Ireland blazes a trail on housing

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

What would our politics look like if housing really were the most important issue in a general election?

After a week that’s seen the Labour government set out a series of bold planning reforms in pursuit of its ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes in England in this parliament, it’s a question that may seem to be moot or unrealistic depending on your point of view.

But it does not have to be either: take even a cursory glance at what’s happening in a country close to home and you will find an election where housing really was the number one issue at the polls.

The election in Ireland may not seem to have changed very much – the government will still be led by Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fáil (FF) as coalition negotiations continue – but housing could be set for a transformation.

On issues ranging from social housing investment to security of tenure for private renters, those parties of the centre right are well to the left of anything that Labour is proposing in England (or Wales). 

On housebuilding numbers alone the contrast is staggering. That target for England works out at 300,000 a year and is widely seen as highly ambitious not to mention unachievable.

In Ireland, FF and FG plus the Progressive Democrats and Labour, the two centre-left parties that could form part of a coalition, are all promising 50,000 to 60,000 new homes a year. Adjust for England’s population (57.1 million) compared to Ireland’s 5.3 million and you get a range of 540,000 to 650,000 per year. That’s a level that really could make a difference to affordability rather than just slowing down the rate of house price growth.