Dr. John Bissett:

I thank the committee for the invitation. A few points struck me. It is important not to forget that the housing issue has to be tied to the issue of economic equality. When we discuss the sliding scales of possible rental structures within the cost rental model, the ideal situation would see no income differentials between people. There is significant economic inequality between groups in this country, so we need to consider this matter seriously. It is not the housing that creates the economic inequality. Rather, the housing reflects the economic inequality. Our public housing system is not essential in and of itself and has not just manifested somehow. It is purely a reflection of the inequalities that exist within society. What we get in the public housing sector at the moment is a particular class of people who are clearly defined and demarcated on the basis of income. We should aim for a radical reduction of income and wealth inequalities across society. That would aid us phenomenally in changing how our housing structure looks. We are doomed to repeat mistake after mistake if people continue to be poor living in public housing. To use the dreaded word "holistic", the State cannot divorce housing policy from issues of economic inequality. They have to be addressed together.

I ask the committee members to think, please, about how they will deal with this question as legislators. I would challenge them on whether they have an interest in it and believe it is important, given that the State seems to believe it is not important, that economic inequality can continue regardless and we can have a society that is based on class and gender axes and is increasingly divided racially, given that poorer immigrant communities now live on the fringes of the city in high-rent private accommodation. This is a fundamental issue.

Home ownership has been engineered through policy decisions. Dr. Conor McCabe's book, Sins of the Father, describes how housing policy was manufactured in Ireland in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s just as it was manufactured in other countries. Large capitalist organisations saw housing as the mechanism for wealth extraction and capital investment. They continue to view it as a mechanism for wealth extraction.

The thrust of the cost rental model is to make housing a public good. I take Deputy Coppinger's point. Ms Comerford and I are involved in a group called Housing Action Now. We do not just want to see this done on a local level in St. Michael's Estate, crucial as that is. Rather, we want to see it done at a national level. Given that we view housing on a European level as well, we are also involved in the European action coalition for housing.

At the national level, it is critical that we be able to meet the scale of our housing problem. Housing policy and Rebuilding Ireland have failed. They are not doing what they are supposed to do. The reason for this is that the current Administration still believes that the market has all of the solutions to the problem, but it does not. The State will have to make an intervention. Within the field of power that is politics, one Administration will be replaced by another because people know that the scale of society's housing crisis is problematic for them. The State has to respond at some level. The market does not have the solutions.

Regarding home ownership, a significant number of people in mortgage debt are at risk of repossession due to the housing policies that caused and drove the previous crisis. As such, it is not as simple as saying that home ownership is still the way to go. Using St. Michael's Estate as an example, the idea behind the cost rental model is to change our housing system and policy.

During the crash, and as outlined in the NERI paper - other people have given presentations at St. Michael's Estate - the Austrian housing system continued building sustainable blocks of housing year on year because the state was geared up to deliver its housing policy and meet need. We need a sustainable housing policy. It does not take much common sense to work out that leaving it all to the extraction of wealth from the housing system will be problematic. The consequences of that policy can be seen everywhere.