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

The Minister provided figures on spending for housing and referred to how much of a commitment it is to the Government. The Revised Estimates show €1.2 billion is being made available for housing programmes in 2017. While that is an increase on previous years, it is on a par with or less than what was spent on social housing even in the 2000s. This has to be put into context. Fingal County Council, to give one example but there are many others, has not built a house in three years. It probably will not build a house this year either. There are a couple of schemes but we will see. The level of investment that would be required to make up for the lack of action for a number of years ,while the Minister's own party was in office by the way, requires a lot more than that. I wanted to raise what the money is being spent on because we know it is not being spent in the old way of just giving local authorities money to build public housing but is being spent on a whole range of things. At least ten times, the Minister of State used the phrase getting properties "back into use". I have a major problem with public money being given to private owners of property to get them to get it back into use to be "leased for social housing" or in other words, probably let out for HAP or one of these other schemes. That is not investing in public housing and makes no sense. When the committee on housing met over the summer at a time when others did not - I am beginning to wonder why we bothered - the idea was raised of acquiring empty vacant houses for public use, not just doing them up for whoever owns them. Acquiring properties is something on which we should be spending money.