Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for putting forward this legislation, which I support. The OECD released its report, Taxing Wages 2022, confirming that Irish workers saw a sharp decrease in living standards last year. It called the combination of a 3.3% decrease in real wages and a 0.8% increase in average income tax paid a double blow for workers. This is not just a double blow for workers, but it is a kick in the teeth for working people. Energy and food prices, rent and mortgages are skyrocketing while health, mental health, community and homelessness services are all at breaking point because of years of cuts, underfunding and mismanagement. The Government has allowed the cost of living, from the cost of keeping yourself in a home to keeping food on the table or the lights on, to outstrip ordinary people's ability to keep up while allowing any supports, resources or services people have to fall apart. Falling living standards and real wages and failing services have been overseen by this Government. That is what people are facing and struggling with right now.

We are in this situation because of austerity, privatisation and commodification. After the 2008 crash, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and the Green Party, over successive governments and hand in hand with the European Commission, the European Central Bank, ECB, and the International Monetary Fund, IMF, implemented a strict programme of privatisation. Where it could not privatise, it began to pave the way for it, which we saw with Irish Water. There was no central water service that could be easily packaged up and sold off so the Government began a process of metering, centralisation and consolidation to create an entity that could be privatised. When the process of commodification could not take place, savage cuts were implemented across local and national services. What could be was sold off or outsourced and what was not was cut to the bone. The Government put a profit motive into the heart of our services and allowed private companies and private individuals to make money from services vital to people's lives and the running of our State. This was with the complicity of the EU. Where there is a profit motive, there is a motive to cut corners and services. This continued a process of neoliberalism that started in the 1970s and 1980s and looked to move as many State responsibilities as it could to the mercy of the market. Nowhere is that clearer than in housing.

The Government keeps throwing out this fact about building more public houses since 1975. I have read numerous articles on how this is totally untrue. Why 1975? Until the 1970s, there was a programme of public housing in which the State built public housing that was totally out of the control of private interests. Traditionally, the State built over 22% of houses from the 1930s to the 1960s. There was no profit motive or private interests making millions from high prices. It was housing for workers, by workers. Transport, post office, office, retail, hospitality and construction workers were all able to avail of public housing. It meant that if you needed a house, you got one and it was built by the State and the market had nothing to do with it. The only people who benefited from it were the workers who got the wages for the construction and the people who got a home. There were differential rents based on income, which this Bill discusses in the private sector.

Instead, there has been a total surrender of house building to the private market, the selling-off of public housing stock and the privatisation of almost all new public housing through schemes like HAP and RAS. Not only did the Government privatise construction of public housing, it also privatised the provision. HAP and RAS cost more than €1 billion to service. The Government relied on the primate markets to supply HAP tenancies and now house prices are at a record high. There is a demographic shift of landlords coming up to retirement so the market is collapsing and they are selling their houses at a profit. That is how we got here.

The Government privatised housing supply and because of that people cannot find homes. There is a need to increase the cap on income to access the housing list. It was increased recently but it should be increased again so that more workers are brought into the net to go on the housing list. If that happens, as it has since January - there has been a slight increase - more public housing must be built to service those people. People cannot come onto the list and then spend 15 to 20 years waiting to be housed.

In the middle of this housing and eviction crisis caused by Government party policies, the Government is committed to the status quoof more private rentals, more private provision of public housing, more profit off rents and more people made homeless. The most decisive action the Government has taken in this crisis over the last few years was to remove the eviction ban. It did not massively increase public housing, control rents or legislate for security of tenure or tenants' rights. It removed a no-fault eviction ban that was keeping tens of thousands of people in their homes. We must return to the State building a supply of housing. Profit and the market must be taken out of housing because they are destroying people's lives and the economy. They are pushing thousands into poverty and leaving thousands unable to have a home. There are more than 11,700 people in emergency accommodation. I dread to see the next figures coming out in that regard. I reiterate that several people have come to our office in regard to housing.

We have dealt with two young men, one working in the construction industry, another working in the computer industry, who both sleep in their cars because they cannot afford rents. One of them actually bought a car to live in out of his deposit plus money he had saved to get private accommodation. He sleeps in Tallaght every night. It is an absolute disgrace. He is now thinking and talking about emigrating because he cannot get a home here. His own family home is overcrowded, with two sisters with children as well. We have the situation of a young woman working in the hospital who contacted us last week after being contacted by her landlord. She has been in the rented accommodation for five years with two young children and was told by the landlord to move out within so many weeks. She rang us and I asked her to come down to my constituency office and to bring down the notice to quit and she asked me what that was. It is horrendous what is going on out there in communities. We have other situations like Tathony House, whose tenants face eviction on 2 June.

The Government should use the billions it has in corporation tax receipts to start a State building company, raise the threshold for public housing and start providing people with homes. These are not new ideas. They would be a return to the policy we had from the 1930s until the 1960s, a policy the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties never should have taken away. We need to take the profit out of housing. I support this Bill because that is what it does. It takes the profit out of whether someone can afford to have a home. It de-commodifies one of the most vital parts of people's lives. We have this housing catastrophe because of the privatisation and commodification of housing. This Bill would stop that and provide homes for people, not for profit. I welcome the Bill.

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