Rory Hearne's State run construction company proposal

[Purple]

Professor Rory Hearne, lecturer in housing policy in Maynooth University and former People before Profit general election candidate and avowed Trotskyite, has proposed that the State set up a company to build public housing. It would directly employ all of the labour and build an additional 10,000 houses a year within 3 years.

It is one of the most stupid ideas I've read in a long time. In an economy at maximum capacity and with full employment all his proposal would do is shift capacity from the private sector to the public sector. Am I missing something here?

He says that "The Irish State has a proud history of delivering public housing and it must do it again" but that delivery of housing was done at a massive social and economic cost. It was a key part of the policies that kept this country poor for over 40 years and condemned generations of young people to emigration. In fact it was that emigration that ensured that there were no housing shortages in previous decades. It takes a special kind of wilful ideological blindness not to see that.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Hi Purple

A lot of these solutions appear very appealing.

Why not spend money, employ thousands of people and build 10,000 houses?

But they never consider the side effects. These thousands of builders are not available. The architects to design the houses are not available either.

Money is not a constraint. The constraints are the planning system and the availability of workers.

You could ban the building of new offices and possibly some other stuff to free up staff for residential. But I am sure that would have other side effects.

Brendan

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Anthony Leddin from the University of Limerick made a similar proposal at last year's Dublin Economics Workshop and it was roundly criticised by those present.

https://www.dublineconomics.com/s/Anthony-Leddin.pdf
Ah, I see that he had an article in the Irish Times about it as well

New State body required to build homes and tackle housing crisis

Specialised body would all but eliminate administrative duplication in current system

www.irishtimes.com

I think that the idea is that the state should build houses, rather than rent them from investors or buy privately built houses for social housing.

Brendan

 

[Purple]

Hi Purple

A lot of these solutions appear very appealing.

Why not spend money, employ thousands of people and build 10,000 houses?

But they never consider the side effects. These thousands of builders are not available. The architects to design the houses are not available either.

Money is not a constraint. The constraints are the planning system and the availability of workers.

Exactly.

You could ban the building of new offices and possibly some other stuff to free up staff for residential. But I am sure that would have other side effects.

Brendan

Even that would not solve much of the problem because offices are different kinds of buildings with a different supply chain. It would free up labour but it's not a straight swap.

 

[Purple]

I think that the idea is that the state should build houses, rather than rent them from investors or buy privately built houses for social housing.

That I fully agree with. I think it should be illegal for the State to buy a private home and turn it into a social home. It inflates prices and prices young people out of the market.

 

[thedaddyman]

We've had a mind shift change in recent years in this country where core services such as bin collecting and water management were either outsourced or moved to a different quango altogether. Was that always a good thing for the end user, possibly not given that things we historically took for granted as being for free we now pay for and it is debatable if the service is better or worse? And we have a housing crisis, especially in The Pale, so why not think differently

If this new body

• had the power to compulsory purchase land
• Had the power to crash through planning and stop the nimbyism
• had a budget to do what it needs to do
• Had the ability to employ and pay for all of the services and tradesmen needed to complete the building
• Had a governance process in place to ensure the building was up to scratch and standard

and then if it handed the running of these new houses over to the local authority and they had the power and ability to manage them correctly, then it should in theory work and should in theory be cheaper since it removes the private sector margin

In theory is the word here. In reality and looking at the amount of capital programmes, delays and cost over runs in this country, I'd not have confidence.

 

[Right Winger]

A HSE for building houses? No thanks!

 

[PGF2016]

Those articles are behind a paywall. Does he indicate where the workers are coming from to build the houses?

 

[rustbucket]

Those articles are behind a paywall. Does he indicate where the workers are coming from to build the houses?

I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty moved from private sector. Working for the state- job security, public sector pensions, shorter working hours. This is an advantage to some

 

[jpd]

No, that's the main problem with all these proposals

Of course, we could train people but that will take four, five or more years assuming you can find enough people who want to be plumbers, electricians, carpenters, tilers, painters, ...
I can't imagine anyone who has spent 3 or 4 years in Third Level education (which is a lot of the 18-25 cohort) being enticed into those careers

But we could get migrants from outside the EU perhaps - oh wait, where would they live?

 

[joe sod]

It must be remembered that when all those houses were built by the state the workers didn't have much benefits etc, safety culture and compo culture didn't exist. It wasn't that great working for the state vis a vis the private sector back then especially when you were a manual worker.
I saw a clip of the last journey of the howth tram in 1960, they showed a clip of the workers taking up the tram rails. The guy was operating a jack hammer but his face jewels were shaking from the vibration and no hearing protection. This was probably a CIE or affiliated worker. That's why everything could be done so cheaply back then.
Therefore back then the state could build houses cheaply because land was cheap and labour was cheap. If you didn't take up these jobs, the emigration boat was there for you

 

[Brendan Burgess]

that delivery of housing was done at a massive social and economic cost. It was a key part of the policies that kept this country poor for over 40 years and condemned generations of young people to emigration.

Hi Purple

I had not heard this argument before. Could you expand on it?

Thanks
Brendan

 

[24601]

It boggles my mind that an academic employed by a university and writing in the "paper of record" can have such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

 

[T McGibney]

It boggles my mind that an academic employed by a university and writing in the "paper of record" can have such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

That's what extremist ideology does to even smart and talented people.

 

[Purple]

It boggles my mind that an academic employed by a university and writing in the "paper of record" can have such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

That doesn't surprise me in the least. Maynooth is probably the most left wing university in the country and the Irish Times is a mouth piece for left wing populism.

 

[Purple]

Hi Purple

I had not heard this argument before. Could you expand on it?

Thanks
Brendan

During the first decades after independence we spent a large amount of our government's income on housing and pensions. We spent far less on education and health. For the first 40 years after independence we got poorer in real terms. Our population shrank during those decades by 200,000 despite some of the highest birth rates in Europe.

It was only after we shifted expenditure towards developing and sustaining human capital that we became a successful economy. Healthy educated people create wealth. Buildings don't.

 

[Right Winger]

Professor Rory Hearne, lecturer in housing policy in Maynooth University and former People before Profit general election candidate and avowed Trotskyite....

Your description of him is accurate and apt. Amazing how the comrades in RTE and the Irish Pravda Times always manage to leave out the bit after Maynooth University.....

 

[Protocol]

A quick query:

Is Hearne proposing a semi-state building contractor?

Or is Hearne proposing a State-owned property developer?

 

[Purple]

A quick query:

Is Hearne proposing a semi-state building contractor?

Or is Hearne proposing a State-owned property developer?

He's proposing a body that does both.

 

[T McGibney]

Your description of him is accurate and apt. Amazing how the comrades in RTE and the Irish Pravda Times always manage to leave out the bit after Maynooth University.....

That's presumably not unconnected to Hearne blocking everyone on social media who mentions his People Before Profit past.