Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their presentations. I spend much of my time dealing with Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council, as Mr. Flynn and Ms Geraghty will know. The staff have been fantastic, given the pressure they have been under, particularly those working in the homeless area. By and large, they have gone well beyond the call of duty when dealing with people, even at the last minute. I have made contact with the homeless section and its staff have done their utmost.

The entire situation is frustrating. Everyone in every local authority shares the opinion that our greatest problem, especially in dealing with this crisis, is the lack of social and affordable housing, on which we must focus. We are delivering approximately 4,000 units per year, but we need to deliver at least 10,000 per year to try to get on top of the problem, although we seem to be fighting. The local authorities are laying out their plans, but these plans are matched with the funding they receive. We are bringing properties and various mechanisms on stream, but we are working on the basis of the funding available. That is a major problem because we do not have enough.

We are being let down in many respects. One of the matters that is not being focused on enough focus is compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, and derelict sites. The record varies and some local authorities are good at it, but when I say "good", I mean that they have implemented the system using a targeted approach, in that they have acquired sites through CPOs. As many of them had been left idle for ten or 15 years, they have been put in the derelict site category and considered for CPOs. We need to up our game. Dublin City Council has used virtually no CPOs, which is disappointing. It is a matter about which I have spoken.

All local authorities need to consider vacant shops on the ground floor rather than just upper floors. Whenever I submit a parliamentary question, I am told that this applies to shops above ground floor. In estate after estate, ground floor shops have been left idle for ten or 15 years.

I cannot figure out why that is the case. We need to deal with them and to find a mechanism to do that. We need to do an audit of them and find out exactly where the problem lies. There is no question but that the number is in five figures.

The Government has also failed to deliver in the area of affordable housing. We recently saw the delivery of five houses in Ballymun by the Ó Cualann co-operative at a price well below the €200,000 mark. We need to examine if that model can be replicated. I would have liked to have seen a State-run housing body established, but if the Government is ideologically opposed to that mechanism, we could consider selecting from a list of private companies to build co-operative housing such as the Ó Cualann co-operative has built. A list could be drawn up from which we could work. The procurement procedure would become much easier and we could speed up the process. That is one action we should take.

We are well behind all our targets with respect of modular housing. When the former Minister said that no homeless families would be living in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation by July, did no one in the local authorities tell him that was not possible? It was a target set but people should have been upfront with him and said that it would be possible to deliver on it. The former Minister should have been stopped in his tracks instead of engaging in a public relations exercise by putting out the message that all homeless people, families in particular, would no longer be living in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation by July. Obviously, it is better for people to live in hubs than in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation but the danger with the concept, like anything else, is that it will end up being a long-term measure. We must ensure that does not happen.

The local authorities have rowed back on the idea of financial contributions, but we need to increase that. A few hundred people in my area alone are on the housing waiting list. When that number is replicated, be it in Cork, Dublin or Waterford, it concerns many thousands of people. Consideration has been given to building more senior citizen housing complexes. It is not what I believe should be done, but that is what many people want. They want to live in senior citizen complexes. We should consider building more of those in order that we can bring more housing on stream. That is an important aspect.

It was stated that the next phase of rapid builds is coming up but we are well behind on the first phase. A total of 500 units were to have been built by this year. Twenty-two units have been delivered in Ballymun and some units have been delivered in Finglas and Cherry Orchard. I have seen those units and they are well built and of a very good quality. We were originally told they would be temporary but now it is fairly obvious that they will become more permanent. If we are going to go down that road, we should consider mainstreaming that model instead of saying that these are units for the homeless. We should examine that model and see if we can make such housing affordable for people. That is an important aspect.

We have not started to use public private partnerships, PPPs. I have had my doubts about them. A number of sites have been identified in Dublin. This will be a difficult one. We would have been better off going down another road rather than going with the PPPs. I would like to hear from the representatives whether the management or otherwise believe that the PPPs will deliver. I am curious to know-----