One sign of the Government’s concern about housing is a string of recent comments from Ministers referring to the recommendations of the Housing Commission. The report , published last summer, got little traction with policymakers when it was published, with its recommendations being shuffled away to the Housing Agency for further assessment and costing.
A document from the Department of Housing at the time implied that the bulk of the recommendations were already in hand, or under consideration. Meanwhile, the commission’s call that a Housing Delivery Oversight Executive be set up to oversee delivery and be given significant powers to do so was dismissed as creating an unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy. A commitment by then Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien to bring the recommendations of the commission to cabinet at a later stage never happened.
Now, however, the Government is in trouble on housing after figures from the Central Statistics Office said that just over 30,000 new homes were completed last year, well below election time forecasts of close to 40,000. And there is finally talk of looking at some of the commission’s recommendations, in particular those on rental controls.
The Cabinet, meanwhile, is to consider the creation of a “strategic housing and infrastructure” office at its meeting next week. This is not quite the powerful executive called for by the commission. However, it will be charged with much of the coordination work which the commission had identified for the body it proposed.
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The Government is right to consider new approaches, though it needs also to be mindful of the commission’s view that for many years policy has been characterised by " ineffective decision making and reactive policy making where risk aversion dominates.” It needs to consider policy in the round, make its decision and try to provide some longer-term clarity. The first key step to doing this will be finalising the National Planning Framework, a key document in setting national housing strategy . This is needed without further delay.
