Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We heard a call for humility or an acknowledgement of the mistakes that were made, are still being made and have led us to an absolutely disastrous housing crisis. There is nobody out there who does not think this is a disaster. The Minister must have clinics, the same as the rest of us, and he meets the people who are affected by the housing crisis. The situation that people are facing is utterly shameful and intolerable for those involved.

This week, I met a woman with two children, part of a working family, who he is being evicted by her landlord from the house in which she was born and her family has lived since the 1950s. The family are not entitled to social housing because they are over the income threshold and they are not entitled to the housing assistance payment, HAP. If they are made homeless, as they may well be because there is nothing available, they will be on the street. The couple are in their late 50s and have two children. I underline that they will not even be entitled to emergency accommodation because their income is over the threshold. People need to grasp what it means, and I am sure the Minister knows what it means, to have people stand in my clinic bawling and crying and asking what will happen to them and their children. The family attended one of the protests that took place over the weekend. While the issue was being talked about the mother and her two children started bawling and crying, just thinking about their situation. Sadly, such cases are repeated again and again.

This week, another woman came to my clinic. She spent five years living in direct provision and now lives in a hostel with her young son who is very seriously traumatised. I could see that because he came in to my office with his mother.

He was carrying a little bag which he brings everywhere since he does not know where he will be living and will possibly have nowhere to go, so he has to have his bag. This is disturbing stuff that is being done to children. That story is being repeated again and again. The mother cries and the child has clearly been damaged by the experience. This is what we are dealing with. If some of us get a bit exercised by all this, it is because people cannot take this any more. Somebody should admit that we did something wrong to have got to this point. We need to understand how we got here, otherwise we will learn nothing and keep making the same mistakes. If the Minister does not accept some of the points that some of us are making and he is railing against the alternatives that we are proposing, does he have any analysis of how we got here? How did we get to this point if it was not through mistakes being made? My understanding is clear. If the Minister's understanding is different, I would love to hear it.

Cherrywood, in my area, is the biggest residential development in the State. We had that in our hands. After the property developers helped to crash the economy along with the bankers, for a brief moment, we had that site and many other sites in our hands. We could have delivered the affordable and public housing when we had all that, but a decision was made by the Fine Gael and Labour Government at the time to encourage investors to come in to buy all that up. They were offered that and they were made aware of tax breaks that were available on capital gains tax and rental revenue. That was a policy.

Ten or 12 years later, is there any recognition that that was a mistake? To my mind, when the history books are written, it will be considered one of the greatest mistakes that was ever made in this country. We unloaded €40 billion. What is that worth now with the appreciation of property values and so on? It may be twice that or more. It was given to these investors. They will walk away after paying little or no tax in the form of capital gains tax or from the extortionate rents they are charging. We had it and we could have delivered affordable and public housing on that land. Instead, we incentivised them with tax breaks and encouraged them to take all that property. Look at what they have done with it and landed us with. The Minister still defends the idea that we will keep doing this and states that they have a role to play.

I am baffled. Is there any acknowledgement that that policy failed us disastrously and contributed to the current situation? Is there any recognition on the part of those who were in government in that period that it may have been a mistake and there may have been a better alternative? If there is no recognition of that, we are really goosed and this will go on and on and get worse. The figures relating to housing output are not hopeful. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has stated that the Housing for All targets will completely fail to meet the housing demand that is projected. There are serious questions about whether Housing for All will deliver on its targets. The Department is saying internally that it is not good enough anyway. I know that from my own area. I have seen the Housing for All targets for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. We will have more people on housing lists in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown at the end of the Housing for All strategy than we have now. That is not a policy that is working.

In the meantime, the people who bought Cherrywood will make a fortune. They will charge extortionate rents and the State will still be paying through housing assistance payment, HAP, rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and leasing arrangements, insofar as we get any of that property. They are huge, ballooning amounts that will continue to increase. Is there any recognition that that may not be a good idea and that we would be better off if we had that stuff in our hands rather than these profit-driven investors having it in theirs? They have us over a barrel with the rents they charge and the power to evict people into the sort of desperate situation that I described.

Does the Minister recognise this? It is a genuine question. I am sure he sees all this hardship and misery. Does he recognise that policies have contributed to creating it and that we should maybe learn a few lessons from what has gone on with housing in this country over the last ten or 12 years?