Government and cross-party support for housing activation office, minister says

By Cate McCurry, PA

There is cross-party agreement in Government and in the Dail to establish a housing activation office to “break down the barriers” and build houses at scale, a minister has claimed.

Minister for Higher Education James Lawless attempted to play down the controversy surrounding the Government’s plan to appoint a housing ‘tsar’, saying the move is more about creating an office to deliver housing solutions.

On Thursday, Nama (National Asset Management Agency) boss Brendan McDonagh withdrew his name from consideration to be the office’s first chief executive.

Mr McDonagh’s decision came after sharp questioning of a suggested €430,000 salary for the role.

The Government is expected to continue with a plan to appoint a housing tsar.

A poll, published by Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks, revealed that 52 per cent of the public blamed Housing Minister James Browne for the controversy, while 46 per cent blame Taoiseach Micheál Martin.

Some 88 per cent of the public said the role should be advertised publicly and that the salary should be between €100,000 and €200,000.

Mr Lawless said the proposed new office is not about the chief executive role, adding that the term ‘tsar’ was of a “media creation”.

“The minister is ambitious. He wants to build houses, he wants to get things done and he wants to get things done quickly – and we all do,” Mr Lawless said of Mr Browne on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics programme.

“It’s not about the tsar individual. It’s actually about the office and the delivery.

“The public don’t want politics: the public want houses.

“And that’s what Government wants to deliver, that’s what Mr Brown is committed to delivering, that’s what all of us want to deliver.

“We need to get through the barriers. We know what about infrastructural complications, we know about zoning, we know about planning permission.

“On paper, there is cross-party agreement, including opposition, including the Housing Commission, which produced the report last year.

“The Sinn Féin manifesto, the programme for government are all crystal clear. We need a housing activation office to break down the barriers, to build houses at scale and at urgency.”

Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said what the Government has proposed is not in line with recommendations from the Housing Commission report.

“What the Housing Commission did say that we needed (was) the housing oversight executives that would be placed onto a statutory footing, that it would have a legislative strength,” he said.

“Even what the minister has outlined there is actually not in keeping with the facts of what happened this week, and actually over the last month, and was also backed up by the Taoiseach himself, about a month ago.

“The commission recommended executives with a statutory footing. What we got was this big title and this strong man who was supposed to go in and shake things up without any legislation.

“The whole thing was bizarre. The whole thing has just been a shambles, and it’s indicative of the Government who don’t seem to know what they’re doing.”

Clare TD Donna McGettigan, Sinn Fein’s education spokesperson, said that while a housing activation office is in the party’s manifesto, their role is different to the one put forward by Government.

“The difference is it’s an executive we were calling for, which is what the Housing Commission is also calling for, and that would give it legislative powers,” she said.

“What is being proposed here by the Government is just a name, a person that doesn’t have any powers, that is going to have a huge wage, which would have created 11 new garda, 11 new nurses, 13 new special needs assistants.

“People could see this eye-watering wage, which is even higher than the American president, and they were very angry about it.

“The fact that we were told that it wouldn’t come from the public purse, (but) then to be told that the preferred candidate would actually be leaving his role, so it would be costing us.

“When you’re talking about people struggling, they don’t want to hear about more money going and it’s just wastage.”