Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would join in the general hilarity but the issue is too serious. As I said, it is extraordinary that two years into the term of office of the Government, the housing crisis – there is no other way to describe it – has escalated. That has not been addressed in any substantial way in the Bill. We must remind ourselves – although the Minister of State might not need reminding – how serious the situation is. The combination of the utter failure of successive Governments to provide adequate council housing in the State, added to the reduction in rent allowance caps which the Government has imposed, and cuts in social welfare and income mean that tens of thousands of families are in a dire situation that is reminiscent of the slum conditions people faced at the turn of the previous century when the great playwright, Seán O’Casey, wrote of the horrible conditions of slum dwellers in Dublin. That is not an exaggeration. Some people are living, either in local authority housing that should have been demolished long ago and still has not been because of the implosion of the public private partnership proposals for the regeneration of local authority housing estates in particular in Dublin, or because people are forced into dependency on rent allowance and the private rented sector for years in utterly despicable, squalid and unacceptable conditions. We have failed to address that. Nothing in the Bill addresses it.

Obviously, the bulk of the responsibility for that catastrophic failure lies with the previous Government. There is no question about that. I acknowledge that the Government came into office having to deal with the mess that the previous crowd created. It is worth pondering just how central to the wider economic crisis is the issue of social housing. The decision of the previous Fianna Fáil Administration effectively to abandon the provision of social housing played a critical part in stoking the property bubble because it meant that a market that was somewhat regulated by the direct provision of cheap, affordable social housing became completely privatised and developers and landlords ran amok, while bankers financed them to so do and the Fianna Fáil Government was cheering on the whole process. That was no doubt because of the cosy relationship epitomised by the Galway tent and the golden circle relationship with the developers and bankers who were the beneficiaries of the madness.

An important point that is not sufficiently underlined is that if we had the level of social housing construction that we had, for example, in the 1950s or 1960s, the property bubble we experienced would not have happened. The reason for that is the provision of social housing has a dampening effect on property values because there is a cheaper, affordable alternative. In the 1950s and 1960s when the State was much poorer than during the Celtic tiger period, approximately 50% of all the housing that was built was social housing built by the State. That exercised some control on the market, private developers and landlords, but the dogs were let off the leash by Fianna Fáil in the 1990s and 2000s. The consequences were devastating for those on the housing list, which trebled under Fianna Fáil’s watch. It is extraordinary that the number of people seeking social housing trebled while we were building 70,000 to 90,000 homes a year. We have been left with an incredible anomaly where we have ghost estates built in the wrong place by greedy developers, financed by bankers and facilitated by politicians, and these are lying empty while we have a shortage of housing in Dublin and other urban centres. The market and greedy people driven only by profit decided that instead of there being rational planning for housing need. It does not get much more basic than housing, putting a roof over one’s head. What sort of statement does it make about the failure of our political system if, in the 21st century, we cannot solve the problem of rationally planning for housing need?

It is damning and all of us are suffering the consequences, not just the 100,000 people on the housing list, which is a disgrace in itself. All of us, at every level of society, are paying off the gambling debts of those bankers and we are also paying €500 million every year in rent allowance to subsidise those same developers and landlords who caused the crisis in the first place. It is shocking. The Government is contemplating further attacks on the pay and conditions of ordinary workers who cannot pay their mortgages, while €500 million a year is going into the pockets of landlords, developers and indeed, the banks, which own many of these properties. Yet again, the banks are being subsidised with public money, when ordinary people are being hammered.

This problem could be resolved if the State provided the necessary social housing. All that money would be saved. This needs to be underlined for the public. If we provided social housing directly for the 100,000 families on the housing list, we would save €500 million per year immediately and we would also generate approximately €250 million per year in extra rental revenue for the State. That is a huge saving and I do not understand why the Government says it cannot afford to do this. As was already mentioned and as I know to be a fact, the European Investment Bank will lend money to any one who puts forward a serious business plan for a capital infrastructure development that can pay for itself over the medium to long term. There is no doubt that a social housing programme could pay for itself and, in the long term, profit the State, not to mind meeting the most basic need of our citizens to have a roof over their heads. Why is the Government, instead of embarking on such a programme, proposing to move to long-term leasing arrangements with landlords and probably NAMA and the banks, the owners of the tens of thousands of empty properties all over the country? Why is the Government proposing to do this, which is simply throwing good money after bad? It makes no sense that we would enter into lease arrangements for ten to 20 years and literally throw money way. At the end of the ten or 20 years, those developers, who will be very glad to have been subsidised with public money, will decide that the market has improved and take back possession of their properties and we will be left with nothing but the bill. One could not make it up. It is an idiotic policy.

There are many problems that the Government can rightly say are difficult to resolve but this problem can be resolved. While I accept that many of the empty properties are no good, I do not accept that the best we can do is to have signed contracts in respect of 110 properties out of the entire empty property stock in the hands of NAMA. That represents housing for 0.1% of those on the housing list. Indeed, it is likely that four to six times that number of people have joined the housing list since the contracts for those 110 properties were signed. It is pathetic.

Is the Government going to exercise some real influence and instruct NAMA to take some of these properties? I know of a development on the Stillorgan dual carriageway that had a large banner across it which read, "The Spirit of Gracious Living". The banner has been taken down because it was so ironic, considering what developments like that one did to the economy. An enormous number of properties in that development are still empty. Why can we not use them to house people on the housing list? I accept that they would not be suitable for families with children but there are hundreds of single people, unmarried and without children, who have been on the housing list for years. Why can we not put them in those properties? I do not get it.

Beyond that, and more importantly, there is already a shortage of housing in general and social housing in particular in Dublin and the other main urban centres. We could create jobs for the 130,000 unemployed construction workers who are rotting on the dole and who want to work, building social housing. Every single house built would save the State money in terms of the social welfare payments that those construction workers would no longer be claiming; the income tax they would pay; the extra rental revenue accruing to the State; and the fact that we would no longer have to pay money to private landlords. I do not understand why the Government cannot do this. I hope the Government will do it but the signals, based on the policy paper published in June 2011, indicate that the Government's answer to this crisis is long-term leasing arrangements.

I could understand Fine Gael proposing that sort of policy. Ideologically, it believes, like Fianna Fáil, in the doctrine of markets. How it can maintain such a belief in view of what the markets have done to housing and to the Irish and European economies is difficult to understand. What has happened to housing is at the heart of the global crisis, not just the Irish crisis. It underpins the crises in Spain, the United States of America and elsewhere. The privatisation of housing has been a disaster for the global economy. Having said that, I can understand the ideological blinkers of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, who have always believed in markets. However, I fail to comprehend how the Labour Party can go along with this policy, given the fact that two short years ago its members would have been saying exactly what I am saying now. They would have been saying that it was madness to pay out such sums to private landlords when we could provide social housing.

I appeal to the Minister of State, Deputy O' Sullivan to give us assurances-----

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