Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

A few weeks ago I attempted to adjourn the Dáil to discuss the closure and suspension of the Dublin City Council affordable housing panel and to give the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government an opportunity to explain to the House how he intended to reduce the huge waiting lists for affordable and social housing in Dublin city and the three Dublin county authority areas.

Today we have received more bad news regarding the proposed €265 million regeneration plan for St. Michael's Estate in Inchicore where city housing manager Ciarán MacNamara is demanding "an immediate conclusion" to protracted negotiations with developer Bernard McNamara on a PPP project which, since 2001, has aimed to provide 720 new private and social affordable housing units.

The performance of Dublin City Council on providing affordable housing has been extremely poor. Only 1,025 units have been sold to date with a further 691 units in various stages of conveyance. Report No. 179/2008 of the manager, John Tierney, announced the closure of the affordable housing panel from 21 April 2008 until the end of the year. This report stated that there are now more than 8,000 applicants on the affordable housing panel, of whom 3,000 registered in 2007 alone. It was expected that the panel would grow to more than 10,000 individuals and families in 2008. Mr. Tierney says there will be a complete restructuring of the affordable housing process, but without a major national housing initiative, the affordable housing programme in Dublin City Council amounts to a cruel hoax on thousands of young people and their families.

Dublin City Council's social housing programme is likewise a grotesque failure of public policy. In the last assessment of housing need, the number of homeless households on the city waiting list was 1,309 and the overall social housing list is consistently approximately 6,000 individuals and families. Like other city public representatives, I find it distressing and dispiriting to meet constituents who are seven, eight, nine and even ten years on the social housing list. The question arises as to why time on the list is not a much bigger factor in the weighting of social housing applications.

Fingal county manager, David O'Connor, gave an impressive report on the county affordable housing programme at a recent meeting with Oireachtas representatives from the Fingal area. The waiting list comprises 735 individuals and families. I know from experience that the Fingal affordable application process is efficient and productive for applicants. Issues have arisen, however, about the income limits for affordable housing and the extent to which lower paid citizens, including public servants, are denied the opportunity to access affordable housing in Fingal. These are issues of which the county manager, David O'Connor, and the housing manager, Dick Brady, are clearly aware.

The social housing position in Fingal is almost as discouraging as in Dublin City Council. At present, the number of individuals and families on the social housing list is 5,259 for the Howth-Malahide ward. This is similar to the number — 5,291 — waiting in the Swords, Balbriggan and Blanchardstown housing areas. In total, excluding multiple applications, there are 5,738 housing applications in the Fingal area and 41 individuals on the homeless list. As with the Dublin City Council affordable and social lists, it may take up to a decade or longer to reach applicants on these lists.

I acknowledge that both Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council have made significant efforts within their statutory powers to eliminate and reduce homelessness and to provide much needed lower cost housing. Fingal, of course, has the advantage of greenfield sites while Dublin City Council is mainly reliant on more difficult brownfield sites. The record outlined above shows a grave failure of public policy over which the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, of the Green Party has presided for almost a year.

The announcement of the RAS, rental accommodation scheme, was a key positive development. Given the incredible difficulties of the private housing market, desperate families in need of housing have also flocked to join the RAS. For example, there are more than 1,400 people in the Dublin City Council area waiting for a RAS allocation, with over 300 households alone in the north-central area of Dublin city. It seems incredible that a country which built over 80,000 housing units in 2006 and 90,000 units in 2007 should have the astonishing housing lists described above in two key counties with a combined population of more than 750,000. This is the appalling reality in the Ireland of the Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, and the Minister, Deputy John Gormley. I say shame on them and on the Fianna Fáil Party and the Green Party.

I urge the Minister, Deputy Gormley, as a former lord mayor and Dublin city councillor — the Acting Chairman will recall I played a role in ensuring he became lord mayor — to call in both local authority managers and devise a strategy to reduce these shocking housing lists. If this approach is still ineffective perhaps it is time we considered a national housing executive to discharge the public housing function that is not being discharged by these local authorities and, in particular, by Dublin City Council.

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