Like the Children's hospital? Once you start dealing with public procurement process the prices inevitably rise. DCC's pretty comprehensive review published in Jan showed it was 40% cheaper for them to acquire private developments via Part V than it was to build themselves.They could fix this at source by building low cost public housing with limited profits and govt ownership.
Any development where there is no profit motivation will be more expensive. The desire to make a profit keeps costs down.Like the Children's hospital? Once you start dealing with public procurement process the prices inevitably rise. DCC's pretty comprehensive review published in Jan showed it was 40% cheaper for them to acquire private developments via Part V than it was to build themselves.
Dublin City Council overpaid contractors by more than 40pc to build social homes compared to private developers, according to a new report.
The stark findings, released by the local authority, highlight the council’s failure to manage costs.
The report, commissioned two years ago, confirms concerns raised by senior executives in Dublin City Council (DCC) in late 2020 that building costs were unusually high for social housing projects.
Read the report and not the attention seeking headlines.If you are referring to this... it would be seem be saying they overpaid, not that its 40% cheaper. Maybe you'd link to what your referring to.
Read the report and not the attention seeking headlines.
The headline says they overpaid contractors, the report makes no such finding.You could have been referring to anything. What in the report contradicts the papers summary, or that supports your assertion.
While it does mention scale may be a factor, they go on to conclude:Reports suggests that lack of economy of scale is a factor, and lack of coordinated oversight of the sector.
it would not be appropriate to conclude that cost differentials between public and private delivery can be explained entirely by scale, cross-subsidisation, and wider project nature.
Yes, a few "will somebody please think about the children!" emotive talking points really help these discussions.
Thankfully we don't do really stupid things like that anymore.
And those projects were in the 60's and 70's. Our housing and spending policies between the 30's and the 70's were a disaster and kept this country impoverished. The reason we didn't have homelessness back then was because 40,000 or so young people emigrated each year. In the early 80's most homes in this country didn't have central heating. Much of the social housing we were building was worse than the emergency accommodation we have now. That was because of the stupid policies of investing so much in housing and not in education and health. It is only since we stopped doing that, that we have become rich.
So that we don't repeat the moronic mistakes of the past. We want massive social transfers (the highest in Europe), massive healthcare spending (amongst the highest in the world), a good education system and all the other things that developed countries have. If we stopped doing all of that then we could build houses like we did in the 60's and 70's. Still think it's a good idea?
You can if you choose to ignore the substance of my post.Not sure how you can put emigration at the door of building housing. That's quite the leap.
The 40,000 or so that emigrated each year during the "golden years" of Irish construction didn't have a house here.Most housing today is of a higher standard than that of the past.unless you don't have any...
Agreed.The 40,000 or so that emigrated each year during the "golden years" of Irish construction didn't have a house here.
Should we wreck the economy again and have moronic economic policies that prioritise public housing over education and health, indeed prioritise it over a developed economy where people can afford their own housing?
They might be looking at similar end products, but the process of delivering them is significantly different.I think if someone has paid more than their peers to do the same thing, thats overpaid in my book.
Why do you think that?But I don't think Irish Govts were genuinely trying to fix the crisis. You can see this in their apathy towards social and public housing completions.
What would they do differently?It will take another crash, or a change in the political status quo, which may end up being one and the same. Who knows.
No, the click-bait headline says the they overpaid, and versus private developers and not their peers. I didn't read anything in the report suggesting they overpaid for any single service. In 39 pages, the term isn't used once.That report is essentially saying they overpaid compared to their LA peers doing the same thing, and perhaps smaller properties.
But that comparison was the very purpose of the report, to attempt to quantify the difference and identify the drivers behind the higher cost and suggest remediation steps where available.Trying to make that out that the private sector could do the same thing cheaper is comparing apples with oranges. The private sector is free from the obligations of the public procurement. Its not valid comparison.
It would appear you haven't read the report. If you want the 30 second confirmation, look at the graphs produced to outline the findings of the review. They compare the costs per unit for DCC, AHBs, and Part V. There wasn't a single unit developed by any other LA included in the review.Like as I said paying more than your peers for the same thing is overpaying. You're arguing over semantics now.
The higher cost relative to other local authorities. How much it costs private developers is neither or there other than a baseline.
Where did I say that?If your argument is the local authority should just buy them finished of a developer.
It is a simple reality that public construction, under necessary procurement rules, do not allow
for long-term economic/commercial relationships which will allow for economies of scale
across projects based on such criteria.
Yeah, they're Approved Housing Bodies, another layer of complexity where it's not clear whether they're part of the solution or the problem.My mistake I assumed AHBs were local authorities as when I looked the term up it was listed under "Local authority and social housing"
Interesting point, but Aisling Reynold's mentioned in one of her papers that we actually lost housing in the 60s and 70s due to the number of homes demolished or lost to total dereliction outnumbering new builds. What is the minimum replacement level to keep the number of homes the same and how do we think about homes being "lost"?It's a good article, but I would have liked to see his proposed solution.
With an 8% vacancy rate, it suggests that underutilisation is a big part of the problem.
Brendan
I was living in a gated apartment complex last census, and they kept arriving until someone answered, and spent a lot of time patiently explaining the census to anybody who hadn't great English, as well as explaining how to answer the questions.That might be the theory but in an apartment complex good luck with that in practice.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?