Why Are We Not Building Council Houses?

Housing is the biggest crisis facing many people as they suffer high rents or are stuck on local authority waiting lists for years.

70,000 people are officially listed on waiting lists but this does not include others who have been forced to take up a HAP scheme in private rental accommodation.

The easiest solution would be to build council housing on public land. But Fine Gael refuse to do this.

Last year just 2,022 local authority houses were built. In the dark days of the 1980s, between 5,000 and 6,000 council houses were built each year.

After that, a deliberate policy was adopted to cut back on council house building. Restrictions were placed on the ability of local authorities to borrow and eventually central funding was cut back.

The aim was to turn council housing into welfare housing – available only to the very poor who waited for years on housing lists.

Then to compound matters a new excuse was found for not building council housing – the social, mix. Unless wealthier people could buy private houses in an estate, there was to be no major council house development.

It is time to end these insane policies. Councils could build decent houses for less than €200,000 on public land. They could open access to the majority of PAYE workers.

That would create  culture where public housing was valued – and the waiting list were cleared.