Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Following the recent constitutional convention decision that housing is a right that should be enshrined in the Constitution this is a timely and worthwhile debate. What it should not be is a time for Government to give itself an undeserved slap on the back for re-announcing housing measures already declared and so far undelivered. The latest of these is the €15 million over two years for the redevelopment of vacant housing units, which will deliver a meagre 449 homes. These are not additional houses but houses already in existence which could have been made available previously but for massive cuts to maintenance and other council services. These houses form part of a natural turnover in the context of the death of tenants and so on. This money has been announced a number of times, giving the impression that great strides are being made to tackle social housing. It has also been announced time and again that NAMA is to provide 4,000 homes for social leasing. It is rarely announced that fewer than 500 houses have been delivered, that the scheme is almost three years old and that social leasing is just another subsidisation of private landlords with limited social housing return.

The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, finally clarified this morning that the local authorities have deemed only 2,000 of the 4,000 homes promised by NAMA as suitable and that the Government only promised 2,000 units. Despite this, the number of 4,000 is bandied about by the Minister of State and the Government. The reality is much less impressive. Clúid housing plans to build 400 new homes in 2014. The State should support the delivery of social housing by the local authorities. Voluntary housing bodies are welcome but the main source of housing provision should be local authorities. The fact that the 449 houses to be provided will be local authority housing is positive. We need to grow the publicly owned housing stock. If this starts with reclamation of vacant units, so be it.

While I welcomed the recently opened new housing in my area by Fold housing, I was not happy that this was originally publicly owned housing which was given to the voluntary bodies to redevelop. The excuse I expect is that the local authorities cannot raise the funds to refurbish these but that is only because the Government has done nothing to open up new funding avenues. The Government's solution is not to be creative to ensure a large varied public housing stock, which is essentially privatisation. This is privatisation to not­for-profit bodies that do excellent work but privatisation none the less. The Government wants to shirk its responsibility and is using voluntary bodies to do so. I do not believe this Government wants to live up to the reality of the crisis in housing. Slapping itself on the back for a scheme to deliver-refurbish only 449 homes in two years is a clear indication of this. The Government is in denial or does not care. I hope it is the former.

The numbers cannot be ignored. There are currently approximately 90,000 families on housing waiting lists in this State; 98,000 families in receipt of rent supplement and 25,000 on RAS. Homelessness has worsened because of the Government's austerity agenda and failure to deliver social housing which would reduce rents and house people currently in emergency accommodation. The statistics are shocking, particularly when juxtaposed with the claim by the Government that it will end long term homelessness by 2016. We cannot have a housing led approach without housing. The Government is pursuing a houseless approach. There are approximately 5,000 homeless people in this State. According to Focus Ireland, there was a 43% increase in 2013 in the number of people seeking housing advice to help prevent them losing their homes. In the capital, 16 families per month, and up to five children per week, are losing their homes. In 2013, approximately 9,237 people were homeless or at risk of losing their homes. This compares to 7,819 people during the same period last year. The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of inner city Dublin has increased by 88% since 2012. Homelessness statistics are now at an all-time high.

In 2013, rough sleeper teams from the Simon Community made contact with 4,271 people, distributed 22,700 sandwiches and hot drinks to people on the street and issued 2,500 needle exchanges. More than 40% of those who accessed its emergency service had been homeless for more than five years. There were approximately 136 people sleeping rough in Dublin in November last, compared with 94 in April. Threshold states that there was a 77% increase in demand for its services in 2013. The solution is simple. Private housing must become more affordable and more social housing must be provided. The provision of more social housing will curb demand and so lower rents across the board. This requires only political will to decide what must be done. All the major housing charities agree that the solution is political.

We can build more social housing. In this regard, Sinn Fein has shown the way. In 2012, we showed that with European Investment Bank funds and other investment funds more than 9,000 homes could be built over two years. This is 18 times more than NAMA has delivered for leasing and 18 times what the Government is promises to have refurbished in two years. While it would not be sufficient to end the housing crisis it would be a good start, or it would have been two years ago. The Government only recently sought European Investment Bank funding for housing. We have little detail regarding on what that investment will be spent. Given recent Government schemes, I have my doubts about its likely effectiveness in tackling the shortage of housing.

The provision of 9,000 new homes in the system would start to ease soaring rents. This type of development could allow for rent caps to be put in place. Rent caps can work but they have to be introduced in conjunction with the delivery of significant numbers of social housing to ensure people are adequately housed. Much of the private rented housing in the inner city of Dublin is not fit for habitation, with most failing even the most basic of standards. The State cannot stand by and allow slums to develop. The programme for Government proposes exploration of alternative funding models for social housing. Three years on the best this Government can come up with is alchemy as nothing has been brought to the table. Even its proposition of social housing bonds has been ignored. This scheme would allow local authorities to sell bonds using existing social housing as leverage. It has worked for many bodies in the UK and Europe which have raised billions to build more housing, thereby overcoming the problems referenced earlier by the Minister of State in the context of the troika and loans.

Another policy proposed by Sinn Féin and many experts in social housing is the establishment by local authorities of housing trusts which would allow them to borrow in the same way as voluntary housing bodies do. This would open up many more options for councils to raise funds to build housing, separate from Department funding. This could significantly increase the ability of councils to provide housing. This policy has been ignored by the Government despite some councils exploring it. I recently asked the Minister a number of questions in this regard but they remain unanswered. I propose to bring this to the attention of the Ceann Comhairle.

The Government needs to make a serious about-turn on social housing provision. It is the key to lowering rents and ending homelessness. It is as simple as providing for peoples' rights. I look forward to the debate on the housing Bill. We have a housing crisis. Some 16 additional families per month are reported as homeless. If that is not a crisis, I do not know what is. Over the last couple of years, and in particular the past couple of months, I have dealt with many families facing homelessness. I recently dealt with two families in that situation. I also recently protested at the clinic of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, in regard to a family previously in receipt of rent supplement that had to split up having become homeless.

This is the human cost of what is happening. Families are being split up and men, women and children across the board are suffering. We are not tackling this matter in a serious fashion. There is a need to get real and to put a genuine house building programme in place.

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