Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Housing (Amendment) Bill 2013. Listening to Deputy Gerald Nash, I had to smile at his proposal for a local authority house building programme when the fact is the programme has already been privatised. That privatisation is being implemented and overseen by a Labour Party housing Minister, Deputy Jan O’Sullivan. If Deputy Gerald Nash and the Labour Party want to ensure there is a local authority house building programme, they have the power to do so as they are in government. However, there is no programme in place. In my local authority, south Tipperary, no moneys have been provided for the building of local authority houses. The only ones becoming available for tenants are those returned to the local authority, mainly on a tenant’s death or moving on after purchasing a house.

That is a very small proportion of the returns to local authorities.

The rental accommodation scheme, RAS, is in fact the local authority house building programme, and nine out of ten housing applicants are being offered tenancies under the RAS, but local authorities are entering into long-term lease agreements with landlords and putting local authority tenants into those houses. Effectively, they are paying the mortgages for those landlords. In ten, 15 or 20 years from now the local authorities will have paid the mortgages for those landlords and they will not have any ownership rights in respect of the houses. That is outrageous, particularly when the Labour Party is in government and holds the housing Ministry. We are paying the mortgages for landlords. Tenants are responsible for all their own repairs. Nothing is done by the landlord, although technically the landlord is responsible for the repairs but in the real world the tenant, in practice, is responsible for all repairs. Also, the tenant does not have any right to purchase the house, irrespective of the length of time he or she is in the house. We should be clear that what has happened under this Government, and commenced under the previous Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government, is the destruction of the local authority house building programme and the substitution of that programme with a privatised housing system for local authority housing applicants.

Another element of this programme, again introduced by the previous Government, is the income limits for housing applicants. Those income limits have been in place for over two years. They have not been increased but we can take it that if the medical card limits are anything to go by, they will not be increased for years to come. The income limits for medical cards have not been increased since 1 January 2006 and any changes made in the recent past were to ensure it is more difficult for applicants to get medical cards. That is the current position with income limits for housing applicants. For instance, a family of two adults and two children must have an income of less than €27,500. That means that a significant number of applicants are being refused based on their income. They are supposed to be able to provide accommodation from their own resources but it must be remembered that persons in that position will not get rent supplement and will be trapped in what I might call a twilight world for the rest of their lives. They are forced to rent in the private housing market without any rent supplement or permanency of any kind. The landlord can decide to sell the house at any stage and they would have to move on. That is another element in the privatisation of the housing programme at local authority level.

Another issue that has arisen recently concerns single parents. Many single parents are being told by local authorities that they are adequately housed at home. For instance, a single parent living at home with their father and mother will be told by the local authority that they do not qualify for housing because they are adequately housed at home. That is not acceptable and it is not right. It should stop, and the Minister for housing should ensure it stops. The income limits are seriously impeding ordinary people who need and are entitled to housing, and for whom housing should be provided by local authorities.

In the past a local authority tenant who was working would have been able to get a local authority loan or a loan from another mortgage supplier either to buy the local authority house or a private house. We now find that even though a payment such as family income supplement, FIS, is taken into account to determine a tenant's rent, it is specifically excluded if the tenant is an applicant either to a mortgage company or the local authority for a loan to purchase that house. I know a number of those people. They have been in and out of my office. In one case a tenant was paying €120 a week for rent. In another case the tenant was paying €105 a week and in another case, the person was paying €95 a week. They would be well able to pay a mortgage. In fact, they would be paying less in mortgage repayments than they would as renters from the local authority. They are being excluded and refused loans not just from the finance houses but from the local authorities also. That should be examined urgently.

A number of speakers referred to the disabled person's grants. That is a serious issue for local authorities in terms of jobs. The entire local authority construction house building programme is a jobs issue as well. It would help to take significant numbers of people off the live register, particularly former construction workers, if we had a proper house building programme, a proper grant system for disabled persons, and housing for older people.

Last year in south Tipperary we had a €3.1 million allocation for disabled person's grants and housing for the elderly. That has been slashed this year to €1.25 million. That is a reduction of €1.8 million, which means that only emergency cases and a small number of priority one cases can be examined and dealt with this year. It also has a knock-on effect for employment and will ensure, unfortunately, that people who were involved in this type of construction work in the past will join the dole queues, which will cost the State money. That is very shortsighted and is an issue that should be examined urgently.

The position on the purchase of local authority houses is that currently there is no local authority purchase scheme. The Minister of State announced that there would be a new scheme but that was well before Christmas of last year. We have not yet seen the details of that scheme, and I hope the Minister will introduce a scheme in the near future.

I ask her to introduce a regulation which would allow local authority tenants to purchase their houses in the old way through the rent, because the difficulty in getting loans is a huge problem for people who want to purchase their houses. They cannot get loans from either financial institutions or local authorities. People are paying significant rent, but would have less to pay if they had a mortgage. When the Minister of State introduces the new purchase scheme, which I hope comes into place quickly, she should also introduce a payment method other than by way of mortgage for tenants who have been paying significant rents, have good rent records and would be well able to pay for the purchase of their local authority houses.

With regard to rents, part of the reason for the Bill is that the powers that be want to ensure local property tax will be paid by local authority tenants. The current situation is that the local authorities are liable for the charge. A number of county managers have said publicly that they intend to increase local authority rents to cover this. This is wrong. We all recall that the current Taoiseach said a number of years ago that it was morally wrong, unjust and unfair to tax a person's home. The local property tax is morally wrong, unfair and unjust and should be abolished. Certainly, local authority tenants should not be forced to pay this tax.

I welcome what Deputy Gerald Nash has said. I hope he will bring his views to his parliamentary party and to his Minister and that we can return to a situation in which we have a real local authority house-building programme. We should allow local authorities to build houses rather than privatise the housing programme and pay landlords. We want a situation in which local authorities ensure that people who are not in a position to build or purchase a house of their own will be provided with a house by the local authority. There is a further element to this. We are paying something like €400 million to landlords under the rent supplement scheme, money which could be put towards the building of local authority houses. This would also help get people back to work. It would take construction workers off the dole queues, save the State money and provide housing for people who cannot afford to build housing from their own means.

There have been significant reductions in rent supplement over the past few years and we now hear that under-the-counter payments are being sought. Private tenants in receipt of rent supplement often have to top up the rent for their landlords. Everybody is aware this is happening. All Members have had visitors to their clinics explaining this is happening. It is time the Government dealt with this situation.

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