Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 May 2016

Committee on Housing and Homelessness

Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland

10:30 am

Photo of Bernard DurkanBernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, on the point that the current crisis is a direct consequence of a lack of a national strategy, in my view it is a consequence of a bad national strategy in which a change took place approximately 15 years ago when there was an over-reliance on the private rental sector to deliver everything. During the boom, rents achieved the same level the mortgages. There is obviously a contradiction.

I might as well mention there was a reliance previously on two sources of income for those borrowing for personal house purchase.

One source was the building societies when they were mutual societies. The other source was the banks, which only came onto the scene relatively soon afterwards and we know what happened in that area. There was over-availability of finance which, in turn, resulted in a massive increase in house prices because the banks were competing with one another to find out which of them could give the most money with the least difficulty.

The next factor is the quality of housing. I would not regard some of the houses developed during the boom, particularly local authority houses, as an adequate response to anybody’s housing requirements.

The issue of margins has been referred to. They range from 15% to 60%. Somewhere in the middle, there must be some recommendation, or an area with which we can deal.

The last point is on policy options in the provision of affordable housing. Some of us have made numerous submissions in the past ten years or so to the Department of Finance, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Prior to that, we made submissions to Ministers in previous Administrations. There seems to be a difficulty regarding the crucial question of how to provide funding and the wherewithal for the local authorities to deliver in their part of the market.

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