‘Cross-party agreement' in Government to establish housing activation office, says minister

Irish Independent

04-05-2025

Minister for Higher Education James Lawless attempted to play down the controversy surrounding the Government's plan to appoint a housing 'tsar', saying the move is more about creating an office to deliver housing solutions.
On Thursday, Nama (National Asset Management Agency) boss Brendan McDonagh withdrew his name from consideration to be the office's first chief executive.
Mr McDonagh's decision came after sharp questioning of a suggested €430,000 salary for the role.
The Government is expected to continue with a plan to appoint a housing tsar.
A poll, published by Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks, revealed that 52pc of the public blamed Housing Minister James Browne for the controversy, while 46pc blame Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Some 88pc of the public said the role should be advertised publicly and that the salary should be between €100,000 and €200,000.
Mr Lawless said the proposed new office is not about the chief executive role, adding that the term 'tsar' was of a "media creation".
"The minister is ambitious. He wants to build houses, he wants to get things done and he wants to get things done quickly - and we all do," Mr Lawless said of Mr Browne on RTÉ's The Week In Politics programme.
"It's not about the tsar individual. It's actually about the office and the delivery.
"The public don't want politics: the public want houses.
"And that's what the Government wants to deliver, that's what Mr Brown is committed to delivering, that's what all of us want to deliver.
"We need to get through the barriers. We know about infrastructural complications, we know about zoning, we know about planning permission.
"On paper, there is cross-party agreement, including opposition, including the Housing Commission, which produced the report last year.
"The Sinn Féin manifesto, the programme for government are all crystal clear. We need a housing activation office to break down the barriers, to build houses at scale and at urgency."
Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said what the Government has proposed is not in line with recommendations from the Housing Commission report.
"What the Housing Commission did say that we needed (was) the housing oversight executives that would be placed onto a statutory footing, that it would have a legislative strength," he said.
"Even what the minister has outlined there is actually not in keeping with the facts of what happened this week, and actually over the last month, and was also backed up by the Taoiseach himself, about a month ago.
"The commission recommended executives with a statutory footing. What we got was this big title and this strong man who was supposed to go in and shake things up without any legislation.
"The whole thing was bizarre. The whole thing has just been a shambles, and it's indicative of the Government who don't seem to know what they're doing."
Clare TD Donna McGettigan, Sinn Féin's education spokesperson, said that while a housing activation office is in the party's manifesto, their role is different to the one put forward by the Government.
"The difference is it's an executive we were calling for, which is what the Housing Commission is also calling for, and that would give it legislative powers," she said.
"What is being proposed here by the Government is just a name, a person that doesn't have any powers, that is going to have a huge wage, which would have created 11 new garda, 11 new nurses, 13 new special needs assistants.
"People could see this eye-watering wage, which is even higher than the American president, and they were very angry about it.
"The fact that we were told that it wouldn't come from the public purse, (but) then to be told that the preferred candidate would actually be leaving his role, so it would be costing us.
"When you're talking about people struggling, they don't want to hear about more money going and it's just wastage."
Meanwhile, Minister Browne announced the highest ever number of private rental accommodation inspections.
Over 80,000 inspections were carried out by local authorities last year – a 26pc increase on 2023.
There was also increased funding of €10.5 million made available to local authority inspection teams for 2025.
Inspection levels have increased from an average of 20,000 a year in the period 2005 to 2017 to over 49,000 in 2022, more than 63,500 in 2023, and an all-time-high of over 80,000 in 2024.
The minimum standards for rental accommodation are prescribed in the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019 and specify requirements in relation to a range of matters, such as structural repair, sanitary facilities, heating, ventilation, natural light, fire safety and the safety of gas, oil and electrical installations.