Housing targets are ‘crazy talk’

“It’s all crazy talk!” is how one of the longest-serving politicians in the country, Westmeath’s councillor Mick Dollard, has said he reacts when he hears of undertakings from political parties to build 50,000 to 60,000 houses a year.

“You don’t have the actual number of builders and people who [are] qualified in the building trade,” he said at the December meeting of the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District as he backed a motion by Sinn Féin councillor David Jones, who proposed measures aimed at ensuring local authority houses in need of repair work can have that work undertaken. Cllr Dollard said a lot of the people who have qualified in the building trade have emigrated. “You have a capacity problem here. If you talk to any builder or anybody involved with housing maintenance, the people simply aren’t there to carry out the work,” he said.

“There’s not enough emphasis placed now on apprenticeships now for the building trade,” Cllr Dollard continued, adding that a lot of traditional careers in the likes of Bord na Móna and Westmeath County Council don’t happen any more meaning that avenue was gone and the country is now relying on builders to get young people through the various apprenticeships. “A national government will need to look at this particular issue,” he said adding that was why it was “crazy talk” when politicians spoke of building 60-70,000 houses annually while the capacity was not there in the workplace. “I mean, we all know people who are waiting for walk-in showers now and that it could be take six months, it could take 12 months, it could take 18 months.”

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Cllr Dollard said if the capacity was there, all those problems would be addressed.

“It’s not a question of money: the money has been provided nationally. The problem is capacity. You don’t have the tradesmen to carry out the work.”

He added: “If we didn’t have people from Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, working on construction in this country at the present moment, we could throw our hat at it.”

The motion by Cllr Jones that gave rise to the discussion proposed that the district explore the possibility of directly employing teams to carry out maintenance work on the council’s housing stock, and that they keep those teams going by hiring apprentices in the future.

The written response to the motion stated that the council’s housing department’s view was that this would need to be examined on a county-wide basis. It also explained that the current policy at Westmeath County Council is to contract out housing maintenance.

The response went on to state that the creation of maintenance teams directly employed by the local authority would require substantial resources in terms of supervision, labour, and health and safety and would have significant budgetary implications.

“It is not envisaged to change the current policy at this time; however, if policy changes on a national level, this could be examined,” the response concluded.

Cllr Jones explained that what prompted his motion was the fact that public representatives reporting housing maintenance issues feel really undermined when they can’t give a direct answer to people on when the issues in question will be fixed.

“One man in particular was told not to light his fire two years ago, and his chimney’s still not repaired. He is lighting small fires at his own risk,” Cllr Jones said, conceding that it might have been a better strategy to bring the motion before the full council for discussion.

“Newly-elected councillors need to be sat down and told the process: who to contact so we can get dates on when people’s heating will be repaired in local authority houses, when their chimneys will be fixed, when their front door will be fixed, et cetera.”

Best motion in ages

Cllr Dollard said Cllr Jones’s motion was one of the best he had seen before the district for many years and he agreed with Cllr Jones that the matter should be brought before a full council meeting.

Cllr Dollard then went on to list the range of needs competing for access to the skilled people available. He said there were 30 voided houses in Mullingar needing to be restored; there are 75 houses in Dalton Park needing work done after a retrofitting programme started there two years ago was found to be poorly carried out. At the same time work is needed on houses to be made suitable for people with disabilities and there are maintenance requirements on foot of the repair requests logged daily by residents of local authority houses.

Cllr Denis Leonard agreed with the points made by both men, including the point that it was not going to be possible to build 50,000 houses a year regardless of what political parties promised during the election.

“The tradesmen of Cllr Bill Collentine’s generation and so many of the people who could do anything in a house, fix anything, do anything, is moving on,” he said. “They’re in the 50 plus age group.

“We’re training up specific apprentices now, specific areas, electrical, plumbing, whatever else. And there’s just not enough of them: a lot of them now live in Canada or Australia.”

He said the brain drain that happened during the 2008 crash here has continued, and that not alone was it going to be impossible to build 50,000 houses a year, but it was going to be impossible to repair the existing housing stock unless more tradesmen get trained.

“One figure that needs to be put in the public domain here is 70% of the parents in this country want their children to do degrees, but only 40% of people need a degree to do what they’re going to do as a career,” he said.

“That has to change. And then we always brag we have the highest or higher level education. That’s all fine, but not everyone can sit behind a computer.”

Cllr Alfie Devine agreed: “We should be writing to the Dept of Education about this, because it’s going to be a massive problem down the line,” he said.

“I’m in the building trade, and I’d say in the last six years, we’ve had two apprentices come on the sites that I’m involved in. So it’s going to be a huge issue.”

Cllr Collentine agreed that it is taking too long to have maintenance done on houses and supported the view that the council should have a team of trained tradesmen.

Cllr Emily Wallace said this country should look at the template set up in the UK after Brexit, when they found that they had a huge issue in relation to training.

The mayor, Cllr Ken Glynn, also supported the speakers. He said that in general the council do get repairs effected relatively quickly, but that there are longer delays with any repairs required in houses purchased under the tenants in situ scheme.

Addressing the question of the lack of apprentices, he said the difficulty is in finding ways of attracting young people into those fields.

Director of services Deirdre O’Reilly undertook to look into the particular cases referred to by Cllr Jones and said her door and those of her staff were always open to hear of any cases of concern. It was agreed that the issue should come for discussion at a meeting of the full council.