What I asked the Progress Ireland team in my first week
An outsider's perspective on Progress
I joined Progress Ireland last month as Director of Communications.
What made me want to work here is probably the same stuff that makes you want to read this newsletter. Getting big, new ideas into the Irish policy machine is exciting, and something I wanted to be a part of.
Now I’m in an interesting position where I’m part of the Progress Ireland team, but not yet fully immersed. I have an outsider’s perspective. And I’ve been asking a lot of questions.
What does the “progress” in “Progress Ireland” mean?
Progress is about changing the world for the better. It sees the issues Irish people face, like our lack of housing, shortage of infrastructure, and economic overreliance on foreign multinationals, as challenges we can address with ambitious new ideas.
The natural enemy of progress is small “c” conservatism: the idea that things are fine as they are, and that we should not, or cannot, change them. Progress, on the other hand, embraces change and tries to harness it.
Progress sees building as a solution to many of the problems we face. If we want to make Ireland a better place to live, we need to build lots of new things. Hundreds of thousands of homes in beautiful new towns and cities, a whole new electrified rail network, and a much larger ecosystem of dynamic Irish startups.
Progress is pro-growth. Economic growth provides fuel we can use to create a better future. It helps the country build wealth, which we can invest into things like a better public transport network and a green energy grid. When done right, this creates a virtuous cycle: investment in infrastructure creates jobs, which unlocks further growth, which enables more investment, and so on.
Is Progress right wing or left wing?
When I first heard the answer to this, I thought it was a cop-out. That answer was: progress thinking cuts across traditional left-right lines.
“But don’t the ideas like progress and growth naturally sit with the right?”, I asked.
Growth and innovation are seen as more right-coded. But that doesn’t mean that progress is solely a right-wing pursuit. Progress should be (and increasingly, is) the concern of the left too.
The Abundance movement is the best example of this new way of thinking on the left. Abundance boils down to two ideas. The first is that to create a better future, where everyone has access to good housing, green energy and transport infrastructure, we need to build and invent more of what we need. The second is that to get there, we need to tackle the root causes of scarcity, the things that lead to high costs and shortages today.
When we look at the root causes of high costs and shortages, we see that many of the well-meaning rules and regulations we’ve added in recent decades have started to gum up the works. Things like planning rules that restrict housing density and building regulations to increase the energy efficiency of new homes were created with good intentions, but in aggregate have made it difficult to deliver housing within a reasonable budget and timeframe.
To create a world of cheap, abundant goods, we need to reduce the red tape and create better accountability for delivery. This line of thinking is supported by Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders. Abundance-style initiatives have also been run by New Zealand’s ex-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the UK Labour Party.
On the other hand, parts of progress thinking don’t sit comfortably with the right. For example, pro-progress organisations champion state capacity: the idea that the state needs to be staffed and resourced to tackle common-good challenges, like delivering critical infrastructure. This runs counter to the small government preferences of the right.
So in truth, the progress movement doesn’t fall neatly into either side of the political spectrum. We examine ideas that will improve human wellbeing and if we believe they will help, we look at how we can implement them.
What is the Progress Ireland view on inequality?
We increasingly live in a world where people can’t afford the basics, like access to good-quality housing where they want to live. Progress Ireland’s view is that ordinary people can’t afford the basics because we have stopped building them.
Housing accounts for 67.7% of the net wealth of an Irish household. Home owners benefit from financial security when they retire and can unlock cash by downsizing. However, we now live in a two-tiered society of those who can afford to buy a house and those who can’t. People who can’t afford to buy live financially precarious lives with limited ability to save.
Even those who can afford to buy pay more for less. Newcomers to the housing market have to buy homes further away from where they grew up, where their friends live, and where they work. They spend hours stuck in traffic every day and feel more stressed and isolated.
Increasing the supply of housing is a powerful tool for decreasing inequality. Housing supply helps bring down prices, putting home ownership back in the reach of ordinary people. Plus, building homes where they are needed most reduces commuting and improves people’s sense of wellbeing. If you save an hour in your daily commute, that’s an hour to grab a coffee with a friend, sit in a park reading a book, or spend time with family.
What does Progress Ireland think about social housing?
Social housing provides an essential societal function. At its best, it ensures that people who, for one reason or another, can’t afford to buy or rent on the private market have access to a warm, secure home. The state should be empowered to concentrate its resources in this area to best provide for those in need.
Progress Ireland has looked at ways that the state can provide more social housing per euro invested. And our recommendations for reducing the high costs of building benefit all kinds of housing, social and private.
A better, abundant future
Imagine a near-term future where every Irish citizen can afford a home of their own. They live in a beautiful town with shops, restaurants, and cultural spaces all within walking distance. And just down the road from their apartment is a rail station that takes them to the city or their job in 30 minutes or less. That’s the future Progress Ireland wants, and it’s the future I want to help deliver. I hope you will too.