Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Our spokesperson on the environment, Deputy Gilmore, has suffered a family bereavement and as a consequence is not in the House.

In the past ten years, the property market in this country has been elevated almost to the level of a national obsession. Newspapers print bulky supplements packed with property advertising. Economists who pronounce on future trends in house prices are guaranteed extensive coverage. Where once the weather was the staple diet of small talk with strangers, we now rely on property prices to fill gaps in conversation.

The motion is about the political choices that Governments make or fail to make and how those choices affect people's lives. Throughout the Government's seven years in office, it has been confronted by a property market profoundly affected by an unprecedented economic boom. It has posed problems and dilemmas but above all choices. This Government has consistently chosen to maintain the property market as a source of enormous profits for a few speculators at the expense of those who need housing. It has consistently chosen to treat housing like any other commodity rather than as an essential social good or, perish the thought, a right of citizenship. In response to political pressure, it has from time to time meddled with the housing market, however it has never seen the property market as one to be properly regulated and controlled in the public interest. Instead, the commodification and marketisation of housing have increased.

That is, of course, completely in keeping with the new conservative Fianna Fáil, whose right-wing ideology would be instantly recognisable and quite at home in the British Conservative Party or among American Republicans and which serves the interests of Fianna Fáil's wealthy backers, who never have any difficulty finding a home and shelter in the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway races. As this motion makes clear, there is a housing crisis in Ireland which pervades all housing types. When the Labour Party was last in Government, families and young couples on modest incomes could afford to buy their own homes. People on council housing lists were housed within a reasonable time and there were certainly far fewer homeless people.

Under Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, house prices have trebled. In 1997, the average price of a new house was €97,000. House prices have increased by nine times the rate of inflation, five times the rate of increase in average earnings and four times the rate of increase in the cost of building. The failure by the Government to curtail the increase in house prices has had enormous social consequences. It has placed home ownership beyond the reach of large numbers of young people. It has imposed large financial burdens on those who have managed to buy a home. It has forced thousands of people, particularly those who work in Dublin, to move further and further away from the city in which they work.

Pick up a school history book and turn to the chapter on the industrial revolution, and there one reads of the long hours of workers in Victorian factories who went to work before dawn and returned after nightfall. In post-Celtic tiger Ireland, we have our own equivalent, those who wait at bus stops in Carlow, south Kildare and Louth, in the pre-dawn, to spend long hours travelling to and from the capital to work. This is the legacy of Fianna Fáil's failure to regulate the housing market. It is grossly inefficient and socially inequitable, and it is causing untold stress to the people concerned.

According to the local authority housing strategies, 33% of new families nationally cannot afford to buy a home. That percentage increases to 42% in urban areas and 50% in Dublin. For those who cannot afford to buy a home, other options have also been closed off. No serious attempt is being made to deal with problems in other housing tenures, including affordable housing, private rented accommodation and local authority housing.

Under this Government, the numbers on council housing lists have doubled, up from 26,000 in 1996 to over 60,000 now. However, less than 5,000 local authority houses are being built each year. By 2002, fewer than 10% of all residences were publicly provided, down from 33% in the mid-1970s. Again, in 2002, just less than 7% of households were living in local authority houses. At the same time, between 1995 and 2002, the stock of public housing in Dublin grew by a mere 447 houses per annum.

Under the partnership agreement, Sustaining Progress, the Government agreed to provide an additional 10,000 affordable houses. This was a fundamental issue for the trade union side in negotiating the programme and one which might well have been a "deal breaker" had it not been included. Instead, the deal breakers are the Government. Not a block has been laid or a sod turned on the promised 10,000 affordable houses. None of the houses has been built, none has been started, not one planning application has been lodged and no architects have even been appointed.

The Government that broke so many promises to the electorate has broken faith with the social partners and with the people who might have been able to purchase one of these homes. This has not, of course, stopped periodic announcements by the Government as to State lands that might be handed over for the building of these houses. We may yet hear another one before the local elections on 11 June. As people know by now, the Government's word counts for little. What we see are State owned lands being sold from time to time to private developers on a commercial basis. I have no difficulty with that, provided the housing departments of local authorities are given first refusal on such lands. Indeed, as the Labour group on Dublin City Council has argued, there is a need for a comprehensive audit of State-held property in the capital to determine what lands would be better used for housing.

Those who cannot afford to buy their own home or who remain on local authority housing lists are forced into the private rented sector, where rents have sky-rocketed in the past decade, and where tenants have few rights. Between 1998 and 2001 alone, average rents in Dublin increased by 53%, and nationally in the same period rents increased faster than in any other EU country. It is striking that during the past seven years of Fianna Fáil rule, more Irish families have lost their homes through eviction than during any equivalent period in the 19th century. Castle Rackrent is thriving, under the appreciative eye of Fianna Fáil. Four years after its publication, the report of the commission on the private rented sector has not been implemented. Meanwhile, the Government's main contribution to tackling the housing crisis this year was to include in its savage 16 welfare cuts changes to the rent allowance which will make it more difficult for people on social welfare to rent their own homes.

In this context, it is little wonder that the number of people homeless in our society has doubled under Fianna Fáil. It is an affront to a civilised society to have so many of our fellow citizens without homes, many living on our streets. I pay tribute to Deputy Stagg, my predecessor in office before I became Minister of State with responsibility for housing in a previous Administration, who tackled the issue head-on when it came to providing accommodation for homeless people. I inherited a policy which ensured people were given an opportunity to get accommodation if they found themselves homeless in Dublin. I recall the health board was able to name the 40 people who were still sleeping rough, having been offered the chance of a home. The problem had been reduced to that hard-core of homeless people. Homelessness has mushroomed during the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats coalition's period in office.

Let us remember none of this is inevitable, rather it is the direct result of the approach and attitude that Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats have taken to housing and the housing market. For as long as the Government persists in treating housing the same as any other commodity, to be used as a means of generating vast wealth for a few at the expense of the rest of the population, we will continue to have a housing crisis. For as long as the Government refuses to regulate the housing market in the public interest, we will continue to have a housing crisis. For as long as housing policy is dictated by special interests, we will continue to have a housing crisis.

If the Government chose to do so, it could tackle these problems. However, it must begin with a fundamental recognition that shelter and a home is a basic human requirement. The housing market is replete with monopolistic tendencies and market failures that justify intervention. It is not beyond the wit of man, or indeed woman, to develop an efficient, properly functioning housing market that serves our society and treats people fairly.

We can begin with a formal recognition of the importance of housing in our basic law. In the Labour Party's Twenty-First Amendment of the Constitution (No. 3) Bill 1999, we proposed adding the following to Article 40 of the Constitution: "The State, bearing in mind international legal standards, recognises the economic, social and cultural rights of all persons and, in particular, recognises: the right to an adequate standard of living, comprising adequate housing and nutrition and other means necessary to a dignified existence." The clause went on to state: "Where practicable, the enjoyment of these rights should in the first place be ensured by individual and family effort and initiative", but "Where persons or their dependants are unable adequately to exercise or enjoy any of these rights, the State guarantees, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate these rights, in accordance with the principles of social justice."

In the society in which we live, with the wealth that surrounds us, there is no reason every citizen of this State cannot be housed. The right to shelter is a basic human right and one which this State should vindicate. We do not need to change our Constitution, however, to regulate the price of building land. Land speculation and profiteering is at the heart of the housing crisis and is the cause of the inexorable increase in house prices. It is striking that a house that costs €100,000 to build costs €300,000 to buy. A small number of land speculators are allowed to effectively control the supply of building land, keeping land prices high and earning supernormal profits on the sale of a vital social resource.

The solution to this problem is to allow local authorities to compulsorily purchase land at a reasonable mark-up over existing use value. This proposal is not new. It dates back to the Kenny report and would allow local authorities to purchase land at reasonable prices for building local authority houses and affordable housing and to ensure an adequate supply of building land being made available for voluntary housing associations and private house construction at reasonable prices. Hence the local authority would have the power to purchase building land at reasonable prices and to sell it on as it chose to builders. In tandem with this power, local authorities should always have a greater say over what is built and where. It is time we grasped the nettle of effective urban development with appropriate mixes of housing types and proper community facilities being provided at the same time as housing, not years afterwards.

I am pleased the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitution has effectively endorsed Labour's proposals in this area and has agreed that constitutional change is not required for legislation to proceed. Our aim must be to slow the rate of increase in house prices, not to reduce them in nominal terms. What matters is the ratio of house prices to people's earnings and this can be improved only by keeping house price increases low while wages increase. To achieve this effective implementation of the Kenny proposals will require a national agency with the skills to monitor house prices nationally, and to ensure effective co-ordination of policies across local authorities. Our aim must be to ensure that a high level of housing output continues and that output is not curtailed as demand and supply in the market come into better balance. A national housing agency would also be in a position to help drive an agenda of housing market reform.

At the same time as tackling the problem of spiralling house prices there is a need to improve consumer rights for home buyers. There is a need for stronger action to ensure the quality of houses being built. We also need to protect house buyers against sharp practice by builders or estate agents. Consumers have a right to be protected against price gazumping and against the long-running sore of developers leaving estates unfinished which is not being addressed. People are still being forced to live for years on what are effectively building sites, even though they have paid very large prices for their houses. A core element of any strategy to resolve the housing crisis must be an increase in the production of social housing. Labour believes the number of local authority homes being built should be at least doubled. There is also an urgent need to change the income limits for the shared ownership scheme and the affordable housing scheme to make them more available.

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