Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

By building local authority houses we also give people the aspiration to own their own homes, which is important. If we are to build a series of local authority housing developments we need to be sure to ring-fence the proceeds of those sales to ensure we continue to reinvest in replenishing and replacing the local authority housing stock that we are removing.

I accept and appreciate the motivation behind this technical Bill. It is important to address these issues but we should have a serious conversation about the need to develop local authority house-building projects. The voluntary housing sector does an excellent job but at last count there were approximately 600 voluntary housing agencies, some of which have been inactive in recent years.

The voluntary housing groups are still using State support to build the kind of houses we could build through our local authority structures. The State should not continue to opt out of directly building local authority homes in perpetuity. The construction of local authority homes for several years could give people some hope that they will have permanent residency and some control over their lives. As it stands, the excessive reliance on rent supplement, long-term leasing, RAS, the rental accommodation scheme, and so forth, which I accept have their benefits, is not the optimum use of State moneys for the purposes of building communities. The Minister of State with responsibility for housing and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform recognise this. I hope they will also recognise the potential of the direct building of local authority housing schemes over the next several years both for the construction industry and the communities we represent.

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