Can the Sinn Féin housing plan make inroads into the crisis that has gripped the country? The party’s electoral fortunes depend on it persuading voters that it can.
With this in mind, in financial terms it has decided to bet the house on the issue – so to speak – with a big €39 billion spending programme over five years. It is designed to deliver 300,000 homes.
Sinn Féin argues that the money is there, and this may attract voters, but can they actually deliver on their promises?
In terms of affordability, the State spending programme is already based on a continuation of strong tax trends. By planning to spend more – an additional €4 billion per year on its own estimates – Sinn Féin is upping the ante further. The party says that this is possible by sinking less revenue into two infrastructure funds established to save for the future. A few more years of buoyant taxes may indeed lie ahead, but the real challenge for Government in recent years has not been cash, it has been delivery.
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Billions have been committed but a mix of administrative and regulatory issues means house building – particularly of social and affordable units – has been slow. The Government’s weakness in the debate on how to address this is the obvious one: it has been in office. And it has not shown any signs of engaging with the proposals from the Commission on Housing in any serous way. What the Coalition thus offers is a version of “more of the same, only better”.
Sinn Féin, on the other hand, can promise systemic “change” in an effort to speed delivery. The issue here is that this is complicated and would inevitably take time. Its proposals aim to pull more control back to the State, notably local authorities, in the delivery of a large public housing programme, involving 125,000 homes over the next government’s term.
It also wants to revamp the way State land is developed and introduce a new affordable housing initiative, whereby the State continues to own the land, thus lowering the price for purchasers in return for some constraints on their ownership.
Sinn Féin is sticking with its plans to end most upfront support for buyers, though it would now phase out rather than end the Help to Buy scheme. It has also added a new incentive of abolishing stamp duty for first-time buyers of houses up to €450,000.
There are a lot of moving parts in the plan. Implementation is the big challenge. The Sinn Féin plan would require breaking the inertia in parts of the system: planning, the local authorities and their relationship with central government and the entire State housing apparatus. It would also mean relying on a building industry that is short on skills. The industry is also often short on finance, though there are plans to help smaller operators with new State-backed lending.
[ Housing fight for Sinn Féin will be convincing voters to ditch Government schemesOpens in new window ]
The party promises to tool up local authorities, the planning system and the courts. This is needed but will take time. Sinn Féin has some interesting ideas, for example to accelerate private building on so-called brownfield sites through a new mechanism of co-operation with local authorities.
The Coalition has increased direct State intervention in the housing system, but has also relied on a host of schemes to get homes built by the private sector. Sinn Féin’s plan to take back more control of this spending – rather than using incentives to try to get private developers to do what the State wants – would be a significant departure, even if public and private provision remains part of the plan for Irish housing.
For voters, it is not quite a case of evolution versus revolution, but it is not far off.
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