From top: Washington Street, Cork as it would appear under plans for a Luas-style rail system contained in the Cork Transport Strategy; Dan Boyle

So we are to have a Cork Luas (CLUAS), or maybe not. Another launch of a big spending plan spread out over a significant time span, by a government that seems intent to be the cast of the latest remake of ‘Brewster’s Billions’.

Another spin-dominated presentation that is as much about business as usual, than it is about any Brave New World of transportation.

The reasons to be cynical? This plan, despite its PR gloss, is made from the same template of all previous plans that have preceded it.

The biggest tranche of spending will continue to go to the construction of new roads, with payments front-loaded ahead of any public transport options.

The shining bauble of a CLUAS system is presented with a number of caveats. Much will depend, we are told, on whether hoped for demographic changes occur, and in whether other public transport (bus) initiatives will have taken up the slack by then.

When is then? 2031 apparently, the date it projected to begin a CLUAS system. To be finished for operation by 2040.

Twelve years from now, the twelve years that we need to change tack to avoid climate change becoming irreversible. Twelve years when we should be prioritising public transport over roads only initiatives. Après le déluge CLUAS.

As with most spin presentations the main emphasis has been out on the headline figures. €3.5 billion is to be spent over a twenty year period on this plan. This averages out at €175 million each year, a not insignificant sum.

Except that spending won’t be averaged on an annual basis. There will be very little upfront expenditure with this plan, as has been the case with all previous plans.

Early expenditure will go on scoping exercises. These will rarely be in house with consultants being brought in to reinforce the already held biases of the National Transport Authority.

Future expenditure, the longer implementation gets delayed, will see more of the anticipated budget being eaten up by construction cost inflation. Either that, or the costs get layered on. Much like we are experiencing with the National Children’s Hospital.

The belief is that new road announcements are what pleases the punters. The truth is rather different. Most voters would prefer the proper maintenance of the existing road network, especially pavements.

There is a notorious double standard in transport planning. Asphalt carpets designed largely for single user vehicles, which operate under capacity for decades after construction, are created under a build it and they will come philosophy.

Public transport infrastructure always seems to be assessed on justifying its use on existing, not future, population load.

The basis of infrastructure spending should be to provide now to create development, not to respond later, and inappropriately, try to meet uncatered for needs.

Public transport initiatives should now become the overwhelming focus of transport planning. Such projects should be prioritised for soonest possible implementation.

Brian Nolan, as Myles na gCopaleen, once wrote that the Irish roads programme was to build a series of parallel roads, with the construction equipment being left in situ, in the yet to be completed lane.

That was satire. Current transport planning thinking, and how it been historically informed, is much worst than that.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and is standing in the Local Elections for the party in Cork on May 24.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: Clean up started in February at Cork City Council-owned Ellis’s Yard site in Ballyvolane where 200,000 kgs of rubbish was illegally dumped; Dan Boyle

When I last had been a councillor, local government in Ireland had greater powers, that allowed councils to make more direct and more immediate impact in providing services.

Many councils had Direct Build Units that saw public housing being provided efficiently and in large numbers.

At the very least, Works Departments existed in each council, that were better resourced, allowing repairs to done more quickly, and vacant housing units to become more readily available.

A huge component of the work of local councils was in waste management. Each council had a fleet of Waste Disposal trucks, that would call to designated areas at a set time each week.

From the 1990s a new philosophy on public services began to develop. Imported from the UK, it was known as New Public Management.

At the heart of this thinking was the belief that local government was monolithic, making it inefficient. This gospel indicated, when it came to public services, the private sector could do things ‘better’.

Waste management was to be one of the first sacrificial lambs brought to the altar of New Public Management. Councils sold on their fleets, often at bargain prizes, to new private sector providers.

Soon a multiplicity of waste companies would be found on our streets. Each offering different methods of collection, collecting on different days of the week, charging different rates for the ‘service’ that was provided.

The myth that the private sector is more efficient, and thus better, has been badly exposed by how we have organised waste management since then.

I believe we should return to a simpler time, that when there was a single provider of waste collection in each local authority area.

While such a service could be provided again by local councils, it would be naive to assume they could do so immediately, given large scale capital acquisition costs, particularly at a time of other priorities.

I believe local authorities should contract out, over say a five to ten year period, waste collection to single providers.

Local councils could then become more effective regulators of the service in a way that would standardise how waste is collected, when the waste is collected, and what payment should be made for the service.

Government policy in recent years has been to oblige local councils go in exactly the opposite direction.

In an effort to make the excessive number of waste collection companies viable, local councils have passed a series of by-laws obliging householders to prove how they pay for disposing their waste.

This is being done under the smokescreen of dealing with the very real scourge of fly tipping. However, as with companies registering with REPAK is seen as somehow businesses ‘fulfilling’ their responsibilities on recycling, this is an exercise to driving all householders into becoming customers of the waste collection companies.

This is unnecessary. It is possible for most households to restrict the need to have a large scale waste collection service.

I take my recyclable and contaminated waste to a civic amenity site. My organic waste I put into a container where it breaks down in compost. After five years the container is only half full.

There is nothing particularly virtuous in this. As an individual I continue to produce too much waste. Like others I would like better incentives that recognise household efforts to reduce waste and to recycle.

The main focus of any waste collection system should be to encourage householders. It shouldn’t be to subsidise waste collection companies.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and is standing in the Local Elections for the party in Cork on May 24.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic via Cork City Council

From top:  Monica McNamara, author of ‘Come On In: A History of Cork Simon Community’; Dan Boyle

Twice in the past week I have met with homeless men in Cork’s city centre. In each case I was called over by name, my election posters acting as a calling card.

Both men were friendly, the weather being good helped in that regard. The few bob were asked for, but the conversations were wider than that with me asking if they were getting what they needed from the services available. They were, even if their expectations weren’t much.

That same week two younger men were found dead on Cork’s streets, each within a stone’s throw of the main homeless hostel in the city. Young anonymous lives ended.

It has been almost five years since the death of Jonathan Corrie near the gates of Leinster House. A name, a face and a story that accompanied a situation.

There have been at least four such deaths in Cork within the past two years. I can recall the death of a young woman who had been living in a tent, no further than fifty metres from a house where my daughter was living. And an older woman found in a doorway, again close to the Cork Simon hostel.

Now we have the deaths of these two young men. With these deaths, and their increasing frequency, grows the fear that we are being desensitised to what is happening right beside us.

Since 1971 Cork Simon Community has been the main agency responding to homelessness in Cork City. How it has done so has been excellently chronicled in a recent book written by Monica McNamara named ‘Come On In’.

The original Simon shelter on John Street was better than the street, but only marginally so. It took twenty five years for a far superior building to be made available at Andersons Quay.

Almost twenty five years later the scope of the services provided by Cork Simon has increased significantly. The two men I met now have access to showers and to laundry services. Food, simple in nature and modest in content, is also available

The lottery remains access to the shelter itself. The occupancy rate of the hostel is 110 per cent. If the mathematics of that seem impossible, the additional figures are reached by placing overflow mattresses on the floor of a common area, meaning many more people sleep there than the hostel was designed for.

And still more get turned away.

A number of months ago Cork Simon commissioned a report from University College Cork, the launch of which I was delighted to be associated. The report, which I’ve already highlighted here, outlines the extent emergency accommodation which shelters are meant to be, have become short term, or at least interim, accommodation they were never meant to be.

Much like this government’s approach to housing supply, there seems a studied incomprehension that increased resources of themselves are not enough.

Resources have to be both sufficient and targeted. Increased resources that fail to meet increased demand, only help to widen and deepen the nature of the problem.

Improved facilities remain tantilisingly unattainable to a growing number of homeless. Current policies only help to grow the number of homeless.

More homeless without shelter. More without services. More effectively given a death sentence from the courtroom of the smug.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and is standing in the Local Elections for the party in Cork on May 24.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic: Cork Simon Community

From top: Local and European election posters on Merrion Street, Dublin 2 yesterday; Dan Boyle

The posters are up. The phoney war is over. The new belligerents being the fight for space on the poles, and avoiding the ire of the no posters anywhere focus groups.

In The Greens we always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards posters. The preference would have been not to use them at all.

After some debate it was decided to use posters, but they had to be generic. Greens also strongly opposed the personalisation of Irish politics, seeing it as one of its biggest problems. In fact we were wrong about that. It actually is one of Irish politics greatest strengths.

John Gormley almost caused a schism in the party, with his insistence to use not only his name but also his picture on his election poster. The slogan on that poster was also quite striking:

“Other parties promise you the Moon and the stars; Only The Greens promise The Earth,”.

He came very close in that election to bringing Garrett FitzGerald’s political career to an ignominious end.

Postering was different then. Paper posters had to be pasted onto hardboard backing. Rain usually pealed the paper away. After torrential rain the hardboard itself would get soaked breaking away from cable ties and risking severe injury to whoever might unluckily be passing.

Plastic posters that could be printed upon were seen as a boon. Being easier to make, easier to put up, more likely to stay up, has led to a proliferation of posters. That has created a whole other set of problems.

For me, however they are made, posters an important part of the democratic process.

They are a relatively low cost means of marketing that help to level the playing field between independent and smaller party candidates, and candidates of traditional political parties.

That many candidates go over the top in their use is undoubted. The snowblind effect of pole after pole taken up by a single candidate provides no useful benefit to the democratic process. There has to be standardisation. There has to be regulation.

One current Cork City Council candidate has produced a three metre long poster. Thankfully the poster does not consist of a full length body shot. The amount of empty space on the poster would seem to indicate that not enough achievements exist to meet the candidate’s ambition.

I would be a fan of the European poster box used in many places on the continent to publicise public events. Build them and people will come. However such a culture shift is not going to occur before May 24. Nor can we bring in appropriate regulations to bring sanity to the system before then.

I think it is at least worth stimulating a debate on how such regulations might work. First limit the number of posters that can be used by each candidate. This election I’m using one hundred posters. I don’t understand how many more than that would be needed.

Secondly regulations could signify a minimum distance between posters of any candidates, or repetition of posters of a single candidate. Say one hundred and two hundred metres respectively.

Finally there should an onus on candidates and their campaigns, to identify where their posters have been placed. This would perform a protection for candidates from one of the nastier aspects of election campaigns.

Often posters get moved, by nefarious persons, to unknown locations, so litter fines get imposed on those unaware their posters had been removed.

Nasty business politics. Not that I want to be seen as a poster child for any of this.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Rollingnews

Update:

Do you mean this one ? pic.twitter.com/uFWxC7gC5q

— Gerard (@downgerd) April 25, 2019

From top: Vernon Mount House in Cork was destroyed by fire on July 25, 2016; Dan Boyle

It is nothing like the same context, importance or cultural significance. As Notre Dame was burning I thought of the many of the abandoned husks we have in Ireland.

Stretching as far as back to Norman keeps, and more recently in history to the score of torched stately homes, ruins of buildings seem to have become an entrenched part of the Irish landscape.

In Cork we have a number of recent examples. The fires at Our Lady’s Hospital in 2017 and a year previously at Vernon Mount, have deprived the region of two buildings of significance each poised on either side of the city, defining its outer limits.

Both have since been left discarded. Those who should be thinking about what to do being frightened about the cost of restoration, or lacking any viable plan as to how the renovated buildings could be used.

I particularly pine for Vernon Mount, a huge part of the landscape of my growing up.

The extent of its deterioration, within a very short time span, has been very much a thing of pity. It has been reduced to little more than frontage. In reality it needs to rebuilt from scratch.

Many would argue what would be the point. Many would say that there are far more important uses for public money, especially at a time of housing crisis.

And yet I believe a case can be made. There is an onus to protect elements of architectural heritage from various eras of an area’s history. In Ireland we have been too quick, too often, to demolish rather than add to.

Cork’s Georgian architectural history has virtually disappeared. Restoring Vernon Mount would be a continuing exemplar of what Cork once looked like.

Even if this argument were to persuade there is a still a question as to what a restored building could be used for. Again, I believe it is only imagination that prevents an answer to this question. It could be a community facility, a cultural centre or an innovative social housing project.

Vernon Mount has a story to tell. Cork’s Hellfire Club, its most renowned resident the infamous Sir Henry Browne Hayes, abducted a wealthy heiress here to inveigle her into an illegal marriage as cunning plan to deal with his mounting debts.

Other voices will say let what was be, but I have been here before. One of the more disappointing campaigns I had been involved with, when previously a city councillor, was to argue an alternative use for the former Greenmount industrial school.

An austere, imposing building, it carried with it a tragic history. I had succeeded in persuading the Presentation Brothers (then managers of the school) to mark the names of young men who had died at the school having been sent there, but who had been buried in an unmarked grave.

The order subsequently sold the building to a private developer. What followed was an all too familiar story of loose security, encouraged anti social activity, and when that was not enough, the strategic removal of the roof. This was all part of a wearing down process to encourage a community’s disinterest under which potential would never defeat the folk memory of history.

Another lost building changes the history of nothing. The ruins of many past structures do little to enhance the landscape. What is sorely lacking is a policy on what we should do.

Some ruins need removing. Some buildings need restoring, repurposing. What we need are criteria that help us define why and how.

Top pic: Tara Higgins

From top: Cork University Hospital, Wilton, Cork; Dan Boyle

The Accident and Emergency department at Cork University Hospital, not unique among Irish hospitals, has in recent weeks not only had far too many people awaiting treatment on trolleys, it also has seen many ambulances queued outside as mobile treatment rooms, preventing them from being available for emergency calls.

It is being suggested, that as a means of dealing with these ongoing difficulties, the hospital should convert its Acute Assessment Unit into a general ward to create additional bed space. I believe that this proposal would not only be counterproductive, it is an idea that is dripping with irony.

The Acute Assessment Unit was developed as an alternative to A and E, a measure that would relieve stress from the usual point of admissions in most hospitals. Initially GPs could refer patients to the unit bypassing the need to go through A and E.

I was a beneficiary of this unit. Around five years ago I acquired a serious bacterial infection. After a visit to my GP, a blood test revealed that my white blood cell count was extraordinarily high. I was the most ill I had ever been in my life.

My GP had me admitted to the Acute Assessment Unit. There I was put in the care of an exceptional consultant and an amazing nursing staff.

I required three laser surgery procedures over three days. The first procedure did not go well. I found myself having difficulty breathing and in a great deal of pain.

It was then I experienced all that is good with our health service. During my difficulty a change of shift occurred, but a junior doctor and the nurse in charge, stayed on a further 90 minutes until I was again breathing normally and the pain had subsided. I will always be grateful for the kindness they showed me.

This I experienced as a public patient. Public by choice. I believe in a public health service. It is one of the obvious failings of the Irish health system that not enough policy makers, and sadly some service providers, don’t.

We spend a lot of money on our health system. More proportionately than our neighbour the UK does on its National Health Service.

Our funding mechanisms are a mess. Around two million of our population are medical card holders at a cost to the State of about €1500 per year per card. This would be divided between holders of hospital service and doctor only medical cards. Two thirds of this cost is spent on drugs.

Two million others take out private health insurance, partially subsidised through tax relief. The average premium is about €2000 a year.

Value for money is not being provided through either funding mechanism. We should no longer accept a bit of this a bit of that approach to our health service.

We should adopt a philosophy that has health promotion ahead of reactive health care. A system which is more community than hospital based.

Health care should not be a lottery. I was lucky, very lucky. I was at the right place at the right time when I became ill. A time when some innovation was being attempted. A shaft of light that allowed a possibility that different might be better.

We seem to be reverting to business as usual crisis management of our health services. This will guarantee ever increasing costs with ever worsening outcomes.

Becoming ill or watching those we care about suffer is already bad enough. Having a health care system that is more ill than we are ourselves, is truly tragic.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic: Denis Scannell

Dan Boyle is to run in Cork City South Central at the local elections in May

I was 28 years old when I was elected in my first election. I was the second youngest person elected to the City Council, the youngest being the son of a then TD. There were a number of others elected who were in or around my age; Micheál Martin (two years older than me) had already served six years on the Council.

Most councillors were 15 to 20 years older than me, which led to a fair amount of condescension being directed towards me in my early years as a councillor. Being the first Green elected had slightly fractured the comfortable template of local politics. I neither spoke their language nor understood their thinking. I imagine the feeling was mutual.

I have been thinking of my original experiences as a councillor while listening to a radio piece on the number of young, first time councillors who are not seeking re-election, which played on the RTÉ This Week programme.

The combination of factors mentioned were understandable and logical. The economic reasons were most cited. Many first time councillors were surprised at the scale of the work involved, and how doing public work compromised their ability to engage in other, better paid work, that would help in securing housing and in raising a family.

Few of these now departing first time councillors seemed to gain any sense of real job satisfaction. When a large number of those you are meant to work with, and for, identify you only in negative terms, those negative reactions tend to get under your skin more.

Some departing first time councillors also found life within political party structures to be somewhat confining, with some political parties being more regimented than others.

I was sorry but not surprised that young political activists have experienced this. A vibrant democracy depends on a regular throughput of new people and ideas. Any attempt to bring about an actual reform of local government in Ireland would be worthless if these negative experiences were not adequately responded to.

I would hope that these prematurely retiring councillors may, sometime in the future, return to the public sphere, being then able to put their experience to a more positive use.

I suggest this to highlight a mirror image problem that also afflicts Irish politics, those who continue in public office but whose continuity has become far too lengthy.

We should begin to embrace the idea of term limits. Contribute to public life but leave space to experience life as it is, outside of the goldfish bowl that it is Irish politics.

Make a better, and more informed, contribution by returning to public life after leaving its often narrow, inwardness and insularity behind.

This was a choice that was made for me. After dealing with the personal disappointment, I’m kind of glad that choice was made. Being outside hasn’t made me any less committed, but it has allowed me the space to look from the outside at the system and its many flaws.

This year it will be seventeen years since I last was a member of a local authority. I was first elected half a lifetime ago. I spent a further ten years in frontline national politics.
The last eight years as Citizen Boyle has given me a far better perspective on life.

I have regrets and many frustrations. The changes I would make would be personal, would be social. There is little I would try to change politically, at least not in terms of my personal beliefs.

I’m putting myself forward again seeking to become part of a system of government I know isn’t working. I want to help this system to work to its potential, to work differently, to work better.

To those stepping aside now I say come back again soon. Together let’s fail some more. Let’s fail better.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic : Denis Minihane/UCC

From top: voting during during the last European and Local Elections at Scoil Naomh Aine Presentation Primary School, Clondalkin, Dublin on May 23, 2015; Dan Boyle

On May 24 voters in Cork, Limerick and Waterford will face a rainbow of ballot papers.

In addition to being asked their choice as to who should represent them on their local councils and in the European Parliament, along with the rest of the country, two proposed constitutional changes will be put before them.

A fifth paper will be presented to these voters in the form of a plebiscite to ask whether an office of a directly elected Mayor should be created in these areas.

While this is a government initiative it is unclear to what extent the government actually supports, or believes in, this proposal.

This is a Fine Gael led government that since 2011 has sought to abolish the Seanad, has reduced the number of local councils and councillors, and has done sweet damn all in reversing the centralising of decision making towards national government.

Developing their proposal has been half hearted, to say the least. How the government intends to define the office remains vague. With a voters’ decision now only weeks away there is little indication that the government is being sincere in its intentions on this.

My cynicism has been heightened by reading a recent Irish Examiner article which got hold of cabinet memos that indicated support for this policy is somewhat lukewarm.

I assume the leaking of these memos has been deliberately done by those who are quite happy to talk the language of reform, while never really wanting to rock the boat.

These memos reveal that some cabinet ministers fear ‘too much power’ being allocated to directly elected Mayors.

The views of the Attorney General (which are meant to be confidential) state concerns that transferring such powers to a more local context, risks not availing of expertise that exists at a national, central, level.

Those of us who have seen Cork City Council defer to the Office of Public Works on how the character of the city’s quay walls should be irredeemably damaged, find this contention to be laughable.

Power should be diffuse. Power should be distributed. In devolving power downwards the winners will be our citizens and local communities. The losers will be those who seek to stifle change, afraid to let go, afraid that their citadels will become undefended.

They are ignorant to the extent that decision making has become over concentrated and as a result less efficient.

Politics, especially local politics, would be less reactionary and more inclusive, if decisions were made close to those most affected by such decisions. Resources, instead of being drip fed from national government, could be more directly used at a considerably smaller bureaucratic cost.

A greater sense of ownership among citizens and local communities could come about from an improved local democracy, that better involves them in the decision making process.

The cynic in me doesn’t believe this government actually wants directly elected Mayors, or indeed any real reform of local government. I would encourage voters in Cork, Limerick and Waterford to call the government’s bluff.

However weakly the government is making the case voters should vote for a directly elected Mayor. Establishing this office can provide a platform to reverse the trend of moving decision making powers away from local communities.

These votes in these cities could result in the government wanting what it gets instead of getting what it wants.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. He is running in the local elections in Cork in May  for the Green Party.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Rollingnews

From top: Schoolchildren at the climate strike in Dublin city last week; Dan Boyle

As I turned into Emmet Place it wasn’t as I expected it to be. The scale of the number of students there had surprised me. I ruefully thought of protests I had attended in the past, where a few dozen of us would march to highlight some political or environmental wrong.

Outside the Crawford Gallery I met an old friend. Over thirty years we had campaigned together on various causes. We played different roles. I chose the route of public meetings/gatherings, then trying to articulate wrongs through various media. He chose to be more anonymous. Doing research, producing reports, using science, law and logic to far better articulate what was wrong and why.

He was as pleased as I was at the strength of the gathering. He wondered out loud if we had failed over the previous generations.

Here I partly diverged from his thesis. We had failed to make progress, failed to reverse the damage, but we did to some extent stem the poisonous flow. A generational finger in the dyke exercise.

Years of seemingly futile flag waving exercises at least seemed to have kept the narrative alive. The indignity of being so long ignored, so long derided, before acceptance of the reality of environmental crisis has become mainstream.

The sight of so many young people embracing the challenge that preceding generations had failed, has warmed the cockles of an ageing man’s heart.

And they are doing so with an emotional maturity that I have yet to manage. They are earnest but without the air of preachy seriousness in which many of us had indulged. Indulgences that discouraged many climate change waverers from becoming convinced.

This generation is more inclined to use derision as a better method of displaying two fingers towards the ignorant and the inept.

It has been dawning on them that the ultimate responsibility for clearing up this mess lies with them. They are eschewing the ostrich head in the sand approach of their predecessors. They are recognising that life as we’ve known it isn’t worth living, unless we right these wrongs.

It wasn’t only the emotional maturity and environmental nous that impressed me. These young people are coming through life with none of the stereotypical hangups that blighted my generation.

How they related to each other was a source of wonderment to me. Most exuded a this is who I am, this is what I am attitude, deal with it defiance, that I wish I had during my adolescence.

I did not witness a docile and brain dead generation laid waste by video games and the internet. I saw young people able to interact with each other in an almost gender free way. The emotionally hamstrung me of thirty years ago cried out why couldn’t I be like that?

They will learn their own lessons. They will make as many mistakes as we have made, but they will be starting from a better place.

They will be deeper in the mire, though no longer indifferent to the challenges they face. They will fight in a way we didn’t, nor probably couldn’t.

Our generation may have removed some barriers, cleared some ignorance, but theirs remains the harder task.

Theirs is the shorter time span caused by our frittering of the time of knowing what was known.

I had bought into the myth of of a millennial generation that was spoilt, indulged and cosseted from the real world. Seeing what I’ve seen this week I realise how wrong and unfair that portrayal is.

A future is possible. It will be thanks to them.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. He is running in the local elections in Cork in May  for the Green Party.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Rollingnews

From top: Queue to view a one-bedroom apartment on Tuckey Street, Cork last Summer; Dan Boyle

The electoral area I am seeking to represent contains Cork’s south inner city. As with any urban area, proximity to the centre sees a larger availability of private rented tenancies.

These tend to be older buildings, many of which have been broken down into smaller apartments. Calling door to door it is eye opening to see how many of these properties are sub-standard.

It is the unspoken part of the housing crisis. Too many people and their families are registered as homeless. The housing market, left to its own devices, is producing a spectacular mismatch between supply and demand.

And yet fear of both these factors means an enormous number of people spend their lives living in sub-standard accommodation.

An inspection regime exists, administered by the local authority. The regulations that inform these inspections are the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2017. The initiation of such inspections is solely the preserve of the tenant – the tenant who lives in fear of losing their tenancy, however sub-standard it is.

This perverse form of governance, is unfortunately, far too prevalent a feature of Irish legislation. Notwithstanding the fact that local authorities lack sufficient resources to provide a robust inspection regime, this nobbled process will never be properly used by those who know that other available, affordable accommodation does not exist.

Bunreacht na hÉireann has tied us up in a constitutional Gordian knot. Legal interpretation has weighed in too heavily in favour of private property rights at the expense of the common good. We may need an explicit new constitutional reference to overcome this. Despite this we should be bolder in drafting and implementing legislation in this area.

Property owning has responsibilities as well as rights. Vacant properties, derelict properties, sub-standard properties should be treated as crimes against society, should be stringently policed and prosecuted with zeal.

Fines for presenting property in these ways should be punitive, then immediately be re-invested into having such buildings brought to their full potential.

Part of the double-think that informs policy in this area is the number of tenants living in sub-standard buildings, who are in receipt of housing assistance payments (HAP) to help them meet the cost of their rent.

This means that landlords of sub-standard properties are not only having a blind eye turned to the type of property they are making available for rent, they are being financially subsidised, rewarded, by the State for making these properties available.

We need to take the onus away from tenants in insisting that they be provided with housing that conforms with minimum standards. Local authorities should be sufficiently resourced to undertake spot check inspections. Complaints should be made by those other than the tenants themselves.

I would argue that this could, should be a role of locally elected councillors. There are precious few actual powers possessed by locally elected representatives.

One ill defined but important role is that of local ombudsman – an on the ground observer of the quality of services; someone to articulate the need to bring them up to standard. These are the voices we are not hearing in the current debate.

These are the responsibilities we need to live up to.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. He is running in the local elections in Cork in May  for the Green Party.  His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Top pic: Twitter