Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

This motion is designed to address an urgent and growing need. The number of people in mortgage arrears is likely to reach 35,000 in the coming year. The number of repossession orders in the courts has doubled during the past 12 months and there is a real concern that when the banks get back into gear, they will rev up to evict rather than assist those in trouble. There is a need for the Government to show leadership. The measures in this motion set out the way forward.

It serves no public good to force families out of their homes because they can no longer meet their mortgage repayments. These are families who are caught in a property spiral caused by the greed, hubris and gross incompetence of developers, banks and a Fianna Fáil Government. These people are so desperate that they rely on the Society of St. Vincent De Paul. They are the self-employed, the recently unemployed - the new middle class poor. They are young couples who bought under the shared ownership scheme run by local councils, often going to the very limits of their incomes in order to purchase homes. Incredibly, there is no national data relating to arrears on this scheme but any Deputy will be aware of cases where people are in arrears.

It is vital that the Government adopt this motion. I congratulate Deputy Ciarán Lynch on introducing it. The Government must do much more to address the housing crisis. We must assist householders who are unable to meet their mortgage payments. The motion should be also the springboard for a much wider policy approach.

The position relating to housing practice has been completely transformed. A change in housing policy is now required. The old way of incentivising people at work to buy in the private market no longer works. We are operating in a new landscape. From a reasonable level, the construction of local authority housing has dwindled to a trickle. According to the CIF, there are now more than 80,000 privately built housing units lying idle. There are approximately 35,000 families and individuals who are seeking council housing but who cannot afford to buy. Even if they could do so, the banks will not lend to them. Rent supports, particularly the rent supplement, are being reduced and threatened with further cuts in the budget. The Government expects that tenants can negotiate lower rents with their landlords. However, many tenants are too insecure to do this. We must, therefore, get real.

Opportunities exist in the context of policy development. A carbon tax is promised in the budget. The revenue generated by such a tax could be used to address the fuel poverty of householders in both public and private housing. A housing strategy should provide for retrofitting older public housing stock, in particular. Therefore, a new housing strategy is required. By supporting this motion, which is aimed at dealing with an urgent demand which has arisen and which was largely created as a result of its own reckless policies, the Government would be taking a first step.

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