Crowe attacks IBEC's housing propaganda
Isn't it amazing that so many people have the solution to the
housing crisis afflicting the 26 Counties. However, equally amazing is
that none of these solutions are given an airing when it really
matters.
Take for example the recent Partnership for
Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) negotiations. The talks would have
benefited from discussion of the Irish Business and Employers
Confederation (IBEC) proposals made this week on tackling the housing
crisis.
IBEC decided that controlling spiralling house prices was central
to preserving the PPF. ``Unless house prices are reined in, we might
as well throw the PPF out the window'' said IBEC director Brian
Geoghegan.
IBEC proposes the compulsory purchase of non-zoned agricultural
land. Local authorities would zone the land for residential use while
also putting in the sewage and other services needed, before selling
the land onto builders.
Surely, if this idea was feasible, the local authorities would
commence their own house building programme. It seems that the role of
government and the public sector in IBECland is provide an easy life
for the private sector. IBEC are also proposing that zoned land not
built on for five years should be dezoned.
Commenting on the proposals Sinn Féin South Dublin
Councillor Seán Crowe said ``IBEC do not seem to have faced up
to the fact that some of the contributory causes of the housing crisis
are the lack of funding from central government to local authority
house building programmes''.
``Why should local authorities having bought, zoned and then
serviced land for building, give it away to the very builders who have
been profiteering and exploiting households for the last ten years?
``We need more local authority housing projects, properly planned
and sensitively developed in consensus with the communities that are
going to live in these new estates. We need action on the housing
crisis, not propaganda.''
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)