Sir, – The debate on housing to date has been predominantly an adversarial Punch and Judy show that can hardly be termed discourse, with an excess of defensiveness for the most part.
This might be understandable in the immediate shadow of the property bubble of the early 2010s, but the anger must be replaced by credible action, through housing delivery – housing of all kinds – at this time.
We cannot afford to continue to set housing policy without informed debate and expect to arrive at solutions that accelerate all housing output.
Only a whole-of-government approach, following full stakeholder engagement through a task force for housing, with a focused programme for delivery, holds any prospect of resolution of this long-running systemic issue.
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There’s every chance that there’s far more consensus than we perceive when it comes to practical solutions.
We have a generation who are effectively excluded from housing – be it rental or purchase affordability.
We need every stakeholder to contribute to the solution.
The widely publicised “curve” in the Covid-19 context is not the only one requiring to be flattened. There’s an equally formidable example in the demand for housing, driven by year-on-year underperformance on overall housing output. It is hardly credible that the “excluded generation” will accept this situation for much longer. – Yours, etc,
DAVID O’CONNOR,
Chairman,
Property Industry Ireland,
Ibec,
Dublin 2.