“Building homes is not being prioritised by the government, they are too busy with promising greenways and the metrolink and other projects that are diverting funding and workers and resources away from the most critical problem of all: the critical lack of housing.”
So says Meath Cllr Dave Boyne who used a giant cheque as a prop for his speech to the Aontú Ard Fheis in Portlaoise last weekend. The cheque, he says, indicates the sheer frustration felt by so many people at the ineptitude of the government who have unprecedented largesse in taxes yet are failing to provide people with their most basic need, housing.
Cllr Boyne said that the scale of the housing crisis was all too evident to local representatives who he said are meeting constituents impacted by the shortage of homes everyday. He feels that the government’s focus is all wrong.
“We have up to 290,000 people who are effectively homeless – the ‘hidden homeless’, the people who can’t afford to move out of their parent’s house, or who are couch surfing – and the population is increasing but it feels like the government isn’t really giving housing the attention it desperately needs.”
“We’re spending money on vanity projects like greenways and cycle lanes which is diverting not just funds but key resources like building skills and time into projects that are less important. Sort housing first, the cycle lanes going nowhere can wait,” he said.
“And people are so angry at government waste, pouring taxpayer monies into projects with no accountability , just as we see with the Children’s Hospital and the Dáil bike shed and so many other projects.”
Boyne was speaking at a busy Aontú Ard Fheis last weekend where delegates heard from speakers and voted on motions covering a range of issues including a cap on non-EEA students visas, gender identity being taught in schools, and returning persons to their country of origin within 48 hours if they fail to show proof of identity.
The Aontú candidate for the upcoming Dublin Central by-election, Ian Noel Smyth, also addressed the issue of housing on the day, calling for change to planning regulations.
That evening, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín told the Ard Fheis that ordinary families felt that the social contract that had sustained society for generations had been destroyed – and that many middle-income families felt caught in a trap where they were too poor to rent but too wealthy for local authority housing.
“When we were young, in school, our teachers used to say to us, work hard and when you get older you will get a good job. If you get a good job you will be able to buy a home, provide for your family and you will have a good life,” he said.
“This simple promise has been the basic social contract of society for generations. If you do an honest week’s work, you will get an honest wage which will pay for a decent life. Nothing complex, a fair and reasonable objective.”
“Ach, ní mar sin is a tá sé. For hundreds of thousands of families this Social Contract has been destroyed. Today hard-working families cannot afford to buy a house. Hundreds of thousands of
young people are working, saving, enduring long commutes and still end up shut out of a home for their family.”
“This government’s policies have set a middle-income trap; where families are “too wealthy” for a local authority house but “too poor” to survive the rental market,” he said. “Working families are now among the 17,000 people who are in homelessness. They are watching their children miss developmental milestones for crawling and walking, due to the lack of floor space in hotel rooms. They are kettle cooking: pot noodles on the floor of a homeless hub for the want of basic cooking facilities.”
“The equivalent of 200 classrooms of children, are living like refugees in homeless hubs in their own country. And what’s the government’s solution? Last Sunday the government introduced a
law with the expressed objective of increasing rents,” the Aontú leader told the Ard Fheis.
“The Social Contract is so broken that its changing the very fabric of Irish society. In 2009 the 75,000 children were born in Ireland. Last year it was 55,000. Young couples are losing the confidence to have families. Plunging birth rates are already leading to school closures and amalgamations. If it continues it will lead to radically increased pensions and health care costs, for the same generation that can’t afford rents,” he said.
He was also sharply critical of the government’s immigration policy, describing it as “disastrous” and saying “they have refused to work with communities.”
“They don’t know how people are coming into the country. They don’t know if people issued with deportation orders were leaving because they have no exit checks at the airports,” he said.
“The government is increasing the population of the country by just under 100,000 people a year. If you increase the population of the country by the size of Galway city without providing the infrastructure of Galway: the hospital, the university, dozens of schools and the tens of thousands of homes, you are going to make it harder for people to access these resources,” he went on.
“If you raise demand for housing while supply remains restricted, you will increase the price of homes, you will increase the cost of rent and you will decrease availability. This is basic leaving cert economics and yet our government doesn’t seem to get it. Aontú in government will implement a stricter immigration system. We will help those who need help, but we process those who don’t, in a speedy fashion and return them home.”