Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

In 1973, the former Labour Party Minister for Local Government, Jim Tully, gave local authority tenants the right to purchase their own homes. This constituted a fundamental social advance. I make that point as someone who, unlike most Members, grew up in a rented house and who knows how important it is for people to have the right to buy their own homes.

Currently, the Government is at times akin to a rabbit transfixed in the headlights of a car as far as the housing issue is concerned. On the one hand, it seeks to meet the ever-rising requirements of greed on the part of builders and developers, who are particularly associated with Fianna Fáil, and on the other hand ensure that owning a house as a human right is something to which every young adult in Ireland can legitimately aspire. Fianna Fáil in particular, albeit with the support of the PDs, has got the balance wrong. Currently, Fianna Fáil is not organising the housing market to benefit buyers. Members should remember that as recently as ten years ago, nurses, gardaí and county council officials could aspire to purchasing a house in their mid to late 20s. Moreover, by a house I mean a three bedroomed house with a garden, where such people could hope to rear a family. In many ways, the market has been excessively overheated by the current Administration in order to meet the requirements of its friends in the building industry. In doing so, it has done a particular disservice to young people setting out to set up homes and start families.

I wish to make a number of specific points. The Government and many local authorities have set up a system in respect of new housing developments to build the right to have a management committee into the planning permission. That management company or committee is then permitted to charge a substantial annual fee to young people for the most part, who have just bought a new house or apartment. In Dublin West, the fee can range from between €400 to €600 per annum initially, but as the years go by, it increases to between €800 and €1,200 per annum. That is a major imposition on new homeowners who struggle to meet large mortgages.

This is privatisation of local authority services by the back door. I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the Tyrellstown estate in my constituency, where something in the order of 2,000 homes have been built by one company. Tyrellstown has been split into approximately eight separate management companies. Last summer, the water supply to that estate failed when there was a scare with regard to potential contamination. The county council was obliged to close the water supply to the houses and to bring in tankers over an extended period of a number of weeks. When I sought information from the county manager, it emerged the council was not in control of the public water supply. Instead, the management companies, which in many cases consist of the builder and his brother or the foreman's son and relatives when completing the houses, were in control and something went wrong. It was extremely difficult to induce the council to correct the problem.

Similarly, some green spaces, public roads and public lighting are under the control of management companies. In some instances, insurance companies ask management companies, which are ultimately meant to be the residents, to pay public liability insurance on public open green spaces. This is a scandal. When questioned by the leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Rabbitte, the Taoiseach agreed it was wrong that management companies should own the public open spaces, water supply and so on. He stated he would do something about it. Recently however, his colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, informed me that he is merely asking local authorities to send him a report about conditions attaching to planning permissions for various types of residential developments which incorporate these management companies. When, at some point in the future, he receives their responses, the Minister will then consider the matter. Thereafter, the Law Reform Commission will also examine the issue.

This is an area in which young people are being ruthlessly scammed by the friends of Fianna Fáil in the building industry. Young people, who have just become homeowners, are charged enormous annual fees for management services in respect of homes and estates which previously have been in the care of local authorities once the estate was taken in charge. Hence, we have the ironic situation whereby expensive private estates built throughout the country are taken into charge properly by the local authorities, while people in affordable houses are charged a ransom fee for public services that should be provided by the local authority. This issue must be addressed.

I also wish to mention a new poverty trap which has developed under the Fianna Fáil-PD Government and which is galloping apace. Because local authorities have moved away from building social housing, people who were traditionally on housing lists and who, after five or six years, had some expectation of a local authority house, are now going into the private rented sector where their rent is supplemented by the community welfare officer. This creates a poverty trap in that an individual, such as a lone parent on a local authority housing list, who is in receipt of rent supplement worth up to €200 per week — the private landlord will receive €600, €800 or €1,000 per month from the community welfare officer for privately renting the dwelling — cannot afford to move into employment because he or she would need to secure a job offering a wage of €500 or €600 per week to afford the private rent. A person who has not been in employment for a couple of years will not be able to make the leap to buying an affordable house.

This is a new poverty trap being perfected by the Government. Its beneficiaries are not the poor, unfortunate people on the housing list but the investors in the private housing sector who can not only outbid a couple seeking to buy a house but are being financed by the Government to keep those on local authority housing lists out of employment. I do not know how the Government proposes to sort out some of the messes it has created to benefit its friends.

In Fingal County Council and other local authorities those residing in local authority dwellings who join community or social employment schemes are subject to rent increases of €8 per week in the first year and €20 per week in the second and subsequent years of participation in the scheme. This is another poverty trap. While the Minister informed me in reply to a parliamentary question that he does not advise local authorities to apply this practice, they nonetheless continue to do so, thereby creating another poverty trap. It is wrong that the Government is creating barriers to home ownership rather than helping people to get into employment and purchase their own homes. The Labour Party legislated in this House for the right of people to buy their own home. Unfortunately, the Fianna Fáil Party is acting for the builders and restricting access to home ownership.

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