is the amount of red tape involved in councils and voluntary housing bodies trying to get housing schemes off the ground.
In reality, it is taking three to four years from initiating a housing project to when a key is actually handed over to new occupants.
The Department insists on each new development being sanctioned by it in phases, with maybe months inbetween the council seeking clearance for the next phase, and the Department giving the all-clear to proceed to the next step in a four-phase process.
What needs to happen is for a development to be fully assessed in total in advance, and then full clearance and finance approved for the house building from start to finish in one go.
In almost every other country, in the time it takes to get through the various phases laid down by the Department, they would have their houses built and occupied.
The role of local government
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The Galway City Council often comes in for stick for slow progress in building new housing schemes. However this is not really the council’s fault — a lack of staff means a limited number of people are handling several different proposed building projects at the same time. They are expected to be like circus jugglers keeping so many balls in the air.
The Government is not funding the number of staff needed to get the job done faster, and when you add in the phased sanctioning and a slow planning process, you have a serious problem.
'A cap of €400,000 was put on the price of a house that can be bought in Galway under the shared equity scheme is beyond the reach of any couple who would qualify under the affordable houses scheme'
The Galway City Council has been busy purchasing land around the city with the intention of building affordable houses, but there is too much red tape holding everything up.
Around Castlegar, for instance, Compulsory Purchase Orders are required to widen the public road that accesses the land zoned for housing, both public and private. CPOs are also required in relation to some other sites around the city, and that just adds years to the process of progressing the development of houses.
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In Insider’s opinion, all new housing developments promoted by the council should be mixed tenure, to include private, social, and affordable houses, as well as houses for the elderly and disabled all together — it is really important that there should be a mix.
There are those who disagree. At the first council meeting to discuss the next city development plan, the ruling pact’s selection as our next mayor, Colette Connolly is urging the council to only build social houses. Will councillors Terry O’Flaherty, Donal Lyons, and Niall McNelis agree, when they advocate a mix of social, affordable, etc?
The only housing projects launched by the council in Galway in recent years have been all social housing — the first site in years on which a mix of housing types will be built is the one in Ballybane, near Merlin Woods, which will have 18 social and 85 affordable houses.
The Department allocated more than €5 million for all the site preparation works on that project, but although the allocation was made two and half years ago, we are still waiting for most of this money to be spent.
Affordable houses
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Last month, Minister O’Brien published the long-awaited Affordable Housing Bill — setting an upper price for a house in Galway City that is simply too high.
A cap of €400,000 was put on the price of a house that can be bought in Galway under the shared equity scheme, where, according to the Minister, the State can take a share of up to 20 per cent in a family’s first home, reducing the purchase price. However, €400,000 is beyond the reach of any couple who would qualify under the affordable houses scheme — the cap is much too high.
Even allowing for the State’s 20 per cent stake (a reduction of €80,000 in the price of a €400,000 home ), they would still have to get a mortgage for more than €300,000 after coming up with their own deposit. Currently they could also qualify for the maximum €30,000 tax break available to first time buyers under the existing Help-to-Buy Scheme — but this is due to end on December 31 this year.
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There is no way a family in the income bracket that qualifies them for an affordable house scheme could secure a mortgage that high — the most they could manage would be at least €100,000 less.
Remember these are the people whose income is just too much for them to be entitled to a social house from their local authority, and too little to get a full mortgage from one of the banks. They are the people caught in the middle.
'The Government must remove the obstacles — the insistence on sanctioning in phases, the lack of local authority staff to move projects forward, and the often frustratingly slow planning process'
The cap matters because if it was set lower, it would encourage builders to build more houses priced in that lower bracket.
And is Rebuild Ireland up to the job of facilitating the growth in housing? The commercial banks get a lot of negative coverage, but when it comes to giving out mortgages, the Rebuild Ireland people are proving less friendly than the banks. Local councillors have cited examples of people trying to get a mortgage, who have found that Rebuild Ireland offers lower amounts than the banks.
3,500 families wait for home
A couple of years ago, the city council promised that 1,000-plus houses would be built within three years, with few completions in the first year, but coming on stream in year two and year three.
Then along came the pandemic and nothing happened. Now the plans are being reactivated, and we are told that this year, 2021, will not see many completions, but next year and the year after we will see them in greater numbers.
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Currently there are 3,500 families on the waiting list for housing in Galway city. At the current rate of progress, it will be 2025 before the houses being planned now will be finished. By then the housing list will have grown by the same number.
There is also the problem of how further housing projects will be funded, with the costs of materials, etc, escalating rapidly all the time.
The first thing that needs to be done is for the Government to remove the obstacles — the insistence on sanctioning in phases, the lack of local authority staff to move projects forward, and the often frustratingly slow planning process.
Unless we find speedier ways of providing the houses needed, private, social and affordable, we will be standing still for years to come. Something has to change, and change quickly.
