Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming before the committee and giving of his time. I congratulate him and his colleagues on their efforts in Government over the past number of years. It was a period that was fraught with difficulty at times, particularly in respect of access to finance. This must be acknowledged.

I agree with Deputy Coppinger about the extent to which the public housing programme can have an impact on the market. The shift from the direct-build local authority housing programme in the 1980s to a reliance on the private rental sector, supported by the Department of Social Protection, was the wrong decision, and I have spoken about it many times. I believe the evidence is there to support that. There are two issues. One is the immediate emergency. We need to accelerate everything we can do in terms of procedures to ensure we address this issue in the shortest possible period. I ask the Minister to put particular emphasis on that, whether it be by way of direct build, modular housing or acquisition of existing private new or second-hand housing.

The rolling over of property has been a serious feature in making housing very expensive in this country. During the boom, it was not unusual for a site to be acquired for a sum of money and then passed over to a second, a third and a fourth owner, resulting in up to ten times the original cost of the site being borne by whoever was going to buy or build a house on that site. The Chairman and the rest of us all know of instances where this happened. I do not believe we have an obligation to facilitate that kind of thing, because the first priority in respect of those seeking private or public housing must be to make it as affordable as possible.

The use of developed private sites by local authorities was very well applied in times past and was very effective in enabling people on the local authority housing list to build their own homes to their own specifications without impacting on anybody. The next issue is local authority housing loans, which have effectively been gone for years. That was part of the switchover from the public housing programme to a reliance on the private rental sector. It was, as it were, stolen.

We need to plan for the future. The previous plan was to rely on the private sector. This is no reflection on the private sector, but the plan was wrong and could never work. During the 1980s, roughly 1,000 houses became available per annum for that income group - those on the average industrial wage - in my county. That was about 25 years ago. We have nothing to replace that except the private rental sector, which is subject to the fluctuations of the market, which makes it impossible.