Opinion: 'What we're doing is forcing people out into the commuter belt and further away so that they can afford to buy houses'
Government housing policy is leading people away from the major cities and forcing them into longer commutes. That's the view of Dr Lorcan Sirr, Senior Lecturer in Housing at TU Dublin, who recently joined RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to talk about the effects of Government policy on housing and transport. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
"Myself and architect Mel Reynolds have looked at the types of housing that people are are buying, but more importantly where they're buying," says Sirr. "What we have increasingly noticed since 2017 is that first time buyers in large urban areas in Dublin and Cork city are increasingly not being able to buy in the city, because there's nothing for them to buy. Instead, they are moving out to Wicklow, Meath, Kildare and Louth, and indeed to Longford and Westmeath.
"The problem is that we don't have a public transport system that can suit these people. Increasingly, what you find are people buying a second car, getting into the car and driving to work, which is the complete opposite of what you want in sustainable development and I'm sure the complete opposite of what the likes of Eamon Ryan would want happening in the country".
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From RTÉ 2FM's Jennifer Zamparelli, Dr Lorcan Sirr on the government's affordable housing scheme
Sirr believes the Government's claim that 400 people are buying their first home every week is "misleading". He points out that "over 400 first time buyers a week aredrawing down their mortgage, but that's not the same as buying their first house. Because over 40% of those people are self-builders, so in other words, building their own homes on their own land.
"When you say something like 400 first time buyers are getting their new home every week, the implication or the inference that people would have, is that there's loads of brand new houses available for people to buy around the country and in fact, there aren't. There's only about 330 first time buyers buying a new home every week and this is the issue, that there are very few new homes out there for first time buyers and for movers."
Have sales evaporated in Dublin and Cork? Sirr says there's less than one first time buyer a month in Cork city and about two a week in Dublin city, "which is shocking in the capital city. Instead, we're seeing the development of apartments. "Of course, apartments are never available for sale, they're always for rent, and a lot of them are social housing, which is great [because] we need lots of social housing", points out Sirr. "But a lot of them are build-to-rents which I would argue we don't really need, because they have lots of negative impacts."
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However, the Government would say that these are still homes. "The Government would say all sorts of things, which are wrong," says Sirr. "Our Irish welfare system, our wealth, is based on home ownership and what we're doing is forcing people out into the commuter belt and further away, so that they can afford to buy houses. Because in Ireland home ownership is the basis of our wealth, effectively, and we need home ownership in Ireland, it's the way we operate, and building thousands of apartments for rent isn't the solution."
What does Sirr say to the argument that "a home is a home"? We're in the middle of a housing crisis and haven't we always moved out of the cities to buy? "It was ever thus when we didn't know what we were doing and now we're intent on better, compact growth and sustainable development. Saying 'a home is a home' - it very much matters where that home is. Particularly for women in households who do the bulk of the care and driving around for kids and things like that. Irish women drive more than women in any other country in the European Union precisely because of things like urban sprawl and no public transport.
"So it's not as simple as saying 'a home is a home'. There's much more surrounding the home, literally and emotionally. There's all the services and transport and commuting and health and well-being that goes around it as well and we've ignored that, at the expense of building apartments."
