Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on what is, perhaps, the most important issue that affects modern Ireland. I pay tribute to Deputy Gilmore for the manner in which he has laid out the case regarding housing as, perhaps, the greatest failure of contemporary Ireland. What has happened in housing is socially destructive and has torn the heart out of the economy. It is socially destructive in so far as it represents little less than a complete retreat from social housing. Two people on modest incomes now have no choice but conscription into the economy in the full knowledge that they will spend most of their time commuting without any assurance that they will ever be able to afford a home. It has an effect on children, neighbourhoods and communities.

Like the Minister of State who spoke, I would like to deal entirely with facts. We regularly hear that 80,000 housing units were finished last year. Less than 6,000 of them were social housing units. When I first became a Member of the Oireachtas in the period from 1973 to 1977, we were building more than 20,000 local authority houses per year. What is being built now is less than a quarter of what was being built in the 1970s. The assumption is that people can be pushed from the social into the affordable housing category even though the qualifications are entirely different.

Having given tax breaks and made mistakes in the Finance Act of two or three years ago which allowed people write off rental income against all costs, people were driven into the market for speculative housing, which should be a basic right. It is interesting to consider the facts. Those who no longer own one or two houses, but eight or ten houses, have been able to deal with their income in terms of tax breaks and the Government's approach to housing its citizens is to use €400 million per year as income for these greedy people who have not got enough.

I can answer the question asked by the Minister of State about where that €400 million could be spent. Any of us who have ever reviewed public accounts know it is a matter of what €400 million would serve by way of capital that could be used to provide a proper housing structure. Some 5.8% of total finishes were social housing units, which represents a decline from 2004 when it was 7%. In 2003 it was 8.9% and in 2002 it was 10%. The social partners opened talks with the Government in the full knowledge that one of the greatest failures in the programme has been the failure to deliver the number of houses the Government, trade unions, farmers and other social partners signed up to. It is inconceivable that this would not be an opening point in the new talks.

Without being emotive we should consider the figures. The national development plan promised 35,500 units. So far in that period only 20,600 units have been provided. To be practical about those who are affected by this issue, is it reasonable that one in five should spend more than one third of their income on paying rent, as outlined in the Economic and Social Research Institute study on the position of tenants? We are depriving people not only of a house, but also of full citizenship by keeping them locked in poverty, which is the net effect because if even one of the two people who share a house works for more than 30 hours, both of them and their children lose the rent allowance. That is not defensible in a civilised society.

Other assumptions are made regarding housing including that we might not have a housing crisis. The suggestion is that sooner or later everybody will be able to be rich. Newspapers frequently run headlines that a particular property has sold for more than €1 million. I remember a former Secretary of a Department telling me how wonderful he felt to be living in Ireland where his sons were paying €500,000 for houses. How wonderful, indeed, that the citizens of the country had been fired on to the market to be available for speculative abuse and at the same time a series of Finance Acts would allow people to move their income without needing to pay even a proportion of it in tax. Meanwhile, at the crack of dawn men and women are driving ever-longer journeys to satisfy the economy and at the same time of the 61,000 who are locked at home because they are getting rent supplement, approximately 3,500 or fewer are on employment-related schemes. The idea is that they can be locked up through the rent supplement scheme when the country is awash with money.

As always for this kind of right-wing politics, the scarce resource of land was available to make a small number of people super rich. It did not really matter that families would not have a roof over their heads. As we go into the new social partnership talks, this is the test that people like me, who have spent nearly 40 years in a trade union, will be watching. After the talks, how many social houses will the Government commit to building? How will the Government explain the shortfall in the houses that have been provided? What will be the reaction to the crazy nonsense of suggesting that all the social housing applicants can be transformed into affordable housing applicants? Given the Construction Industry Federation's strike against mixed housing and that we have abused the 5% provision is it realistic that somehow people will automatically be able to get houses? We need exactly what Deputy Gilmore has proposed. We need to replace the supplement system, which is degrading, and blocking people from entering the workforce and improving themselves. There is a clear discrimination against two people living together where because of the income of one, both are penalised.

With regard to the scarce resource that is land, it is also clear that the Government should use the resources it has in such surplus. If it can give €3 billion to those who do not need it, can it not give instructions and a plan to local authorities to acquire the land and build the houses that social housing applicants need?

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