MEMO TO MICHAEL D: DON’T STIR THE POT

MICHAEL D Higgins went off-script yesterday in a public speech, at the opening of a centre for homeless young adults in Kildare, saying that we don’t have a housing crisis, but a ‘disaster’.

The President, pictured, also said that housing and basic needs of society should never have been left to the market – and that the outlook is getting darker for sections of the population. He said that he would speaking more about it in the future because he thinks it is a ‘great, great, great failure’.

I suspect that he’ll be getting a call from Government Buildings reminding him of his role, and that his position demands that he not give voice to his opinions on matters of ongoing political debate, such as this.

Because while many of us would have sympathy for the position he expressed – being horrified by the rents that people are being charged, the inability for most to buy housing and the number of homeless – the situation is a more complex than his analysis suggests.

If our President wants to emote – and stir the public fires – then it is incumbent upon him to provide costed suggestions as to how the State should finance and then construct all the new housing units we need. Otherwise, he is acting like a newspaper columnist – and his position is far more significant and important. Off-script: President Higgins Whether he likes it or not, there is a significant role for the private sector in the financing and construction of new units – and the President should know that the State has been busier than the so-called ‘cuckoo funds’, the institutional investors, in buying new units from private developers. Stop the developers and the crisis gets even worse – even if it doesn’t suit the political ideology of some to admit that.