The two issues which are causing Irish people the most concern and annoyance at the present time, are housing and our uncontrolled mass immigration. However, if there was sufficient housing and accommodation available, far fewer Irish people would be worried about those who are coming here.
If you’re old enough to cast your mind back a decade and a half or so, when we had plenty of people coming here from Poland and other countries, who was protesting? It wasn’t an issue in the early 2000s because the chronic lack of accommodation didn’t exist. The ongoing failure to build worthwhile numbers of houses and at the rapidly worsening deficit in either rented accommodation or houses that first time buyers could acquire has been the cause.
Accepting such large numbers of migrants per annum, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants, is unsustainable at present, because of the shortage of housing or of any kind of suitable accommodation for such people, nor for the 14,500 Irish homeless and so many home seekers. Whether migrants have come here seeking a better life, forced out of their countries by war or conflict, or because they’ve been told there’s money for jam in Ireland makes no difference. There’s nowhere they can be housed, and unsurprisingly, the homeless Irish are prominent among those at present opposing this.
The EU’s asylum and international protection rights are all good and fine, but the EU cannot impose this on a country that isn’t able to put a roof over the heads of large numbers of needy Irish people. What their provisions envisaged was not mass economic migration such as we’ve been witnessing. The authorities here have been temporarily making use of available rooms in hotels and suchlike for Ukrainian refugees, and while this may have suited the providers, it isn’t something that could continue. Likewise, the idea of putting thousands of people into tented accommodation, including those from countries where winter conditions are totally unlike those in Ireland, is not only unfair but is irresponsible. Tent “villages/towns” are not realistic and if Ireland’s winter/spring weather in the months ahead echoes what we’ve experienced in the first half of this year, the doctors and hospitals will be overwhelmed with newcomers who can’t even adequately communicate their ailments to those who are there to help them.
With a general election in the offing, Irish politicians are seeking to outdo each other in regard to solving the major problem- which is how to build enough accommodation, either houses or groups of permanent dwellings of some kind as rapidly as possible, and at costs which are not outlandish. At least 300,000 such dwelling units are needed right now. And if we continue adding a further 20,000 or 30,000 homeless migrants to the list annually, we’re going nowhere. The present Government’s policy has not been effective enough, and the housing proposals by Sinn Féin don’t seem realistic either. Getting people to vote for a constitutional right to a house for every adult in Ireland is all good and fine, but it won’t build any houses by having a law saying we must do so. Nor will their idea that the various local authorities should become responsible for providing the houses – and would build them faster and cheaper.
How then can the needed houses be built? In plain language, two things are needed. The land/locations for them, and the money to build them as rapidly as possible. What jumps out this week is the fact that a chunk of funding has now been provided, thanks to the Euro decision that Apple must pay €14 billion in back-taxes to Ireland.
The present Government or any government has the power to compulsorily acquire the land needed, and the money to adequately compensate those who own it. They also have the “Apple” windfall to finance the building of enough reasonably priced housing units to seriously improve the current situation. How many apartment blocks and housing units can be built with €10 billion? Would it not be possible, if there’s effective budgetary control, to make definite use of this money, and make inroads into resolving the housing crisis?
If the present Government doesn’t avail of this “unwanted” windfall for the purpose, the political grouping that is prepared to do so would surely receive strong public support. But is there the will and the essential budgetary control?