Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this discussion today. This essentially boils down to the impact of EU fiscal rules on our housing crisis. We sat here a year and a half ago when the first thing the new Dáil did was to establish a housing and homelessness committee. I was happy with many things in the report. However, the fiscal rules are central to why we are not making progress on the housing crisis, something which was not adequately dealt with in the report

The 2012 Stability and Growth Pact means that Government debt cannot be more than 60% of GDP and our deficit cannot be more than 3%. For that reason, our Government decided to make an important change in social policy, one which will be studied in the future by sociologists and academics. It switched from councils building houses to approved housing bodies, so much so that the stock has tripled, as stated in the presentation, and it is envisaged in Rebuilding Ireland that housing bodies would provide up to one third of the public housing stock. This matters because the Government has decided to switch in order to bypass the EU rules and to try to find an off-balance sheet mechanism. The Government tried a conjuring trick and has been found out. With all due respect, how can anybody claim that something is not on the balance sheet when it is almost exclusively financed by Government? My concern is ensuring that the housing crisis is addressed.

Another secondary consideration of the Government is that it is not particularly interested in having councils building houses to the same extent. I have found that when one is a tenant of a housing body, one is not a tenant of the council and does not have the same representation and ability to have councillors batting on one's behalf. I wonder what the point of having councillors is given the current situation in respect of Irish Water and housing. I do not know what they will do apart from deal with lampposts. This is a serious issue. Tenants do not enjoy the same rights as those who have council members fighting for them.

Finance is now a major barrier to resolving the housing crisis. The problem with housing bodies is the volume of houses they can build. In days gone by, councils could build hundreds of thousands of houses quite quickly. Housing bodies tend to build 20 or 60 houses at a time. We need much more volume to resolve the housing emergency.

EUROSTAT may find that this is on balance sheet. It raises the question of what the Government will do if that is the finding. In recent times, the EU has been portrayed as a friend of Ireland given the Brexit situation. However, it is preventing us from dealing with our housing situation. We have money and do not have to borrow. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund could solve the housing crisis, but we are prevented from using the money. It is quite shocking how little attention has been given to this by the media because it is one of the key issues.

One cannot resolve the housing emergency through using housing bodies because we need scale and speed, and I mean no offence to any of the people gathered here.

Let us say EUROSTAT says we are on-balance sheet. Will the Government and the Department of Finance seek a derogation from the EU rules? Will they seek an emergency meeting with the EU to explain to it that we have a serious housing emergency and, therefore, must breach the rules? If one had a Government that was willing to do so then it should go ahead and breach the rules because it is more important to build houses for the people who need them. This is an important discussion. The shift to try to move away from councils has now been exposed. This aspect must be seriously considered if EUROSTAT says the illusive off-balance sheet model does not work.