The top civil servant at the Department of Housing, Graham Doyle, told a property conference on Thursday that he did not think a “housing tsar” was necessary.
Mr Doyle spoke against the suggestion that a new “tsar” was needed to tackle the housing crisis at the Property Industry Ireland (PII) conference in Dublin on Thursday.
Referring to a poll of conference attendees on whether a housing tsar was necessary, Mr Doyle said: “I like that poll; I voted no.
“We do not need a housing tsar – can I just clear this one up please, once and for all.”
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The Department of Housing later issued a statement, saying that Mr Doyle was referring to his opposition to the term “tsar”, rather the role of the head of the Government’s new Housing Activation Office (HAO).
He told the conference on Thursday morning that the Minister for Housing and the department “have a job to do around housing policy” and that Government departments have “a very broad policy remit” when it comes to housing.
He stressed that the work the department does was in the policy and funding space as well as removing obstacles for construction efforts.
“We don’t need a tsar to do all of that and we never, ever used the word ‘tsar’,” he said, adding that “an interventionist approach” was needed on the ground.
“There is a sense in some quarters that if you knock a few heads together, if you give enough people a kick in the backside, then things happen. I only wish that was the case,” he said.
The position to head the HAO was suggested by Minister for Housing James Browne, who also spoke at the conference.
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While an appointment was blocked by Fine Gael at the start of May, the Government has insisted it will be going ahead with the plan.
The department later issued a statement about Mr Doyle’s remarks at the conference, saying on Thursday evening that he “took the opportunity to strongly emphasise that the word ‘tsar’ is not – and was never - appropriate to describe" the head of the HAO.
Mr Doyle “emphasised” at the conference that the HAO will have a chief executive “with an interventionist approach to key sites on the ground, not a ‘tsar’ and the connotations that word evokes”, said the department’s statement.
The department said the focus on ‘tsar’ in media coverage had been “misleading and not reflective of the real intent and purpose of the HAO role”.
The statement said Mr Doyle was “fully supportive of the HAO and wholly supportive of the Minister and what he is trying to achieve in this regard”.
Brendan McDonagh, chief executive of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), had been highlighted as Mr Browne’s favoured option for the role but he withdrew from contention over the political controversy over his €430,000 pay package.
The Government has reiterated its plan to continue with the setting up of the office.
Responding to the questions on Mr Doyle’s comments on Thursday, Minister for Public Expenditure and Infrastructure Jack Chambers said: “We’ve been very clear. The Government position is that there will be someone leading the Housing Activation Office, and it’s a matter of Government policy and direction that that’s what will occur.”
Mr Chambers, speaking before the Department of Housing clarified Mr Doyle’s comments, said the secretary general’s view “might be his own perspective” but “he’ll have to implement what Government decides”.
“I think it’s fair for people to make observations, but their primary duty is to implement Government policy and to drive delivery of the Programme for Government – and in fairness, they do," he said.
