We’re in the middle of a housing crisis. But we didn't get there overnight. This government engineered the very crisis it found itself in and came up with its own grand plan to solve it. Or so it seems.

But it is part of a wider disaster-economics scenario. What we are witnessing is a complete withdrawal of Government responsibilities. It involves what we have seen until now: people dying in the streets, children sleeping in hotel rooms, soup kitchens feeding hundreds of people, tenants being evicted after the homes they were living in were sold, increase in the number of suicides… But we are to see much more of it, for this government has essentially abdicated its responsibilities to the wolves.

Local authorities were hijacked.

What started with Irish Water and the Local Property Tax is part of a larger scheme in which they are first suffocated of funds, then made redundant, policy by policy.

This is now happening with housing.

The implementation of the Social Housing Strategy is being hampered by significant infrastructural issues, which are not being dealt with quickly enough. That’s according to Dr Donal McManus, CEO of the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH)

He outlines three critical issues -from the perspective of housing associations- that need to be addressed: lack of sites for development; the urgent need for coordination of funding schemes for social housing and the development programmes for housing associations.

The most serious obstacle hampering implementation of the Social Housing Strategy is the failure to make enough sites available to housing associations he says.

“There are over 800 sites in public ownership that could be assessed for social for social housing and transferred from local authorities to housing associations. Housing associations could then access private finance to deliver much-needed homes. However, this is not happening due to unnecessary infrastructural obstacles and delays.”

Alan Kelly’s Urban Regeneration and Housing Bill legislates such a move. Developers under previous bills were to surrender 20% of developments to local authorities. Not only did they bring it down to 10%, it now stands at virtually zero. Instead they will lease these premises to local authorities, retaining ownership. This means the already depleted stock is never to see any improvement.

Another recent Kelly announcement, a new tenant-purchase scheme, will exacerbate this. Under this plan, Social Housing is to be sold off at discounts of 40 to 60 per cent of market value. This does not make any logical or economical sense, selling off assets in time of acute shortages should be the last thing any government would want to do.

Local authorities lost the capacity to provide affordable housing at a local level and the statistics below illustrate that trend. New acquisitions, spending and house completions have all dwindled to the lowest levels in years: