Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

By any standards that is not a decent accomplishment. I really do not believe the Minister of State is making an impact. Meanwhile, we are finding out that 16% of homes in the country are vacant. The Government is providing tax incentives for holiday homes that remain vacant for 11 months of the year. That is not the way forward in terms of housing policy and the Minister of State should look at the type of incentives being given and reconsider them in order to help the less well-off rather than those who are doing quite well.

In many respects a triple tax incentive is being provided, particularly if one considers the relief available for rental property. Builders construct accommodation for rental purposes. They get tax relief on the cost of the rental units in the first instance. They also get tax relief on the rent received. To add insult to injury they get a third tax relief from the State, namely, a payment under the rental subsidy scheme. While people are living in substandard accommodation and housing lists in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown have trebled over the last ten years, the Minister of State is providing a triple tax relief to some of the wealthiest people on this island. That is not the right type of housing policy. The measure of any social housing policy is how it helps the least well off.

When one looks at the transition for those on rental supplement to the rented accommodation scheme, one finds that when local authority officials inspect the accommodation it simply is not up to scratch. Whether this is due to fire regulations, the lack of hot or cold running water, damp on the walls or whatever, only 10% or 15% of the accommodation vetted under the rental accommodation scheme — I am subject to correction on this — passes muster. The accommodation is not measuring up to the simple basic standards for 2006, a damning indictment of the Minister of State's housing policy.

This is not about general housing, but rather about housing for the least well-off. It is for lone parents trying to bring up a couple of children who are struggling to make ends meet and paying money to landlords day in day out. Even that type of accommodation is simply not meeting the basic standards, and it is the most vulnerable who are suffering, whether parents trying to bring up children on their own, recently arrived immigrants or whoever. Meanwhile three different types of benefit are being handed out to very well off people. They are getting the double rent relief, capital allowances and rental supplement. The well off are doing better out of this and the most vulnerable are suffering.

I commend Sinn Féin for attempting to reinstate Part V of what was well considered legislation. Fianna Fáil has moved to the right, particularly under Deputy Cullen's stewardship. It sees the only way forward as the privatisation of essential State services. I am concerned that the State has an enormously important role to play in providing the basics, whether in health, education, housing or in public transport. The last few years in particular have seen State agencies starved of the essential funding they need and legislation filleted of the intentions that were there in the first instance.

We must also consider the issues raised by the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution and its conclusions as regards housing. It suggested two very simple initiatives. One was that local authorities should be able to purchase land at the existing use value, plus 25%. The other was that we should be taxing the benefits of the increase in value that accrues from rezoning. If one looks at any of the property supplements one can see we are not talking about millions or tens of millions of euro but hundreds of millions of euro in increased value. The lands belonging to Sir Marc Cochrane in Shankill went overnight, by virtue of a stroke of a planner's or a county councillor's pen, from a value of €3 million to €170 million. That is the type of profit being made by those who are inside the tent at the Galway races. The efforts of the Government could be concentrated on a few slight changes that would improve the capacity of the local authority to build homes in the first instance.

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