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Shaky foundations of affordable housing
by Joe Horgan
Whichever way you travel through Ireland now, car, plane or train, you see them. The new housing estates march across the Irish landscape like an army. Some blend in to the edges of towns looking only slightly odd, others sit in the middle of fields as if lost. They mark the vanguard of the new Ireland, the builders and developers, a seemingly unstoppable force. They are creating a new country. I don’t know whether you can get 40 shades of concrete.
A few years back the government trumpeted an initiative whereby some control of the housing explosion would be put in place in the form of ‘social and affordable’ houses. This was intended to ensure that the latest expanse of ‘exclusive and architect designed’ estates would have to contain a percentage of housing that was available to those who could not otherwise afford them. It came about as a result of rising anxiety about the ability of young couples to ever afford their own homes in a market place that was increasingly prohibitive. It was a somewhat radical move by a government closely associated with a right wing adherence to the free market and a close relationship with a cartel of big business and developers. Now this government can be very efficient if it chooses to do so, see the smoking ban and the deportation of refugees as two wildly varying examples. So out of the 69,000 houses built last year how many were covered by the much heralded scheme to produce ‘social and affordable’ ones? 163. One hundred and sixty three out of 69,000. According to the Irish Times, under pressure from their friends in the building industry, the government had inserted some sort of get out clause and giving the lie to Mary Harney’s political vision of a land where the better and richer redistribute their own wealth, developers took advantage of it. And the end result was 163 houses throughout the whole country for those struggling to find a home.
As I was writing this piece a steady rain settled over the fields and I stopped at an item that came on the radio. A man was speaking in a wonderfully rich, west of Ireland accent. Some Irish voices, like music or landscapes, just make you sit and think. Smile. He spoke of moving on to a new estate from the country as he was nearing retirement and felt in need of the facilities that the town could offer. He then went on to castigate those of his neighbours that he stylised as being the true adherents of the Celtic Tiger. They talked only about their cars he said, their property, the price of their crazy paving. If he stopped to talk to them or salute them they hurried on. The people who he passed the time of day with, shared a laugh and a joke with, were the Africans and Latvians and Poles who lived in rented accommodation outside of the estate. They at least, displaced and adrift as they were, still carried the virtues of community and personal contact. He was still defiant, still expounding the beauty of his native country, still praising the days. Strangely though he felt, like the refugees he saluted, a stranger amongst the new Irish. His story was peculiarly disheartening and uplifting at the same time.
Of course that is just hearsay. One unknown old man’s experience. Change will inevitably leave some people lost. So before we merely damn the values of the new Irish and their political masters we have to acknowledge the things the government has attempted. Perhaps it has genuinely tried to challenge the soulless operation of the free market with its social housing scheme and perhaps in time that may produce some results. Indeed the amounts of money spent on successive tribunals suggest at least some degree of moral questioning at the heart of the establishment. Doesn’t it?
Last year the judge in the Flood Report looking in to planning corruption found that a certain company had made corrupt payments to a former Fianna Fail minister, Ray Burke, and a number of other planning officials. He also stated that the same company had hindered and obstructed the tribunal on five grounds. Last year, still operating in a culture that cosies up to all and any big business that company, despite the findings of the tribunal, went on to make an after tax profit of over e55 million. If nothing else this suggests that the government’s challenge to these companies is no more than lip service and that no real attempt is being made to actually damage the powerful and wealthy. I suspect that people involved in corruption at the level of crooked welfare payments are dealt with less leniently. Still, I don’t know the niceties of the law and perhaps there is nothing more the government can do. It has at least named and shamed them and can probably do no more then than wash its hands of them.
Strange then that the accounts released by the company also state that in the same year the tribunal found against them that donations were being paid into the coffers of a political party called Fianna Fail. Being paid and being accepted by the very party that was forming the government that was setting up tribunals to investigate companies such as the very one that was giving it money. Grubby, grubby, grubby. It seems that the propensity for copying Britain has now gone to the extent of aping the sleaze and hypocrisy that did for the Tories.
It is not that a love for the heart and soul of this country leads naturally to an opposition to those who are grabbing for change. But what does the way they conduct themselves say about what they believe? Well the rain has stopped now and the sun is shining and tonight there will be a full moon over the Irish lanes and the houses, old and new.
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