economy gone crazy
Developers make money on empty flats while housing lists grow,
reports Roisín de Rossa
There are those who think that the housing crisis ends at the
Pale, but there are darker shades of pale all around the 26
counties when it comes to getting a roof over your head.
This is a problem faced by at least 100,000 people in the 26
counties according to Local Authority figures. Local authority
housing lists add up to an incredible 47,000, of which 11,000 are
in Dublin and County, 4,240 in Cork and County, and amazingly
over 2,000 in each of Counties Wicklow, Wexford, Kildare and
Donegal.
d no one should be under the illusion that the dire housing
crises in these counties arise only because everyone is looking
to live beside the seaside. EU money, tax incentives, tourism and
all these `goodies', along with the continental cheeses, wines
and patisseries, have brought their associated problems. The
situation is bad in Dublin - it's crazy in Clonakilty.
For down at the seaside, overlooking the most beautiful sandy
strand, is Inchydoney Lodge, a 67 bed-room hotel plus 60 unit
apartments blocks. At £100 a night for a suite, or £110,000 to
buy an apartment, it's not quite the lodge you'd house the
gamekeeper in. The town owes the development of this site to John
Fleming, who has done roadworks for the County Council, and
Seamus O'Mahony, an accountant from Bandon. They built the lodge
for around £10 million, with grants and subsidies and
accompanying tax incentives
All this becomes possible with EU funding and tax incentives,
which generously allow you to write off double your income from
the development against tax for 10 years in seaside resort areas.
And of course this all helps build the enormous tourist potential
of the area.
The development is managed by Michael Knox Johnston, a well known
hotelier who has worked his way up from managing the Sandals
Hotel in Jamaica, to the Chepstow Country Club, to Mount Juliet
and the Skibo Castle in Scotland.
Knox Johnston runs a thalassotherapy spa - nothing to do with
Scottish women, but a process which uses ``fresh heated sea water
as a source of relaxation, invigoration and healing'' (a bit like
fresh salmon out of a tin) with subaqua massage multijets,
counter-current swimming area, a geyser spa, and aeromarine spa,
topped off with ``microbubble seats''. Furthermore you can get
lymph drainage, marine brumisation and a variety of algotherapies
amongst other treatment choices that you wouldn't want to be
without.
Local residents, who would have come to this lovely beach for
picnics on a Sunday, strongly backed the project, and, as a
meeting of 500 in the town showed, so great was the desire to get
the project off the ground that the West Cork Branch of An Taisce
dropped its objections - the first time such a thing had happened
in its 50 year history.
Many of the apartments remain vacantly staring at the beautiful
seaview and West Cork scenery, but this mightn't be a source of
stress to Fleming and O'Mahony, because getting rid of just 40 of
the apartments would bring in over £4 million and that means £8
million tax free.
But three miles up the resurfaced road, in Clonakilty, there are
some families living in two room flats above the shops. Pointing
to one of the gaily painted, pink and green buildings in the
tourist attraction, main street, Sinn Féin Town Councillor,
Cionnaith O'Suilleabhain says, ``for instance up there is a family
with three children living in two small rooms in totally
unacceptable conditions. Apart from the overcrowding, and the
state of the building, they would never get out in a fire.''
``Most of these shops have flats above them,'' he goes on. ``The
owners can charge exorbitant rents. £70 is quite usual for a
sub-standard one-roomed flat. I have called on numerous occasions
on the Town Commissioners and lobbied the County Council to
implement the Housing Act, register these landlords, and inspect
the accommodation and order improvements. It just doesn't
happen.''
Cionnaith goes on. ``The Government supports the people who run
about in Mercs, who have more money than they know what to do
with and who rub shoulders with politicians. It helps them to
invest millions, but they don't care a damn at the end of the day
if the property is rented or not. They still make money even
though there are people living in real poverty and appalling
conditions who can't afford decent accommodation.''
``We've 220 on the housing list here in the town, and there are 12
houses coming on stream shortly, and all these empty flats down
by the sea. It is criminal.''
It is scarcely any wonder that Peter Bacon, of the highly
acclaimed Report on Housing, observed that ``the question has to
be asked, is it a good idea that we provide tax incentives for
commercial development when the need for housing is far more
pressing? Tax designation,'' he added, ``may need to be looked at
further.''
It's not that the people in Clonakilty lost by the Inchydoney
development. They didn't. Provision of social housing to meet the
needs is simply not an alternative, whilst the developers have
the money, and government backing, to make investment decisions,
and Municipal Authorities and local people don't; but that is the
craziness of the `privatised' system that the boomtimes have
brought us.
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