Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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Deputy Catherine Byrne is in possession.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome this debate. I have been raising matters in regard to housing and homelessness for some time. I believe we would all agree there is an emergency in the area of housing when we are told there are 100,000 households on the social housing waiting lists. We will certainly have more families on the waiting lists if we do not have a house construction programme and if we continue to have social welfare cuts and increased rents, which are a particular problem in Dublin.

I welcome the €68 million announced by the Minister of State to be spent over two years to build new social homes for families in need of housing. The Minister has estimated that this will provide 442 new homes. It is a start, but obviously we have a long way to go given the number of people on waiting lists. Funding of €15 million

is available for retrofitting of boarded up local authority houses. This must also be welcomed because we see people waiting for houses in every town, yet these houses are vacant and boarded up when they should be brought into use.

In the past, I raised the slow pace of NAMA property transfers with the Minister of State. I have been told that only 10% of homes earmarked by NAMA for social housing have been transferred to local authorities. I hope this figure can be increased. I would like to see a specialist unit in the housing office in every local authority to speed up transfers. We had a debate yesterday in the House on housing, social housing and homelessness. An issue that certainly comes up when we have this debate is the fact the Minister of State has many groups looking at this situation. There is a monitoring group and an oversight group, but what we now need is action. Of course, I agree with the overall policy statement of the Government in February 2013 which said that the Government's aim was to end long-term homelessness by the end of 2016. That is certainly a welcome objective, but we must work strongly in the meantime to ensure we will work towards that deadline for 2016.

I have seen statements by various people involved in housing. Some of the comments they have made are very worrying. The chief executive of the Simon Community said last year that homelessness and what he called the rough sleeping crisis is worse than ever. He said the Government must decide on a policy on housing because no one is building houses. That is certainly the case in areas where we need housing, particularly the larger towns and cities. He made the point that a homeless person cannot afford private rented accommodation when rents are going up, rent allowance caps are coming down all the time and no extra accommodation is being provided. He said it is a complete logjam. One has the combination of social welfare cuts and not enough units.

According to a figure given at the end of last year, the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin has increased by 88% in the past year. I know legislation looking at the question of housing assistance has been promised. I hope this will be brought in. Perhaps the Minister of State could tell us what legislation she has in mind in respect of this matter. I know the Minister of State has met NAMA and I hope she will continue to try to get those extra units. I have met representatives from the Simon Community, the Peter McVerry Trust and Focus Ireland and they have all stressed the serious issues facing their organisations and the people on the street. In particular, they raised the issue of youth homelessness. I understand the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is reviewing a youth homelessness strategy, which should be looked at by the two committees the Minister of State has set up in her Department. There is a need to monitor what is going on.

I spoke to an organisation in Galway, known as COPE, which told me very clearly that homelessness in Galway is not as serious as it is in Dublin. However, it is an area about which COPE is worried. It is especially worried about the way street counts are conducted. I am not too sure who does the weekly street counts of the number of people sleeping rough but there seem to be different figures made available regarding the number of people are sleeping on the streets. The Simon Community made the point that the figures could be higher than the figures reported in the media because the count apparently does not include what we call the hidden homeless - those squatting in Internet cafés and people in hospitals. The figure is probably higher than the official figures we have seen. That is something that is of great concern to the various housing organisations and the people who work at the coalface with homeless people.

One suggestion I made to the Minister of State by way of questions and in a recent Topical Issue debate was using housing organisations. I know there is a proposal with the Minister of State from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Ballinasloe. The branch is seeking €400,000 to provide housing in Ballinasloe in partnership with Clúid, which is a very well-known organisation in housing that has done very good work in many towns. The proposal for Ballinasloe is very interesting. They have a free site thanks to the diocese and are involved with the Maureen O'Connell Fund, which is a fund where money has been left to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to provide housing in Ballinasloe. There is a need for this type of housing, which would be sheltered housing, and it is a very good proposal at which I hope the Minister of State will look. I hope Galway County Council will support that. It has told me it will support it. Voluntary organisations represent just one area that could be used more.

I have been approached lately by some people who are very concerned they might lose their houses. People who were interested in the mortgage-to-rent scheme were told to register with a voluntary housing organisation. I know they will try to do that. The next part of the proposal was that they would surrender their houses and make an application to Galway County Council in the case of constituents of mine in Galway. Perhaps there is too much paperwork involved and it is too complicated to go down this route. I presume they will deal with their financial institution first, but I think many local authorities do not even know this scheme exists and many local authorities are wondering why they are involved in this. Could the Minister of State simplify things? Of course, people want to hold on to their homes. It is the natural wish of families to do that. I hope we could simplify that scheme if one is going to involve local authorities.

I understand that about 8,000 units were completed last year. The ESRI estimates that Ireland requires approximately 25,000 housing units per annum to meet the shifting demographic changes and the demand for housing, so we have a big task ahead of us. Rents in urban parts of the country are increasing, particularly in Dublin. There is a big deficit in the provision of housing in Dublin. I hope those areas can be looked at and that the Minister of State might be able to respond to some of the issues I raised in my short contribution.

Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. The debate is very timely. I am sure I am no different from other Deputies who probably find that housing is not just the single biggest issue coming to them in representations but larger than all other issues combined.

The Dublin market has always been different from the rest of the country but it is diverging even more now. Indeed, the housing situation is very different from what it was even a few years ago. This is a timely debate because we need to find innovative solutions for both the private and public housing sectors. Every area of housing in Dublin now needs attention because they all feed into one another.

One issue on which I wish to focus is affordable housing. I think I heard the Minister of State mention that affordable housing was an area in which the State would not get involved in future. The Part V provision used to cater for affordable housing but that is dead in the water now. We must not forget about that cohort of people who do not qualify for housing assistance, who will never get on housing lists, who cannot raise a deposit but who may be capable of sustaining a mortgage over the longer term. We cannot forget about those people. We have to find ways of helping them, whether that be through longer-term mortgages or some other mechanism. I do not know what the solution is but they cannot just be written off. It is so difficult for people to get into the housing market in Dublin now and there is absolutely no social housing available.

I worry a little about the possibility of pushing up the price of houses through, for instance, the new land zoning tax. I understand the thinking behind it in terms of the perceived need for a social dividend from rezoning. I do not think the tax has been payable on much land to date, but the danger is that it will do exactly what the Part V provisions did. The latter were seen as a way of getting a social dividend from builders, but what the provisions actually did was push up the price of houses for ordinary people. In that way, the State contributed to the housing bubble. We blamed everyone for the housing bubble but the State piggybacked on it. We must be careful not to do that again. Much as we might like to get something from builders, when we rezone land, we must be careful to ensure it does not negatively impact on people trying to buy houses.

I note that the Minister of State has placed a lot of trust and hope in the voluntary housing sector. I know that voluntary housing bodies are used widely in Ireland and elsewhere, including Britain. Such bodies have developed a lot of expertise, but I have a small reservation about the huge taxpayer investment in properties that neither the State nor tenants will ever own. I would strike a note of caution in that regard. I do not know why the State has stood back to the extent that it has in terms of the provision of housing. I understand that bodies dealing exclusively with housing develop expertise and have off-balance sheet borrowing capabilities, but I would suggest to the Minister of State that in solving a short-term problem in this way, we may be creating a longer-term problem for ourselves.

I wish to highlight the fact that Dublin is a special case, and my own area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown particularly so, because there simply is not one single house that meets the criteria for rent supplement. That means there is no social housing for people living in my area. If one wants to go on the housing list in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, one is told that the minimum waiting period is ten years, and at the same time, one cannot rent in the area either. Despite this, when one looks around the rest of the country, one sees there are many houses available, including some owned by NAMA. There is no housing shortage in the country as a whole, but in Dublin there is simply no house that meets the criteria. It is not just the shortage of houses; it is also the disproportionately high property tax that people in Dublin pay. The burden on the householders of Dublin is high and obviously landlords are trying to pass that on to their tenants. The push from the property tax as well as the fact there is an absolute housing shortage in Dublin means that rents continue to rise. When people contacted me in the past because they could not rent a house and receive rent supplement in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, I used to advise them to go to South Dublin County Council or Fingal County Council. Now, however, there is no point in telling them to do that because rents are escalating in those areas too. There are virtually no houses available in the Dublin area. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, has plans to change the rent supplement scheme to a rent assistance scheme, under which people will be allowed to work and draw housing assistance, which I welcome. However, it does not really solve the underlying problems of rising rents and a housing shortage in Dublin.

In other parts of the country there is no shortage of housing and rents are far more affordable. In that context, it may be time to consider some kind of resettlement programme, even on a temporary basis, until we get to grips with the housing shortage in Dublin. I know that eventually it will dawn on people that if they want housing, they will have to get out of Dublin and there will be a drift to the cities and towns outside Dublin. I also know that resettlement is not for everyone and that family ties and so forth connect people to where they were born, but for those who want it, it can provide not only a housing solution but also access to schools and other facilities because the demand for these is not as great as it is in Dublin.

I do not think the drift out of Dublin should be left to market forces, however. It is time for the Government to get actively involved in a planned programme of resettlement, helping families to relocate. If it is left to people to decide themselves to go, we will get a scatter gun type relocation throughout the country which, from a planning perspective, is not a good idea. It would be better to direct people who elect to move out of Dublin to the gateways and hub towns identified in the national spatial strategy. Although the latter has fallen into disuse, it is better than nothing in terms of relocating people out of Dublin. In such towns, of course, there is a better chance of getting employment. I am not suggesting that relocation is the solution to the entire housing problem, but for those who express an interest, it is worth pursuing. I know there is a voluntary organisation called Rural Resettlement Ireland, but I think it should be something that is much more structured than that.

At the moment, not only are we not helping people to relocate or suggesting they consider it, we are actually putting barriers in their way. For instance, if one is on the housing list in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, one cannot go to Bray and get housing assistance because one is not on the housing list there. I do not think the legislation requires that but that is how the scheme is being implemented. That should be dealt with by letting local authorities know they should be as flexible as possible. It is ridiculous that people who are on a housing list and for whom a housing need has been established cannot go and rent a house in an area that is cheaper and get a lesser subsidy. As I said, relocation is not for everyone but it is a possibility for some.

The Minister of State will shortly announce a stimulus package for the construction sector, which I very much welcome. It is something that is badly needed for the thousands of people who will remain jobless unless there is a recovery in the construction industry. I presume the stimulus package will form part of a solution to the housing shortage but I would stress the need to address the issue of affordable housing too. I would also caution against looking for contributions that are so high as to push up the price of houses for everyone.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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There is a crisis in the provision of social housing in Ireland. It seems to stem from an ideological debate that is going on at the moment concerning what care must government provide to citizens. Sinn Féin believes that everyone has the right to a roof over their head regardless of their financial situation. We believe that this is a right that should be enshrined in law. A safe and warm home should be a fundamental right and not a concession that can be granted or withheld at the whim of government or local authority managers.

There are roughly 90,000 households on the housing waiting list across the State. In a country of our size this is a terrible indictment of the way we do business. There have been reports of people waiting on the housing list for 15 years or longer as they wait to be placed in social housing that is just not being built by this Government and was not built by previous governments either.

There are 95,000 people on rent supplement and around 30,000 on the residential accommodation scheme, RAS. I call it the residential accommodation scam. While successive governments have failed to embark on any form of housing projects, private landlords have been benefiting from rent supplements paid from State coffers. It seems more than bizarre that a Government would hand over finances in the form of rent supplement and RAS to private landlords instead of building our own social housing.

Local authorities are constrained in what they can do to upgrade social housing. Conditions in existing social housing, as well as private rental accommodation are deteriorating, and problems have already been highlighted in Dublin after a raft of inspections in the city centre. A shocking result was that 90% of flats failed the basic standards test. Local authorities cannot adequately restore and upgrade housing to make it suitable for social housing unless they are given funding from central Government to do so. Without funding, the hands of local authorities are tied when it comes to making more social housing available.

The Celtic tiger left us with a legacy of ghost estates and empty houses across the country. Without proper Government investment and regulation these buildings will remain empty for the foreseeable future. I know that there are legal and cost complexities involved but it is shameful that we have thousands of NAMA-controlled homes, paid for by Irish taxpayers, which remain empty and unused while 90,000 people are on the housing waiting list.

NAMA promised 2000 homes for social leasing at the end of 2012. This scheme is not the answer to Ireland's social housing crisis. Very few homes were put in place and in 2013 the Government announced a special purpose vehicle to speed up the delivery of these properties. In addition, these properties would be rented through local authorities and voluntary bodies, and returned to the developer when the lease ran out.

Homelessness is also an issue that has to be addressed. Every day, when we walk the streets of Dublin, we can see homeless people around us. It is a sad fact that within a few metres of this building, our national parliament, people are sleeping rough. This should not happen in a country that has wealth resources such as ours. According to Focus Ireland there are about 5,000 homeless people in the State. The number of people sleeping rough increased by 88% in 2013. Ireland is not a densely populated country and we are not at risk from over-population. Why is it that we find it so hard to house so many people in this country? This is a question the Government must ask itself. It must commit itself to tackling the housing crisis.

The rent supplement threshold is totally unrealistic. It has the effect of causing people, including landlords and their agents, to tell lies. We should not be encouraging people to tell lies through a State-supported mechanism.

I receive many complaints about the complexity and bureaucracy of the housing application process. It seems to be designed to get people to give up half way through. Therefore, the housing application process should be re-examined.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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The first thing we need to agree on is that there is a crisis. One may call it a problem or a difficulty but in my area it is a crisis. Rather than trying to resolve it or take measures to relieve the crisis, it seems to be getting worse. Deputy Olivia Mitchell spoke earlier about the situation in Dublin and I am more familiar with that region. She referred to the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area and I can talk about similar difficulties in south Dublin.

I am the only Deputy who has a full-time advice centre in my own area. I get cases from Fianna Fáil, Labour and Fine Gael supporters, the majority of which are housing related. There was a time when one could try to come up with solutions for people who were in unsafe, overcrowded and difficult circumstances. In some cases now, however, they are homeless. Homelessness is not just affecting young people, including couples, it also concerns elderly people. In addition, there are individuals whose marriages have broken down and they are forced to sell the family home. Those are the sort of cases that are coming into my advice centre. People are coming to us seeking solutions to their difficulties. We can get them on the housing list but that list is getting longer so we are talking about seven years. In Dublin City Council's area it is longer than that. If an individual is not working or on a low income, the other option is rental supplement.

I recently carried out a survey in my own area because people in such difficult circumstances are constantly being told to look elsewhere. If someone comes to Tallaght and there is no housing available there, they will look in Rathcoole, Rathfarnham or other localities. According to my survey, 96% of the rented accommodation advertised in the local area was above the social welfare threshold for rent supplement. Consequently, there is a difficulty in that regard. Some 77 properties were available in the hinterland including Rathcoole, Rathfarnham, Saggart, Tallaght, Templeogue, Greenhills and Walkinstown. If one goes to Kildare one is going out of County Dublin. Meanwhile, if one goes into the city centre the rents are going up, so where can people go to find accommodation? Of those 77 properties, a large amount would not accept rental supplement. Of the three houses whose landlords said they would take rental supplement, the rent was so high that it meant the option was meaningless. That option was therefore out for those individuals.

Some people say that the thousands of NAMA properties are a magic wand but, according to the local housing manager, in south Dublin there are only a handful of such properties. The remaining options are to stay where one is, even if it is unsafe. A woman who attended my advice centre last week is living in a refuge; she does not have the option of obtaining rented accommodation. It is also difficult to obtain rent supplement, as was the case recently concerning a woman with a large family. It is hard to get four-bedroom accommodation for such a person. That woman is not allowed to rent three-bedroom accommodation, so her options are a hostel or one bedroom in a local hotel. There is no flexibility in that respect.

While there is a crisis, I agree with the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan's housing-led approach, including the provision of emergency accommodation. However, the Dundalk women's refuge has been subject to 75% cuts. The options are shrinking and thus the problems are becoming worse. We do not have options to offer people who are experiencing housing difficulties.

I welcome the Minister of State's plan to refurbish housing stock but it is a drop in the ocean.

We must adopt a much more radical approach to a problem which is getting worse. We heard on the radio this morning about 183,000 people in mortgage distress while three insolvency cases have been dealt with. Where are those people going to go if they lose their homes? They will be looking to the safety net that used to be there in terms of housing. They will approach their local authorities for housing or rented accommodation which is not there. We are not doing anything to help those people.

I am sorry for being so negative in my contribution but there are options we can explore. That involves building new houses and a radical approach.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the debate, the contributions to which from all sides have been extremely positive. Some of the contributions are in stark contrast to the fiasco which took place here over the last couple of days. The Dáil should have been concentrating in that time on bread and butter issues for the people who sent us here. There is no greater bread and butter issue than the need for the State to provide shelter and accommodation for vulnerable people in difficult circumstances. My experience is no different from the experience set out by previous speakers. I acknowledge the work my county colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, is doing in this area. It is another legacy issue that has been handed on and is being dealt with proactively. As the previous speaker said, there is no silver bullet, magic wand or easy solution.

This morning, I looked at my own constituency. In County Limerick currently, 1,543 people are on the housing list with a further 2,274 on the list for the city, which is a total of 3,817 for the new local authority. These are not just numbers. They represent people and their families, many of whom have been on the lists for a considerable period of time. I know from my time as a county councillor that some people on the housing lists spend huge amounts of time on them. There has been the safety valve of the rental market but matters were really brought home to me over Christmas. I met people from my own area who work in Dublin in good jobs yet find that they are being priced out of the property market. They find that the aspiration to buy an apartment or house in Dublin is out. In some instances, it is the case that even with a good job, being able to rent an apartment or house in Dublin is out. We are slowly but surely reverting to the situation which destroyed the country. We must take it very seriously. We cannot allow a situation to re-emerge where people must commute to Dublin from Kilkenny, Mullingar, Longford and places like that due to a bubble that is about to be inflated in the city once again. We cannot realistically say that property rising prices, rental demand and rents are a good thing. They are not. They will lead to further wage demands by those at work, which will lead to inflation and in turn to the competitiveness cycle we found ourselves swirling around in during the good old days of the last Administration. The housing situation is critical to ensuring that does not happen.

There are a number of aspects to the issue including a planning element. We continue to have a situation whereby even when adequately zoned land is available on which there is a willingness to construct, an application may wind up in An Bord Pleanála where it can be stuck forever. There is no legislative timeframe by which an appeal must be determined. We have a land-use policy issue regarding how and where we build houses and the quality of them. We have a further issue which relates to the local authority sector itself. We must ensure that the local authority is protected and enshrined as the housing authority. I have a concern in this regard, which my colleague, Deputy Bernard Durkan, has been enunciating for a long time. It one removes responsibility for housing from local authorities or dilutes their role, one loses local knowledge, connectivity and the essential element the Minister of State will know well from her work as a public representative on Limerick City Council and in the House; the relationship between local representatives and housing authorities. That relationship is critical to ensure that people are housed appropriately and adequately. It is something which has been lost sight of recently.

The Minister of State's Department has inherited a number of problems including huge waiting lists and the legacy of unfinished estates. I welcome the money which has been allocated to unfinished estates. While it is a relatively small amount, it is a start. Previous speakers gave examples of different initiatives in their own areas. The Minister of State was in my native town, Newcastlewest, to turn the sod on a St. Vincent de Paul-led voluntary housing initiative. Up to now, we might not have seen these issues in rural Limerick, but we see it now. We see it in every county. The response is welcome. An example of a legacy issue with which the Minister of State is dealing is an unfinished housing estate in a very small village in my own area, Carrigkerry. It is symptomatic of the problems local authorities are confronted with and the bills which will have to be met.

I was listening to the radio on my way to Dublin the other day and a cohort I am very concerned about is generation Y, which represents those born since the 1980s. Other Members, including Deputy Olivia Mitchell, spoke about them. For many of them, the aspiration to buy a house is fast becoming just that, an aspiration. Listening to the radio, I heard about how more and more of them are staying at home with their elderly parents. It is having an impact on their capacity to start families and stand on their own feet. It also has an impact on their families' lives.

Access to credit, properly zoned land and good quality housing is something with which we will have to grapple. The net contribution of the construction industry to the economy is at an unsustainably low level. It was unsustainably high previously when we built houses in the wrong locations where there is now no demand. Nevertheless, we could double our output of private and public sector housing in the morning and would still be running to stand still. I encourage the Minister of State to consider the credit union movement. Access to finance is a very significant issue. Consideration should be given to local authority engagement in public-private partnership arrangements with credit unions, which have approximately €14 billion on deposit currently. There is no better borrower to lend to than a local authority or the State as one knows one will get the money back. We may be able to leverage some of the savings on deposit in credit unions to do valuable infrastructure work in our communities, including the provision of sewerage and water works, housing and amenities. The local authority sector could adopt a partnership model whereby a credit union or local community owns the houses and rents them to the local authority over a period in return for an annual dividend and option to purchase after ten or 20 years. The State cannot do this on its own. If credit union members are being stymied, there is an opportunity to obtain finance.

I implore the Minister of State to consider a particular labour activation measure by way of housing aid for older people and persons with disabilities, which is an issue affecting every community. There is a significant backlog of work across the State to deal with, inter alia, roofing, showers, handrails, footpaths and disabled toilets. There is a great deal of work that can be done. Given the credit union movement and access to low-interest loans, we must start to think about these things differently to access finance to carry out this work. We have shown what can be done with the home renovation incentive scheme for private individuals. A similar initiative should be considered for local authorities. What are local authorities doing but using the State's money to solve a housing or disability problem for an individual? If that can be done without the burden of VAT, etc., it would be really welcome.

We all know them as they are in every street in the country. Elderly people have doors and windows that need to be replaced and ramps put in place.

This debate is hugely important. I would like it broadened out to an Oireachtas committee where ideas can be thrashed out. An issue about which I am concerned is that a person from Abbeyfeale, County Limerick, who is in a good job in the Dublin docklands, and on a good salary, returns home at the weekend and says he will never be able to own a house in Dublin and will have to start commuting from places such as Kildare. That is the slippery slope that this country went down from 2004 to 2008 and for which we will be paying for a long time. I implore the Government to do whatever needs to be done, be it the imposition of stamp duty on second properties or some other measure, to ensure we do not go down the road from which we are still trying to recover and from which we will be recovering for a very long line.

I wish the Minister of State well. I know her heart is in this work. She has displayed great commitment in regard to local authority housing in Limerick in her native city. I am sure the experience she has gained as a Limerick City councillor and a Deputy for Limerick East for many years will bear fruit in this area.

Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the supply of housing and the Government's homelessness policy in the State. There is no doubt, as stated by other speakers, that there is a crisis in the provision of housing and dealing with homelessness in the State. The two are intrinsically linked. Dealing with the housing policy and the housing crisis will feed into helping to resolve the issue of homelessness. While specific actions may be needed to complete dealing with homelessness they should all be dealt with.

There is no escaping the fact that there is no political will to deal with the housing issue. I do not believe in the way housing has been treated in recent years. The usual excuses that have been trotted out are that we have been in a very difficult financial situation, that we have been reliant on others to keep us going, and we blame Fianna Fáil for putting us in that situation. The Government talked about stimulating the economy and encouraging people to get back to work by having activity. Dealing with the housing issue would have been a way to do that and continuing on with house completions would have stimulated local employment and would have paid dividends in returns to the State. Clearly, the figures for social housing completions have declined from 6,600 in 2007 to 1,000 at the end of 2012 and have declined even further now as no new units are being built. Housing purchases decreased from 2,000 in 2007 to 56 at the end of September 2013 and local authority housing progression went from 7,700 in 2007 to zero in 2010. That shows the extent of the crisis because of the factors that have been outlined by other Deputies including the mortgage crisis, spiralling rents and people's inability to provide for themselves.

The number of people dependent on and seeking social housing has mushroomed and increased significantly. In Donegal, there are 2,600 people on the housing waiting list. It is estimated that with the number of people in receipt of rent allowance for more than 18 months and who are prioritised under the housing policy it brings the number up to approximately 4,300. That is a huge issue with which to deal. In Donegal, under a leasing programme, 78 houses have been approved and under the NAMA scheme 59 houses have been deemed acceptable for social housing, but yet none of those houses has been completed and none of the transfers has been completed. There is a huge crisis in Donegal.

We are aware there is a housing crisis in Dublin and the surrounding counties because of the improvement in the economy and the increased demand and rising rents. There is a crisis also in rural areas because of the decline in housing provision by local authorities which makes it very difficult for people to meet their accommodation needs. It appears to me that the main pitch of Government policy is to rely on the private sector through the rental accommodation scheme, through rent allowance and long-term leasing. That approach will not deal with the issues and the problems. In Donegal, three houses have been built in the past three years. The only reason we were able to get those houses built was that they had already been tendered and contractors appointed when the Government slashed the programme. We had to fight to get those three approvals to go to construction; one per year for 2012, 2013 and 2014, for 4,300 people in need of housing assistance. That is telling.

It is time the position improved and it is time to start rolling out a building programme which deals with people's housing needs. Such a programme could also help stimulate the local economy and local employment if the Government was creative and ensured that social clauses were included in the tendering contracts and ensured that the successful tenderers were compliant with all the labour law and the requirements for operating in the Twenty-six Counties which, unfortunately, Donegal County Council has neglected over the years. Local contracts in County Donegal have not been able to compete with contracts from the Six Counties because Donegal County Council simply ignored the requirements for operating in the South where contractors could not tender on a level playing field. If the Government was creative and did those things, we could start to deal with the housing crisis.

I mentioned the rent allowance although it is not yet the direct responsibility of the Minister of State; it may be her responsibility in the future and then she will have to deal with it. The responses of the Minister for Social Protection and the Department around the issue of rent allowance are disgraceful. I hope when it comes under the housing sections of the local authorities that it will be dealt with more properly. The idea that the rental subsidy cannot be increased because it would increase the rent is completely wrong.

About eight months ago the Department of Social Protection gave a presentation in the AV room on the new rent allowance limits that were being introduced, how it was operating, how it was a great system and would provide for everybody who needed it. That morning I went on daft.ie and searched for properties in Donegal for a single person under the cap that had been placed by the Department. In the entire county there were four flats available for rent under the cap for a single person. All the Department of Social Protection has done is develop a black market for landlords because tenants have no choice but to put in the rent under the cap otherwise they will be refused rent allowance straight away and they have to pay, in cash, the difference to the landlords. That is what has happened right across the country. Every Deputy in the country would say that. At the presentation, every Deputy told the Department of Social Protection this and its response was to accuse people seeking rent allowance of fraud. That is a bizarre situation. It shows the Department must be working in a vacuum if it thinks the rent allowance deals with the issue.

The rent allowance also shows the complete failure of the private sector to deal with any of the housing issues because landlords will capitalise on it and use rent allowance. Many landlords will refuse to take rent allowance from clients, which is another unfair outcome of the operation of the system. That happens particularly in the cities but also in rural areas where landlords will refuse to accept rent allowance clients as tenants. Some of this may be due to the fact that their properties are not known about or registered but it is a huge problem.

The Government will have to get a building programme up and running. I understand money is available from the European Investment Bank for capital programmes. Currently it is pitched only towards the voluntary housing sector and it is not capable of gearing up to avail of that money. That issue needs to be looked at and can only be dealt with public investment with a major housing programme being rolled out across the country to provide for people and which will have the knock on effects of being beneficial to the economy and also provide people with a basic right and a basic necessity, a roof over their head.

There is also a crisis within the local authority housing sections in terms of their being unable to afford to refurbish houses in order to re-let them. Approximately 40 houses in Donegal have been vacant for a substantial length of time, in some cases for many years, because to re-let them the local authority is required to bring them up to a set standard - it is right that this should be the case - but it cannot afford to do so. The cost per house in terms of refurbishment is approximately €50,000. This means the entire maintenance budget for the housing section within that local authority would be spent on refurbishing only one house, leaving the remaining houses undone. This issue also needs to be addressed. The local authorities must be provided with the resources to roll over their stock, thus housing people and ensuring some inroad is made in this area. It appears that even during the boom times the policy was to not provide housing for everybody who needed it in order to maintain demand within the system.

I am often struck as I come into Leinster House each morning by the number of people sleeping rough between here and the hotel across the road. During the five minute walk from here to the hotel one would pass at least five people sleeping rough, which in this society is a disgrace. Given the number of vacant NAMA properties throughout the city there is no reason this should continue.

Michael Conaghan (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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There are queues forming. These are not queues of people waiting to attend concerts, rather they are of young families waiting for houses which they can turn into homes. This is heartbreaking because the queues are not moving. As someone who has been interested in the issue of social housing for a long time it is important to put in context why this is happening. The context can only be understood by looking back to the so-called Celtic tiger era. It was at that time that people were enveloped by the sense that everybody could buy their own home. This sense was sweetened by seductive offers of finance from banks to purchase not only one house but, perhaps, an apartment in Spain or somewhere else.

Amid the fever of buy, buy, buy the Government turned off the funding tap for social housing. The funding streams for construction, buy-backs, regeneration and refurbishment were all switched off resulting in a dwindling of the housing stock. The funding ceased and the queues increased and have continued to grow. This could be seen as a bleak scenario. I once heard a child on a bus from Ballyfermot point out an empty house to his mother as we passed it. People have been taken over by their need for housing.

While the outlook may appear somewhat bleak I no longer hold to that. I know the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, and of her work in Limerick on a whole range of social issues over the past 30 to 35 years, which has been difficult work that required dedication and vision. I am heartened by some of the announcements made by the Minister of State, including the recent announcement of an additional €68 million for construction and €15 million in respect of voids. I welcome that regeneration of areas such as St. Theresa's Gardens and Darndale are to recommence. St. Theresa's Gardens has waited many years for regeneration. One of the first questions the Minister of State asked me on her appointment was if I knew of St. Theresa's Gardens. The Minister of State visited the area and met with the residents and saw at first-hand the conditions in which they were living. This prompted her to acknowledge that social housing, as she inherited it, was an emergency. I welcome the additional funding to secure a substantial number of NAMA units, the €35 million in respect of appropriate housing and accommodation for people with disabilities and €50 million for the improvement of energy efficiency in local authoring houses.

There is hope. What has been announced is only the beginning in a new pattern and trend in the supply of social housing. There is much more to come. It is badly needed.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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The next speak is Deputy Broughan who is sharing time with Deputy Shortall. The Deputies have five minutes each.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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I recently had an opportunity to speak briefly on television about the housing crisis. At that time I mentioned that, in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, when we were really poor, 50,000 to 60,000 social housing units were constructed. At a time when this country had no money we had a major social housing programme. Despite what happened to this country in 2008-09, and the policies which has been supported by the Minister if State, Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Conaghan since 2011, we do have the resources to mount a major social housing programme.

The disgraceful Fianna Fáil Government and MacSharry and Haughey cuts of the late 1980s and early 1990s began the total abandonment of a social housing programme. This was continued by Fine Gael-led governments and another lengthy Fianna Fáil-led government. All of those governments abandoned the social housing programme, thereby abandoning the achievements of their forebears in the 1930s. As a result, we now face a serious housing crisis, with housing lists of 90,000 to 100,000 people. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, recently told me that 78,000 people are in receipt of rent supplement. We are faced with an astonishing crisis.

I have previously suggested that the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, should be elevated to a full Cabinet Minister with responsibility for a Department of Housing. Whatever one's view about housing, it is one of the most important social and personal economic goods of any family or person. We need this Government, and in particular those who would call themselves Labour Ministers, to take vigorous action to respond to this crisis with which every Deputy in this House is dealing on a daily and weekly basis. That is the type of response we need.

It appears the strategy of this Government in terms of social housing provision is to again rely on Part V of the planning and development Acts.