The level of political outrage generated by the proposed changes to the rent control system is a welcome development. It shows that the Government has actually made some serious decisions about a thorny issue for which there are no obvious right or wrong answers.
The most worrying feature of the Coalition’s first six months in office has been the impression of drift. There appeared to be a reluctance to take decisions that had the capacity to stir up opposition or lead to negative publicity of any kind.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the package of rent control measures, it is at least a sign that the Government is prepared to start grasping some of the nettles that stand in the way of serious progress. Many more will have to be grasped if real progress is to be made on housing and infrastructure.
It is a political truism that governments need to take tough decisions during their first year in office to have any chance of getting results before their term is up. The rental sector is just one aspect of the housing problem, but the willingness of Minister for Housing James Browne to move on the issue hopefully signals more serious initiatives in the coming months.
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The big issue for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is whether they can create the conditions for a significant increase in housing supply to enable young people to buy their own homes. That will require a range of decisions to streamline the cumbersome planning system that stops houses being built and slows the development of the vital infrastructure required for development to take place.
Ireland is far from alone in facing such problems. They are a feature of most successful western economies where many of the regulations originally designed for the public good have been expanded to such an extent that they are now major obstacles to necessary developments.
A serious debate is currently taking place among Democrats in the United States about whether the complex planning rules promoted by the party over the past half century are the very reason they have been unable to meet the needs of a growing population in the states they control.
There has recently been a spate of serious books focusing on the policy reforms needed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure, while enabling government bureaucracy to work more effectively. At the core of this agenda is a radical critique not just of government, but of the array of activist organisations that dominate progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party. They address the question of why large public projects of the past such as the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, which were completed ahead of schedule and under budget, cannot happen today. The problem is particularly acute in states and cities controlled by the Democrats.
The scale of the problem was highlighted by the fate of Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure Bill. He managed to get the measure passed through Congress in his first year and hailed it as proof that democracy can still deliver for the people. The problem was that in the years that followed only a fraction of the funds that Biden had authorised were actually spent, so the Bill had no impact on the lives of ordinary Americans by the time he started his re-election campaign.
The writer Joe Klein, a Democratic Party supporter, summed up the situation: “A regulatory quicksand has been created that it is almost impossible to crawl out of. It has been a bipartisan project – environmental activists and not-in-my-backyard (nimby) obstructionists and antivax loonies walk hand in hand. It has been a movement led by lawyers and judges.”
This debate has a direct relevance to Ireland. It has been widely asked why a project like the Ardnacrusha hydro electric scheme on the Shannon conceived by the Cumann na nGaedheal government in the 1920s, or the large public housing projects undertaken by Fianna Fáil in the 1930s and 1940s, would not be feasible today.
[ Could we build Ardnacrusha now? Not a chanceOpens in new window ]
Even when there is a political will to get something done, the legal and regulatory obstacles prove too daunting. For instance, the commitment to renewable energy was central to the political life of former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan. Yet during his time as minister for energy his ambitious plans to develop a large offshore wind industry stalled.
The long list of objections which have been raised to building a more modest wind farm off the coast of south Dublin illustrate the difficulties Ryan faced in trying to develop a serious renewable energy infrastructure in this country.
Similar problems with cumbersome planning regulation and public objections have haunted the Government’s ambitions to develop our electricity and water infrastructure. To break the logjam it will have to take whatever action is required, and ignore the inevitable squeals of protest.
Despite all its problems, the Labour government in the UK is showing courage in tackling the obstacles to building houses where they are needed and investing in nuclear energy to meet its climate change targets. Similar courage is required on this side of the Irish Sea.
