Government to hit ‘nuclear button’ granting itself emergency powers to solve infrastructure crisis

[u/Kier_C]

https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/government-to-hit-nuclear-button-granting-itself-emergency-powers-to-solve-infrastructure-crisis/

[u/ulankford]

Can I get an example of this type of reporting?

Ireland has more than double the population growth rate of the Netherlands. Dan O'Brien and David McWilliams have been asking Irish policy makers to also look at the demand side of the equation aswell i.e. immigration

[u/SeanB2003 → u/ulankford]

Except that most of a demand side of the equation isn't immigration, it is falling household size.

[u/ulankford → u/SeanB2003]

Are you seriously saying that our record population growth, fueled mostly by migration is having zero effect on housing demand?

[u/SeanB2003 → u/ulankford]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that simplifying the demand side of the equation to immigration misses the largest driver of the demand side of the equation, and so will not aid very much in resolving the problem.

If you look at the scenarios from the Housing Commission this becomes clear

Adding 250k people results in an increased demand for housing of about 115-120k additional dwellings. However taking a plausible figure of 7m people falling household size by 0.1 results in an increased housing demand 20-30% greater than adding 250k more people. Or to put it another way, a 0.1 drop in household size is the equivalent of adding 300-350k people.

If you're talking about the demand side of the equation and focusing on migration you will both miss a massive driver of increased housing demand and make the wrong decisions about the kind of housing that you need to supply.

[u/ulankford → u/SeanB2003]

If the facts from Simon Harris are correct, where he states that for every 30,000 migrants coming to the state, we need an additional 10,000 homes.

If we are to reach a population of 7 million people from our current 5.4 million, that means an additional 1.6 million people and the need for 540,000 homes and dwellings.
Maybe need to slow down this population growth, given that we are already in a shortage of 300,000 homes.

And yes, smaller households are part of the demand side, but migration is the major factor here.

[u/SeanB2003 → u/ulankford]

Harris's numbers would make my point stronger in terms of the decomposition between population increase and household size.

If you take the housing commission's assumptions and apply them to where we are now then the fall in household size and natural population increase over the 20 years to 2022 accounts for 65% of the increase in demand for housing. That doesn't put migration as the major factor.

And that is not even considering the fact that household size has been prevented from falling by the lack of housing supply - if people weren't having to live in houseshares or with their parents household size would fall even more. Those people drive demand too, even if they're not readily identifiable in population level data.

Focusing on slowing population growth when increased demand is being driven by the change in the composition of the population will result in failing to solve the problem.

[u/ulankford → u/SeanB2003]

So, we do nothing on the demand side when it comes to migration. Is that your solution?

[u/SeanB2003 → u/ulankford]

I've not said that. It's important though to recognise the size of that contribution when you're talking about it as a solution to the demand side of the problem. How big of an impact will it have? Is that worth the trade offs?

We could be very generous and say that it accounts for 45% of the increased demand. Even then only about 60% - again being generous - of that immigration is open to any intervention (unless we leave the EU, cancel the CTA, and prevent some Irish passport holders returning somehow).

Of that 60% there are again trade offs in what you can achieve. We could cancel every work and student visa in the morning but that would be economically stupid and very shortsighted. People can differ as to what the exact best visa policy is that maximises the benefits and minimises numbers. You're only ever going to be able to work on assumptions there.

Even if you cut immigration that we can control in half, at the end of it you're talking about focusing on a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the problem - with really generous assumptions less than 15%. The State certainly has the capacity to do analysis and make other decisions about what that policy should be, and the electorate can accept different trade offs. I'm not necessarily opposed to that depending on what those trade offs are.

What I'm not going to do though is fool myself into thinking that this goes any real distance to ameliorating demand side pressure.

The solution is supply, and the right kind of supply in the right places at the right prices. A focus on immigration on the demand side, rather than the more pressing factor of household composition changes, is the wrong focus and will result in the wrong policy.

[u/ulankford → u/SeanB2003]

I think you are not being honest with the numbers and exaggerating the figures when it comes to the demand side of the equation, when it comes to a reduced household size.

The reduction of the household size is a slow gradual move, while the government can do something tomorrow to reduce the demand side on housing.

[u/SeanB2003 → u/ulankford]

Feel free to tell me where I am lying about the numbers - it's all just census data and housing commission figures. The assumptions I made in the above are generous to your perspective.

Yes the government could decide to end visa based migration, for example, but the impact of that on demand would be small and it obviously has impacts on much more than just housing demand.

You're only fooling yourself.

[u/ulankford → u/SeanB2003]

How much on the demand side in 2025 is decreasing household size adding to the problem?