Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late as there was a community event in my area I had to attend. I hope I will not repeat what others have said and will try to focus on the social housing pillar. Homelessness is an international problem and is evident in every country. A baby died on the streets in Portland, Oregon, which is in the richest country on the planet, and homelessness is at a phenomenal level there. The root of the problem is the aversion to public home building compared with the 1970s, 1980s and previously.

From looking at the figures the poverty of ambition is incredible if one considers that we have a housing emergency. The best-case scenario is 2,800 public houses, according to Mr. Walsh's presentation. I also cannot get over why it is not targeted. We know where the homeless crisis is worse and I am getting tired of saying this. If one looks at the figures for the area breakdown for the first nine months of 2016 - figures which went very quietly up onto the website yesterday by the way - 42 social housing units were completed in the Dublin City Council area. We know the homeless crisis is everywhere but as it is actually focused in particular parts of Dublin, why is the Department not targeting the key black spots with a huge amount of social housing and other measures? There have been 36 units completed in Fingal. I was a member of the local authority in Fingal for 11 years. There are 200 families in emergency accommodation in that area at present and another 98 families - as far as I know - who are homeless but not in emergency accommodation. Approximately 300 of the 760 families who are homeless are in Fingal and yet a paltry amount of houses are targeted to be built there and not one in the greater Blanchardstown area, where I guarantee most of the 300 families are from. Can someone from the Department explain that please? Fingal County Council has two sites left in the Blanchardstown area where a lot of the housing crisis is. Some 40% of the homeless in Dublin are from Dublin West. I and other Deputies get a lot of visits from them. There are two sites and they have not even been developed. I would like a written case study, by a Department representative here, as to why not. The 20 modular houses in Wellview were talked about 13 months ago. The area is the most deprived area of the constituency and now modular houses are being lumped in. I am not going to oppose them as anything is better than nothing - but where are they? Let us stop calling them rapid build because that is a bit a joke at this stage. They are not so rapid houses. It was 13 months ago and where are they? Of the two sites, a plan for Church Road was brought before the council, again I believe it was more than one year ago, and there is still no sign of any houses. There is one site left beside Wellview, which is called lands north of Wellview. Could the witnesses investigate why Fingal County Council has not bothered its barney developing that site when it has a homeless epidemic all around it?

I do not like blaming the council or officials. Political decisions are made but the councils are telling us that the Department is telling them there is no shortage of money. We know the tender process is a big problem - not the planning process per se but the fact that it must be put out to tender and this delays some of the process. I believe that people should have an answer as to why, in the homeless black spot in Dublin, there has not been a house built by the council in years - since I was on the council actually. Why have those two sites not been fast-tracked and moved? I would have thought that if the Department wanted its figures to go up, it would target where the need is greatest. Cork city has had one council house provided in the whole of the first nine months on 2016. There have been 20 units built in South Dublin County Council and 16 in Limerick. I feel for the departmental representatives as I would hate to be coming before this committee because that is an embarrassment, given the scale of the problem. Last night the Minister said it takes time to build houses and yet, my point is, that the available sites are not even being developed by the council.

The other key problem we have is that NAMA, which is State run, is selling off so much land at the moment to vulture funds. This is land that would definitely be needed. If one considers the greater Blanchardstown area, which is the fastest growing area of the last ten or 15 years, the council sites are minuscule at this point. It is, therefore, only with NAMA that we could build enough houses in the area. NAMA is building lovely mansions up in Castleknock that are unaffordable to the vast majority. In one deal in December 2015, a US vulture fund called Lone Star Funds bought 20% of the residential development land in Dublin. That is absolutely incredible given that Ireland has a housing emergency. The sites were €19,000 and now they are being sold for €100,000. Nothing is being done by the Government to stop the vulture funds buying up all the valuable land that we could have used for social and affordable housing.

With regard to the homelessness figures two different accounts were given on the "Tonight with Vincent Browne" programme in on 4 January. The Minister for State with responsibility for housing and urban renewal, Deputy Damien English said "... by June next year there will be nobody living in emergency accommodation ... we will fix this." He also said that he, the Minister, Deputy Coveney and the Department are confident they will have tackled that end of it by June. Which June are we talking about? Are we talking about getting people out of emergency accommodation?