The Irish Independent's View: It's up to Housing Minister James Browne to sort out scarcity of zoned land
Now that he is unshackled from the doomed role, he is free to opine on the housing dilemma. Mr McDonagh introduced 'Felipe' as an acronym for the solution to the biggest problem facing Ireland.
'F' stands for finance being available for developers to build; 'E' is for expertise in trades and the necessity to address the shortage of carpenters, plumbers and electricians; 'L' represents the availability of land for housing; 'I' is the infrastructure to service the zoned land; 'P is for the planning system, shortening the time taken to get building and reducing the amount of developments being appealed to An Bord Pleanála and then judicially reviewed, which also costs money; and finally, 'E' is engineering and availing of modern methods of building to enhance construction productivity.
'To me, if you solve those six issues, you have gone a long way towards trying to help resolve the situation,' Mr McDonagh told the Oireachtas Finance Committee last week.
Easier said than done. But then this cohort of parties in Government has had the best part of a decade to address much of the 'Felipe' framework.
After saying goodbye to the Troika, Fine Gael told us it wanted to keep the recovery going. Fianna Fáil joined them loosely in partnership in 2016, before a formal marriage in 2020. Now the two Civil War parties have ditched the Green Party and replaced them with the Independents.
It's been evident throughout this period that fixing society and providing housing was equally as important as repairing the economy.
The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one. We're a long way past that stage now and yet we still don't seem to have moved into the solutions phase. Instead, the problem is still being discussed. The latest contribution to the debate has been the 'L' in 'Felipe' being picked up on and teased out. Three of the country's biggest home builders say that the limited availability of residentially zoned land for housing is the key driver of property inflation.
Supply and demand means that prices are being sent rocketing by a chronic shortage of homes to buy at a time of strong demand, according to a KPMG report. The industry says the lack of zoned land to meet demand is driving up prices, according to the report.
Rather than leaving it to local councils, Housing Minister James Browne is promising to step in and zone more land, particularly in areas near critical infrastructure like road, public transport, electricity and water services. It can't come soon enough.
However, Mr Browne made a hames of the appointment of the housing tsar. Now the minister will just have to clean up the mess himself, rather than sub-contracting the job out.
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