Dáil debates

Thursday, 5 July 2012

10:30 am

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I appreciate the Minister's response but I wish to put the following points to him. I asked a parliamentary question this week and got a response from the Minister on how many social houses would be provided in the next year. He said it would be approximately 4,500. However, they are not council houses. They are what is now called social housing. In other words, they are either provided by voluntary housing associations or through the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, involving private landlords, all of which represent money going out of the public coffers to non-public bodies. That seems to me a waste of money.

Whether we acquire the NAMA houses or provide them directly through building the houses, the only thing that makes sense is for the State itself to provide council houses so that we save the €500 million a year in rent allowance payments and get an extra €250 million in extra tax revenue. Even the troika could see the sense in that approach. Why has the Government said it will not provide council housing anymore and is outsourcing it to NAMA, RAS and voluntary housing bodies? The condition of some of the accommodation provided by the latter that I have seen in the past week is deplorable, but that is not the case with all of it. Some voluntary housing associations are, in effect, big business and they are putting people into squalid conditions. The State should be responsible for housing people. Will the Government tell people on the housing list when they will be housed? Will they have to wait ten or 11 years, which is the current situation, to get a secure council house?

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