Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

The first time buyer lost the €4,500 grant and was asked to pay the €8,000 levy. Thus by direct intervention the Government has ensured that the cost of the house to the first time buyer has increased by more than €12,000. That is a conservative estimate because the price varies from one area to another. Even without those direct interventions a couple now hoping to buy the average three-bedroom semi-detached house would have to earn in the region of €100,000 per year. With jiggling, juggling, loans from families — because few families can afford to present young couples with the €20,000 usually required as a deposit — couples somehow manage to put together the mortgage payments, the stamp duty, and the rest to put a roof over their heads.

In the 1980s, a time of high unemployment, I argued that society was under threat because one could not make the normal transition from being part of a family to creating one's own family when one did not have the income necessary to do that. This Government has ensured that process is once again interrupted. Some years ago I read a Danish study of a phenomenon which I believed could never happen here. The study reported that there were more mothers leaving their families than vice versa because when the mothers died their children were still living at home. That is happening very quickly here, not because people do not want to be independent or live in their own homes but they cannot do that.

The social welfare chapter in the latest budget attacked not only those struggling to keep a roof over their heads but those seeking rent allowance. When Deputy Harney introduced the PDs policy in the 1997 election to the effect that lone parents should stay at home with their own parents, that is in the grandparents' house she was roundly criticised. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Coughlan, has introduced that same penalty by the backdoor. One now must be living in private rented accommodation for six months before being considered for rent allowance. That someone who qualifies for rent allowance would have enough money to sustain herself or himself in private rented accommodation for six months would indicate to me, if I were a social welfare officer, that this person did not need rent allowance in the first place. Why would one give it to that person? It is incomprehensible that this Government has decided that in order to put a roof over one's head one must now be at the very least upper middle class or have had one's name on a housing list for ten years.

Last year the cost of housing went up by between 13% and 16%, that is seven to eight times the rate of inflation. The price of housing is increasing by over €74 a day. Is it any wonder that one sees people outbidding each other in desperation. They know that whatever about their chance of buying this year, this time next year their chance will be gone entirely. There has been a large increase in the incidence of parents being co-owners of houses with young people, which is the only way they can acquire mortgages. The Government pretends it is not happening. Why should it worry about it? We should worry about it because it is interfering with the natural process. If we are not worried about that, I do not know where we will end up.

Although 60,000 people are on local authority waiting lists the budget was cut by 16%. Taking inflation into account the cut grows to 20%. If no additional person goes on local authority waiting lists in the next 12 years, at this rate we will only have cleared the current list by then. We all know that will not happen because people are not earning enough to get a mortgage but are earning too much to be considered for affordable housing. The consequences of this for society are serious, yet it does not appear to matter.

The motion before the House may appear to be something that has already been heard, but it goes to the very heart of how we organise society. I am sick and tired of hearing the Tánaiste say she will not interfere or she cannot interfere, that she does not believe in interfering. However, the Government interferes on a daily basis. It directly interferes in the market to help those it clearly sees as its supporters. They are the ones who are benefiting from this crisis.

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