Government will stand or fall on housing issue

In the run-up to the 1997 British General Election, Tony Blair was asked what his top three priorities would be if elected to government. ‘Education, education, education’ was his response. Truth be told, there were many more issues than that on the agenda in Britain in 1997, but Blair wanted to send a signal about where his focus would be.

For all opposition parties heading into our upcoming elections, the answer to that same question will surely be ‘housing, housing, housing’. With our housing crisis as it is, that is an easy choice. For the Government parties, it is a rather harder matter. Given the widespread feeling about this issue out there, how best should the Government approach it?

If the Government were to spend all their time talking about housing, how could they possibly win an election? Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will want to talk about stability, about not rocking the boat, about not taking a chance on those with little experience of the difficult decisions that you must make when you are in Government. But, on the other hand, how can you ignore the issue? It’s a difficult balance and one that needs a lot of management, and a fair bit of delivery.

Our new Taoiseach has dived into the issue. At his party’s Ard Fheis, he made the pledge that Fine Gael in government would target building 250,000 homes over five years up to 2030. That’s a big number. Last week he was talking big numbers again, claiming that the number of new homes delivered this year will be close to 40,000. That would be well over the target of 34,500 for this year which the Government’s Housing for All plan had suggested, though early indications are that there is a good chance that final numbers will in fact be closer to 40,000.

The context for this is important. Later in the year there will be a formal revision of the housing need in the country arising from population growth. That will likely suggest that we need to build rather more homes per year than we had been working on in our existing Housing for All plan, which is a politically sensitive topic for many reasons.

Since he came to office, the Taoiseach’s mind will have been preoccupied with having a solid response when the numbers of homes needed are revised fairly dramatically upwards just before a general election. So, he talks now about reaching close to 40,000 this year, the better then to be able to sustain the argument at election time that we can build up to 50,000 every year for five years. And don’t be surprised if that revision of our housing need later in the year suggests that we need to build about 50,000 homes every year.

This is a clever piece of politics on the Taoiseach’s part, but it will only mean trouble for him unless those housing numbers at the end of the year do actually turn out to be quite near to 40,000. Every single home below that number makes his 50,000 a year claim that bit more difficult to sustain.

And these figures will set the context for how we discuss the housing issue in the red hot atmosphere of the election campaign. Last week he notably referred to his 250,000 houses over five years as a ‘ballpark figure’, which is the kind of wriggle room any politician needs to give themselves. But whether it is a ballpark or not, this is how the Taoiseach is trying to shape the housing battleground in the election.

He knows well that he will be mocked and attacked for making the claim. Some will say it is not ambitious enough, others will say it is not feasible, and there are other criticisms of these numbers too. Many would argue that any figure is misleading, in that it is for ‘homes’ rather than ‘houses’. That means that a block of 100 apartments which are only available for rent are counted as 100 homes, which is technically accurate if not quite the dream homestead many had in mind.

Others, who aspire to own their own home, would like to know how many of these new homes are bought by the state or one of its agencies, thus preventing them from buying one. Simon Harris is politically very sensitive to that last issue. You notice how he always refers to adult children living in their parents’ box room, suggesting his audience for this message is more the parents than the ‘children’ in question.

He has calculated, and not unwisely, that the voters who might vote for his party are the older generation who worry about whether their children will ever be able to buy or build their own home – as well as those who have just managed to jump on the ladder. That is classic Fine Gael territory, and an unspoken example of what all that talk about going back to Fine Gael basics means in practice.

Notwithstanding all the criticisms, Simon Harris intends to hold the line on these numbers if he can. And, of course, one thing he also knows is that giving a number will cause the opposition parties to be questioned in their turn about what their target number is, and how exactly they intend to achieve it. Government parties will be happier watching opposition parties be asked about that than defending their own record on it.

How we do it is the most important question of them all. And on that there is a lot of divided opinion. Some want more houses than apartments. Some want the public sector to build more or even most of them. Some don’t want private finance funding them. Some think it is impossible to reach anything close to those big numbers without the private sector with private money doing it. Others say the problem isn’t money but getting the people to do it.

Then there is the question as to what standard we should build. If you want to build more homes, and make them cheaper, you can drop your standards. But what does that mean? For example, in our debates on housing, you hear people say all the time that the state built lots of houses in the 1930s or 1970s when money was scarce. That’s true, but you also have to accept that the word ‘house’ as it was used in the 1930s or even 1970s doesn’t mean the same thing in the 2020s.

Technically, technologically, materially, they are two different things. If you enter a new-build house today – whether built for the state or for the private market – it is a totally different thing to what we were all brought up in. It’s essentially a kind of spaceship, pre-built in sections, containing complex energy generation devices, air filtration systems, along with materials that weren’t even thought of years ago when the state was busy building ‘houses’. Lower the standards of today and you might build some more tomorrow. Is that the right call? My feeling is that the real debate on all this will come post-election, when the big numbers in those election promises will need to be delivered on, whoever is in government.