Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am a little confused on the water issue. The Minister has been confusing people about this for a number of months. Is he not proceeding with the deduction proposal that he included in his motion two weeks ago? For example, will council or social housing tenants have water charges deduced by local authorities? I expected that to be provided in the Bill because Irish Water refers to this in the information it has provided on its website and the Minister included it in the recent motion. This morning, we heard that landlords would be consulted before proceeding with the Minister's proposal to deduct the charge from deposits. I disagree with both proposals and I would be delighted if he has backtracked on them but people deserve to know whether that is the case. The Bill does not contain many of the measures the Minister outlined in the debate on the motion two weeks ago. Is this because he does not want to add fuel to the fire before the protest on 10 December which everyone in the country is talking about? I visited four picket lines of teachers this morning and they were talking about finding a way to attend the protest. If the Minister is trying to calm everything down, that is probably the right decision but people who rent deserve to know what will happen.

It is incredible that it has taken the death of a man on the streets to bring the issue of housing into the Chamber where it has not been discussed for four weeks. If this death had not happened in front of the Dáil, nobody would be talking about it. Why did the Minister express shock that this happened? Approximately 160 people are sleeping rough in Dublin and hundreds of families are on the verge of homelessness. The issue has been discussed intensively for a year and a half and it is incredible that any Minister would express shock that a homeless person has died.

I refer to the Minister's housing document. The Taoiseach indicated during Leaders' Questions that it will be discussed in the Dáil next week. Like the strategy on water services, the housing strategy was released without any discussion in the House. This is the most pressing social problem in our society. Nothing tops it, including water services. The reason people are rightly angered about water provision is it affects every person but there is no more serious problem than the housing emergency we are experiencing. I have spent a week going through the Minister's documentation. It does not provide for additional capital investment other than that announced in the budget. The Minister indicated in his contribution to the budget debate that €1.5 billion would be provided in direct capital investment, including €300 million through public private partnerships, which is a failed policy of the past, and €400 million off balance sheet, which seems to involve the outsourcing of house building to NGOs and an attempt to raise money on the markets from speculators.

There are three pillars in the document. The first gives the impression that 35,000 additional social housing units will be provided over six years. Even if that were to happen, it would be a pittance. That equates to approximately 6,000 houses a year, which is low considering that during the Celtic tiger era between 80,00 and 90,000 houses were built annually.

People might look at the figure of 35,000 and think it represents a great start, but not all of those units will actually be additional houses. Perhaps the Minister will clarify the breakdown? The figure includes leasing, refurbishing, outsourcing to housing agencies or approved housing bodies, public private partnerships and provision under the Part V regulations. As we all know, the Part V provisions did not work in the past. In short, it is not the case that 35,000 new houses will be built.
The second pillar refers to our old friends, the private landlords. This part is really just about moving people about within the private rented sector. They will either remain in the privately owned home they are already in or they will be moved to another. Again, there is no additional housing.
The third pillar is particularly worrying and certainly merits discussion in the Dáil. There is reference here to a "new framework for rents and related charges for local authority housing". This suggests that the Department wants to move to a situation where there is full cost recovery through rents, something that has been hinted at in a range of housing documents going back a long time. This is in line with the move away from the differential rent schemes towards a different model. I do not have time to go into all of this now, but I hope to do so if there is a discussion in the Dáil.
The immediate homelessness crisis is in the spotlight today following the tragic death of Jonathan Corrie. It is incredible that the National Asset Management Agency owns 12% of all hotels in this country but we can find no room for homeless people. In fact, the Government is telling MAMA to speed up the sale of those hotels so that the agency can get its books back in balance. That should stop now.
The Minister is going around boasting that €55 million is being given to alleviate homelessness. It is useful to compare this with the €83.5 million that was given in tax breaks to hotel owners and developers this year. In the third quarter of 2014, Dublin City Council paid almost €2.5 million to accommodate people in hotels, as set out in the report today in The Irish Times. These hotels include Travelodge, Bewley's Hotel, the Sunnybank hotel, the Inn on the Liffey Guesthouse - I am sure every family is dying to be accommodated there - and Newdara Limited, trading as the Portobello Hotel. These are far from five star facilities; they have been called a lot of things by a lot of people. Why is money being shovelled in the direction of these businesses when NAMA has hotels which could accommodate people as an immediate end? Why, moreover, are we talking about importing containers?
This Government has an ideological aversion - the Fianna Fáil Party is not much different - to doing what needs to be done. There were only two decades in the 20th century when a housing crisis was tackled, namely, the 1930s and 1970s. In each case it was done by public house-building on a mass scale. This Government, however, has set its face against doing that and is instead relying on the private sector to solve the problem.