Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The importance of every citizen having a safe and secure home cannot be overstated. Like the Acting Chairman, I am increasingly concerned about the critical shortage of social housing provision in the greater Dublin area and especially in my constituency. Some weekends, up to two thirds of those who contact me are in desperate need of housing. I am increasingly presented with difficult situations on the housing front.

In recent months, the number of homeless people in the Dublin Bay North constituency has been increasing. They are sleeping in cars, shopping centres or on the street. The spring count of people sleeping rough in Dublin in April showed that 94 persons were sleeping on the streets of the capital. That is the highest level since spring 2009, which shows that no progress has been made to reduce the number of people sleeping rough on our city streets.

The Fingal county manager, Mr. David O'Connor, recently told us that about 9,000 individuals and families are on the Fingal housing list. A recent meeting with the Dublin city manager, Mr. Philip Maguire, and Dublin City Council housing manager, Mr. Dick Brady, revealed shocking housing and homelessness figures for the Dublin Bay North constituency - which is housing area B of Dublin City - and for the whole of Dublin city.

There are just under 20,000 individuals and families on the Dublin City Council housing list, with a further 7,217 on the city's transfer list. In Dublin Bay North there are 5,152 families and individuals on the housing list and a further 1,124 on the transfer list. Some 236 families and individuals are homeless in area B out of a total of 849 for the whole city.

Many of the housing applicants I meet on the area B list have been on that list for between eight to 15 years. In one case last year, the applicant had been on the list for 18 or 19 years. While I accept the commitment of our officials, the policy response to these appalling figures by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council has been abysmal.

In 2011, for example, just 115 housing units were allocated in area B of Dublin city with a further 149 units in 2012 and just 68 units so far this year. If senior citizens' accommodation is excluded, the figures are just 67 units for 2011, 89 for 2012 and 45 so far this year. When the crash occurred in September 2008, we had up to 2,000 vacant housing units on the north fringe of Dublin city and the south fringe of Fingal. Over the last four or five years, however, many of those units have been occupied by investors with rent supplement tenants, by purchasers and voluntary housing agencies.

Clearly, however, only a resumption of construction and direct housing provision can hope to address this appalling housing crisis in area B, which is in my constituency. Some of those desperately searching for housing are constituents affected by cuts to rent supplement and the refusal of landlords to accept rent supplement. Earlier today, I tried to raise the issue of caps on rent supplement payments with the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, but unfortunately my oral question was not reached.

Rent supplement, which was intended as a temporary measure, is increasingly being relied upon by individuals and families in the medium and longer term. Reduced caps are forcing many constituents out of rented accommodation into temporary accommodation or, indeed, into homelessness.

In Fingal, for example, where the caps have been set at €775 for a family with one child or €900 for a family with three children, the total rent demanded for properties in some areas far exceeds those amounts.

The recent death of Margaret Thatcher reminded people that it was her governments which abandoned social housing provision and began relying on private rented accommodation and the very expensive Exchequer-funded rent supplement, and in the process enriched the landlord class, which funded and, indeed, owned the Tory Party. From the late 1980s the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael led Governments, also very close to the landlord class, embarked on the same socially regressive policies in this country with a Government policy of abandoning capital investment in housing and a move to increasingly relying on the rental market. It is not working and the glaring failure of this can be seen in our constituency.

I see the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, beside the Minister for Social Protection. It has been mooted in the media in recent days that at least €1 billion or up to €2.5 billion might be available for construction projects to boost employment. I have been consistently referring to the need for this Government to kick-start a capital investment programme for social housing and I have repeatedly raised this with the Taoiseach on the Order of Business. Before Christmas he told me this would happen in 2013, but 2013 is becoming a stand-still year for the economy.

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