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03/09/2017
Irish Politics

Creating a ghastly housing quango is not the way to solve this crisis


To put it politely, the Government is showing signs of deep-seated confusion in relation to the homes shortage crisis. I could be less polite.

First, Simon Coveney announces a help-to-buy scheme for home-seekers. Then Eoghan Murphy announces it is being dropped. And, lo and behold, we are now informed that the government is thinking of completing its 360 degree “flip-flop-flip” policy pirouette by retaining the scheme!

So I nearly wept when I heard of a government source telling the Irish Times this week that they were now thinking of creating a body – wait for it! - “like Irish Water” - which would take over the housing functions of local authorities if it appeared that local authorities were not going to use their powers to tackle the homes crisis.

How could anyone suggest creating a semi-state home-providing agency modelled on Irish Water? Except perhaps its parent department? Do our Ministers not understand that the very words “Irish Water” produce a gagging reflex in the Irish body politic?

Creating such a ghastly housing quango on a national level is not the way to go.

What we do need, and need badly, is an urban renewal agency for Dublin with a specific mandate and powers to urgently identify under-used and derelict or obsolete areas and sites in the city, to compulsorily acquire those lands in a simplified, accelerated process, to make plans for them emphasising a sustainable mix of social, affordable and privates homes and apartments in an urban context paired with social and commercial building, to grant building leases to builders, and to give associated planning approvals.

The enabling legislation could provide for similar agencies in other cities if needs be. The process could be self-financing. Site assembly needs CPO powers for effective, large-scale urban renewal.

That is the only way that Dublin city can be made into a place where those who need homes near their workplace and near to developed social infrastructure such as schools, shops, cinemas, parks, and public institutions can be given a fair chance. Otherwise we are talking about two-hour commutes.

Waiting for private enterprise and market forces by themselves to accomplish that inner-city renewal is utterly hopeless. Private enterprise can only do large-scale urban development on peripheral green-field sites. No significant, balanced urban renewal has ever been achieved anywhere by leaving the task to private capital and market forces alone.

Let me tell you A Tale of Two Streets.

I travel to work by Charlemont St  and return home by Clanbrassil St  almost daily.

On Charlemont St, a large redevelopment scheme, a PPP between Dublin City Council and a developer, with mixed public and private apartments is well into its first phase. It looks really promising. The whole of the Council’s rundown Tom Kelly flats project is scheduled to be redeveloped.

But the tragic part of this story is that phase one is only now underway - ten years after the idea was initially approved by the Council’s planners. The process has been bedevilled by one problem after another.

Some local politicians announced the scheme’s commencement so often that it seemed it would never start, let alone be completed. Other local politicians insisted of establishing formal consultative bodies at local level. Still other local politicians togged out against the demolition needed to clear the site for phase one. Then An Bord Pleanála reduced the height of the apartment buildings as approved by the Council. You get the picture.

I don’t want to be negative. On the contrary, I welcome the Charlemont St PPP. But it has now taken a decade to get going. And by the look of things, it will take another five years to complete.

Half a mile away up the Grand Canal on Clanbrassil Street, there is a vista of dereliction and decay. There is a huge scrapyard or fuel depot on the side of the canal. There are derelict and semi-derelict one and two storey buildings stretching back through Leonards Corner towards New Street.

The difference between Charlemont St and Clanbrassil St is that the City Council owns the land in one while private owners and tenants occupy the land in the other. Both areas are potentially very valuable tracts of building land. But one was available because it was publicly owned and the other will never be available because various commercial interests are struggling to control the land.  

As things stand nobody is going to CPO large swathes of the Clanbrassil St area  for urban renewal.  The area could be the location for a major renewal project providing hundreds of badly needed homes where it makes sense to build them.

This Tale of Two Streets is replicated many times over between Dublin’s canals and to a lesser extent between the Tolka and the Dodder,

Councillor Dermot Lacey - a good guy - contacted me in relation to a suggestion I made here a few weeks ago that Dublin City Council was not the agency to drive renewal. He was unhappy with my criticism. I respect his loyalty to his Council. But I remain unconvinced.

When you look at the Council’s complexes at St Theresa’s Gardens and O’Devaney Gardens, you have to ask just why the Council cannot get its act together quickly even in relation to its own land. And those are but two of the many derelict or run down areas where Dublin City Council has both ownership and power to tackle its own dereliction.

I don’t want to take away the Council’s powers. I certainly don’t want to give them to the national Irish Water-type quango that some government sources are apparently contemplating. Let Dublin City Council get on with redeveloping its property portfolio. Who or what is stopping it?

But we can’t wait for an indolent bureaucracy that has taken decades to handle its own portfolio to deliver urban regeneration on the scale and at the pace now so badly needed.

There is no great mystery about what must be done in Dublin. What is missing is imagination and drive. Eoghan Murphy’s problem is the poverty of imagination and indecision in his own department. They are the people who allowed a series of ministers do nothing as the homes crisis grew.

They are also the people who gave in to Threshold’s demands in 2013 by outlawing bed-sits just as the home shortage was becoming acute. That well-intentioned foolishness swept away the homes of 8,000 to 12,000 vulnerable urban dwellers at the very worst time. That was certainly some departmental achievement.

Lastly, let me say that the Constitution is not the problem. None of what I suggest raises even the smallest constitutional problem.

We only need action.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Photo credit: comeheretome.com


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