Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am not a member of the sub-committee and have no right to table amendments but I am here to raise several issues to be dealt with in a substantive way in order that I can table amendments on Report Stage. The Minister of State gave a long reply and dealt with the Government’s inadequate policy on social housing. Only in the last few sentences did he relate it to what might come under this Bill. I strongly support the idea that the National Pensions Reserve Fund should be used for productive investment in public infrastructure and so forth. I am highly suspicious of this Government's motivation with regard to this Bill. The proposals for investment outlined in section 22 coincidentally are those in which private big business and multinational corporations also have a huge interest. The thrust of this Government is towards privatisation, so-called joint ventures, etc. which are ways of diluting public ownership and moving to sell parts or all of crucial infrastructure to multinational capitalists.

Section 42 increases my suspicion because it states very specifically that more of the pension fund can be put into saving banks but the Minister of State makes no such explicit provision for our greatest infrastructural need, social and affordable homes for the people. He read a long reply on different aspects of Government policy which are intended to deliver a totally inadequate number of homes for people in desperate need but none relates to what would be possible under this Bill if the Government was seriously committed to public investment in social and affordable homes. It should be a prime candidate for investment from the pension funds that are moving over. It is one of the greatest social needs. The construction of homes is also an area that is highly labour intensive, and one in which, unfortunately, there is a large reservoir of unemployed skills. Skilled workers have gone overseas who could come back. These workers are desperately looking for homes. In a short time, if the will existed, a substantial programme of public investment in social and affordable homes could be put in place throughout the country.

The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund should be directed to this work. If this Government were serious about resolving the crisis and ending the suffering, it would make of this a key project that would stand for all time, defining what a Government could do, but that is not proposed in any sense. It is mealy-mouthed in the extreme.

In his reply on Second Stage the Minister of State made a small reference to the points raised by many Deputies on the need for social housing and a fund like this to be used for that purpose. Nowhere in the Bill is there any indication whatsoever that we might be moving in that direction. Any Deputy who is in touch with his or her constituents has known for a long time the extent of this crisis. The Bill that has just gone through the Dáil is a scandal, its only purpose being to remove 90,000 households from local authority lists through the trickery that is the housing assistance payment, HAP, programme. It will not resolve anything.

I am asking the Minister of State to come back on Report Stage with clear proposals to address this issue. It is, unfortunately, true that much of the expertise that formerly was available within the local authorities has been lost. In the 1970s, for example, many of them were building 7,000 or 8,000 houses a year. These days, some of them have not built any for a long time. Of course, it is the case that expertise has been lost and needs to be reassembled very quickly. Will the Minister of State come forward on Report Stage with a comprehensive proposal on what is possible in this field?