FOR THE LAST year or more, Ireland’s many infrastructural crises – chief among them the lack of housing supply and the consequent astronomical cost of the rare few houses that are available to buy or rent – have been cleverly disguised by bad actors as something else entirely.

The ‘Ireland is full’ mantra has sought to pin many longstanding systemic shortcomings on the doorstep of those who, in many cases, don’t even have so much as a doorstep to their name. The suffocated supply of housing, including as many as 163,433 vacant homes, has never been the fault of international protection applicants.

Thanks to the smoke and mirrors (literal smoke, metaphorical mirrors) from those who would seek to obfuscate the true causes of the housing crisis, though, actual productive discussion about housing began to fall by the wayside, replaced by conversations about immigration, usually fuelled by falsehoods and marked by dangerous rhetoric.

Sinn Féin – who surged in popularity in 2020 thanks in no small part to the credibility of their Housing Spokesperson Eoin O Broin – have themselves at times been guilty of eschewing what truly matters in order to pacify an implacable far-right. They have only suffered in the polls since deciding to appeal to the anti-immigration cohort. This week, they have perhaps begun to return to the issues that can actually, truly benefit people and published their housing policy document, A Home Of Your Own, which promises 300,000 new homes between 2025 and 2030. 

Analysing a policy before it’s implemented, particularly one written by a party that has never been in government, is sort of like trying to judge the quality of a cake by eating its ingredients. So at risk of ending up covered in egg, and also flour, sugar and margarine, we won’t be doing that. You can read the full details of the document here, however.

What this column can do, in the meantime, is listen to the criticisms levelled by those who have so mismanaged the housing supply for the last ten or so years and exhaustedly ask: “Really?” 

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe, for example, issued a statement calling Sinn Féin’s plan “bad news for aspiring home-owners and bad news for renters”. Excuse me? Am I forgetting the time in the past 13 years of Fine Gael governance in which there was good news for aspiring home-owners and renters? A FactCheck by The Journal, meanwhile, found that Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien made some misleading statements during his televised debate with O Broin this week. Earlier in the week Fine Gael put out a profoundly ratio’ed tweet bearing the caption ‘Fine Gael is the party of home ownership,’ which is true in the same sort of way as saying that Ticketmaster is the most efficient way to get Oasis tickets. Sure, some people got tickets, but most of us agree that the system is a disaster. 

Writing about Ireland’s housing crisis feels like bashing your head against a brick wall. Also the wall costs €500,000 for some reason, serves no discernible purpose and also if it’s in Donegal then it could fall down and cause serious harm to your family. Which brings us to our next story.

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Whether those in power have the will to change the allocation of government resources has long been called into question. This week there was a whole new reason not only to question their will, but their wherewithal. I am, of course, referring to the bike shed. The €336,000 Leinster House bike shed, paid for by the Office of Public Works and completed this week to the utter horror of the public. €336,000 for a bike shed. Even Ticketmaster would be proud of that one.

The bike shed will join the infamous Dáil printer in the pantheon of ill-fated public spending projects that are both inexplicable and inexcusable to anyone capable of minding a cow for 20 minutes without trading it for some magic beans. Unlike the printer, the bike shed at least fits on the premises, but much like the printer, its arrival calls into the question the judgment of those tasked with spending public money.

Maybe this criticism is unfair. Maybe I’m allowing some personal prejudice to cloud my judgment. Maybe I’m just jealous of the bikes because they have something so far out of my own grasp (a house in Dublin). 

Finance Minister Jack Chambers has said that whoever signed off on the new €336,000 bike shed at Leinster House must be held accountable. Nobody would argue with Chambers that there should be accountability for such reckless overspending, but one does wonder who Chambers believes should be ‘held accountable’ for the €336,000 National Children’s Hospital. Oh no wait, that’s right, that’s costing us 6666.67 times the amount the bike shed is. Though in fairness to the children’s hospital, it probably does come with a bike shed (and if it doesn’t then god help us we’re going to end up doubling the €2.24 billion that we’re already somehow paying for it). 

Chambers’ intimation that an individual or group can be found and held responsible for this one example of stupid spending will likely be read as disingenuous by a public who can hardly remember the last time that the government got a good deal on anything. 

The public at large do not associate the government with anything like the kind of savvy, streetwise, Moneyball-esque spending strategy that we’d like to see. Indeed, when money like this is approved for the world’s most expensive 18-bike bike shed, all it does is remind the public of all the money that doesn’t get spent on the things we really need. 

At least it seems that we’re finally talking about housing again.