Charlie O'Connor (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution on this important Bill. This is an occasion on which I can speak comfortably about Tallaght and my wider constituency because this is where my experience of housing is based. I remind colleagues that I was a member of the local authority from 1991 and I miss it. Much of my work still concerns housing issues and they remain of great interest to me.

I am sorry the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Finneran, is not present because I wanted to compliment him on his work and to wish him well in the lead up to the budget next week. As other speakers have stated, it is important that we support the work of the Minister of State and other Ministers. Everybody has a point of view on where Government funding should be used. I have an interest in the brief of the Minister of State, Deputy Martin Mansergh, who is in the House, because I am anxious to have a new Garda station in Tallaght.

With regard to housing, the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, has the support of all colleagues in fighting his corner and trying to ensure that money is made available to continue to properly fund social housing and other housing programmes. Last week, I brought to his attention my upset at newspaper reports that 291 proposed homes in South Dublin County Council's programme for Tallaght were being axed. I understand this is not the position but I await confirmation. It is important that we continue to provide homes through local authorities and other schemes where people cannot get their own accommodation.

I lived in the inner city many years ago. My family waited patiently for a Dublin Corporation house and then we lived in Crumlin. Much of what crosses our desks on housing, including a number of provisions included in this Bill, concerns issues with which I grew up. I am glad to be able to bring my life experience to my work as a Deputy for a major population centre. I am very happy about the experience I obtained over many years. Mr. Frank Feeley, the then city manager, told me a long time ago that I would survive as a politician because having been a member of the county council for only three or four weeks in 1991, I criticised Dublin Corporation. I did so because in those days Dublin Corporation had provided 5,000 houses in the Tallaght area but there was no accountability or public representation and we had to fight our corner as far as these issues were concerned.

The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill contains a number of important provisions. It makes further provision for the functions of housing authorities. It provides for the making of housing services plans and the carrying out of social housing assessments for the purposes of social housing support and the allocation of dwellings. It also provides for rental accommodation arrangements and for the management and control functions of housing authorities. In addition, it provides for the making of antisocial behaviour strategies. It also makes further provision for tenant purchase of dwellings by incremental purchase arrangements. For these and other purposes it amends and extends the Housing Acts 1966 to 2004, the Housing Finance Agency Act 1981, the Planning and Development Act 2000 and the Civil Registration Act 2004. It also provides for other related matters.

I wish to address a number of issues, some of which were already mentioned by colleagues. I listened carefully to my fellow Dubliner, Deputy Catherine Byrne, when she spoke about homelessness. It is very important, even at this stage, that the Minister listens to those representing people affected by homelessness. There is a strong view, which has been represented to me throughout my constituency, that the question of homelessness should be addressed in the Bill.

I have mentioned often that I live in Tallaght and thank God Tallaght has developed hugely over recent years and we are a city in all but name. However, despite the progress and the good things that have happened, which I have listed often so I will not test the patience of the Ceann Comhairle by doing so now, there are still gaps in services. I am very unhappy that there is still no provision in Tallaght, which is the third-largest population centre in the country, to deal with those who are homeless. There is no hostel. I have stated on many occasions that we send people with such a problem to Dublin city on the bus. That is not right. In this context I compliment the Tallaght Homeless Advice Unit, an organisation based in Tallaght village which does its best to cater for those who are homeless and provide them with information and resources to deal with their situation. I strongly support it.

I receive quite an amount of correspondence from various groups, as I am sure do colleagues, including from St. Mary's Priory, which makes the case for legislation to make a commitment on homelessness. Even at this stage, I hope the Minister will acknowledge and examine this. He has acknowledged the correspondence he has received from many colleagues with regard to the MakeRoom group which has organised an online campaign on homelessness. The group makes strong points and I hope the Minister takes them into account.

A number of colleagues raised issues which I feel strongly should be provided for in this Bill. We all receive representations from many groups and young people with regard to the operation of apartment management companies. All of our constituencies have had problems with these. Over recent years throughout Dublin South-West and in Tallaght there has been a huge increase in the development of apartments. In some cases this has been good and in others it has not. If one walks around Tallaght or any other place, and Deputy Catherine Byrne spoke about Crumlin, one sees a huge number of apartments lying idle. Nobody lives in them or uses them and this causes all sorts of problems, including antisocial behaviour. I wonder where this will end. I want to be positive about Tallaght but if one walks around Tallaght village, the new town centre area and a number of the estates one will find vacant apartments.

Where apartments are occupied I receive huge numbers of calls, as I know colleagues do also, about the operation of management companies. I hope the long-promised legislation on these issues will be fast-forwarded because many people are asking us to address this issue. It is very unfair that young people under much pressure, in good times as well as in more demanding economic times, receive fewer services than those to which they are entitled. In general, management companies seem to be very difficult to deal with. Not a day goes by that I do not receive inquiries in this regard. It is time that various Departments put their heads together and introduce legislation to deal with this problem. I hope this will be sooner rather than later.

Colleagues made reference to tenant purchase, another area in which I am interested. It is important that we support the view that families should be assisted as much as possible in owning their own homes. That was my view all those years ago when I was reared in Crumlin. That was my view when I moved to Tallaght and when I became involved in community life and then political life.

There was a time when the Government introduced a grant to assist people to leave local authority houses and to go to other places. I will not dig this up again, but it took families from local authority estates who were doing well, contributing to the local economy and the local community fabric. It is very important to encourage people to own their local authority homes as much as possible. Every effort should be made by the local authorities to ensure that people do that. I know the Minister is keen on this and we should encourage it.

The question of antisocial behaviour is something that concerns us all. When I was small, I did not quite understand what it meant, but I know now that it is not just a modern phenomenon, even though it seems to have got worse. Where a family is living peacefully in a local authority estate, its members should not be hassled by people, have stones thrown at their windows, have their cars interfered with, have graffiti sprayed on their walls and so on. It is not happening just in my community, but everywhere in every county. Different colleagues will tell stories about antisocial behaviour. It is important that the local authorities are given as much power as is necessary to deal with this. I do not want to throw families out or penalise them, but where decent families are being hassled due to antisocial behaviour, it is important that action is taken. It should be done in a fair way. There is now talk about antisocial behaviour in every single community in the country, so it is important to get the point across.

There have been stories in all our newspapers about graffiti attacks in different situations. We are used to seeing graffiti on walls, but houses are now being attacked in some communities. There was an incident in Old Bawn recently where people sprayed graffiti on the walls of houses in the area. I know we see graffiti everywhere we go in the world, but that does not make it right. The local authorities and the Garda Síochána must understand that writing graffiti is a serious crime as far as the communities are concerned. I believe Senator Harris was quoted this morning as saying that sterner action should be taken for crimes against the person. I will certainly not disagree with that. He also made a point about crimes against property, but I would say to him that antisocial attacks on property upset people. It is right that they are condemned, and I am not a bit afraid to condemn them.

I spoke earlier about the need for people to be accommodated. All of us who deal with housing list applications are aware that the emphasis is always on catering for family units, which is fair enough. The number of three bedroom houses being funded is greater than the number of two bedroom and one bedroom apartments. There is not much of an argument against that policy, except for the fact that there are different groupings of families that need to be catered for. The separated fathers' group, which is based in Tallaght but which is known to many people in the region, makes the point about single fathers. It is very difficult for local authorities to concentrate on one group rather than another group, and it is certainly not popular to concentrate on a group to the extent that more formal family units are eliminated from the list. However, it is a demand on the services in this modern age, and it is important to state this. The local authorities need to grapple with that challenge. I know it is a difficult challenge and it is far more prevalent today than it was ten or 20 years ago. I do eight advice clinics every week in my constituency, and the number of single fathers with that problem has increased.

Local authorities used to have a scheme which was known as "accommodation in lieu". If an application was received from somebody who was already in a family but needed his or her own accommodation, such as a single parent, a provision existed whereby a local authority could allow accommodation in lieu to be built on to the house. The applicant could then live close to the family home. I know there were reasons given when it was discontinued, but I still getting inquiries about this. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who has just joined us, will know that we must continue to look at a range of innovative schemes to ensure that local authority housing stocks remain strong and that people who have a clear need for local authority housing are still facilitated. I hope that somebody will look at that. I do not want to turn the clock back, but if there is a challenge——

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