From top: Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien addressing media at Government Buildings on measures to curb the activities of cuckoo funds last Tuesday; Dan Boyle

During my life I’ve had experience of every type of housing tenure. I’ve been an owner occupier. While in the Oireachtas I also acquired an apartment in Dublin, a home from home as I worked there.

The owning of either property was something of a self delusion. Large mortgages existed on both properties. What existed was a promise to acquire if agreed payments were met at required times.

The purchase of the house in Cork wasn’t easy. We qualified for a Housing Finance Agency loan through Cork Corporation of £17,500 (punts) at an interest rate of 13.5%. The house we purchased cost £24,500 equivalent to €35,000 in new money.

We met the shortfall through a £5,000 sterling loan from an English relative paid back at commercial rates, as well as £3,000 loan from our local credit union, given as being for ‘house furnishing’. A first time buyers grant either didn’t exist then or it didn’t apply (it wasn’t a newly built house).

Our collateral against this was a collective income of less than £100 a week. In fact it was lower than that again, as the Teamwork employment scheme I was on came to an end, making me unemployed as the conveyancing was being completed.

This type of juggling has held a similar relativity across the generations throughout the history of this State. The formula has always been access to a mortgage provider giving rates of interest that could be sustained at an average level of income.

Not anymore. Once Ireland, along with the UK and New Zealand, had at 80% among the highest rates of home ownership in the world. Now we are below the European Union average.

The dependence on owner occupier housing has skewered the choice that has historically been available. The private rented sector has been been small, with local authority social housing being the main alternative for many.

The post-Celtic Tiger period saw government policy encourage a larger rental sector. The sector has practically been given carte blanche to establish dominance in the housing market.

The growing affordability gap and the virtual ending of building new social housing, has helped affirm the new found dominance of the rental sector.

In acquiring property, my generation, and those before mine we’re lucky. My daughter’s generation and that of her children won’t be.

What we need is a national coherent housing policy. One that offers real choice in housing tenure. One that has security of tenure and fair housing costs as its core.

We can’t go back to the way things were. We can’t allow the pernicious influence of the Construction Industry Federation to continue to hold sway.

Voluntary housing bodies, community housing and cost rental schemes offer the opportunity that widens the diversity needed to deepen and improve housing supply. This is where policy should lead.

I sold the properties I ‘owned’. The mortgages were repaid. There was no cash profit nor was that something that bothered me. The payments over the years I made I saw as the equivalent of rent.

For the past decade I have rented. I will rent for the rest of my life. Once that rent is affordable and my tenure is secure I will be happy to do so.

Would that everyone had that choice.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and serves as a Green Party councillor on Cork City Council. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

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