Many older people have a “fairly visceral” attachment to their home and encouraging them to downsize must be about the carrot, not the stick.

Newstalk Breakfast presenters Shane and Ciara this morning considered how we can make better use of Ireland’s spare bedrooms after new figures show one-in-five Irish households have two or more sitting idle.

A new analysis of census data from HomeHak finds that over 389,000 households in Ireland have at least two spare bedrooms.

It also notes that on census night, there were just short of 788,000 households with at least one spare bedroom – equating to at least 1.2 million unoccupied bedrooms around the country.

The authors of the report are urging homeowners with spare rooms to consider making use of the rent-a-room initiative which allows them to earn up to €14,000 a year tax-free by renting them out.

Downsizing

On Newstalk Breakfast discussed what we can do to encourage people to downsize if they are not making full use of their home.

“I have some sympathy for the people who are sitting on [empty rooms],” said Ciara.

“By the way, I have no empty bedrooms, I’m like the old woman in the shoe, I have a house full of children – but, that also means, at some point down the line, if I stay in the same house I'm in now, I probably will have multiple empty bedrooms.

“There is something about living out your days in your own home and not having to move - and I understand that some people would like to move and I understand that some people might be incentivized to move in various ways-– but I think there's an awful lot of people who see their home as something that they have a fairly visceral attachment to.

“You hear people say, ‘Oh, they'll carry me out of this place in a box’ or, you know, ‘from my cold, dead hands’ and I kind of come, a little bit, from that school of thought.

“I can't even imagine what kind of incentive it would take to get me out of my house to downsize. It would have to be massive.”

Shane Coleman in the Newstalk studio. Image: Newstalk

Shane said no-one should be pushed to move against their will – but we can do more to encourage them to do so.

“I mean, I do think we need to take the emotion out of this, because no one's going to be forced out of their house, but what you maybe can do – and by the way, I don't think this is a panacea for the housing shortages at all, we need to build more houses; that's the bottom line – but if we are going to encourage people to move and downsize, we need to make sure there are nice places for them to move to and suitable accommodation.

“I don't think there's anything wrong with offering people financial incentives.

“I don't know how you do it, you could maybe say, you know, if you're a certain age, and you're downsizing, you wouldn't have to pay stamp duty on the new home.”

Carrot and stick

Ciara said she has no issue with offering people incentives to move but, “I do dislike the idea of, having spent a lifetime paying off a mortgage, etc, with there being sticks to do so”.

“I think there is a lot of emotion in it,” she said. “I don't know, but I feel already myself reacting to it – I'm just saying how I feel.”

Homelessness in Ireland reached yet another record high last week, according to official Government figures – with 12,847 people accessing emergency accommodation in June.

The figure includes 3,829 children.

Main image is a splitscreen showing Ciara Kelly and Dublin houses.