John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I could stand up and make faces when Deputy Healy speaks but some of the Deputies present would not be happy. I thought the Deputy was a nice man but he has set me right.

To return to the serious issue under discussion, a mainstream housing programme is being introduced. While it is not sufficient, it is as much as can be delivered at this time. To echo the comments of Deputies Eric Byrne and Dara Murphy, I am delighted that €15 million in hard-fought funding has been allocated towards addressing the issue of voids, which are the bane of my life. People visit my clinic and Deputy Ellis's clinic asking why they cannot move into a boarded up house in Ballymun or Barnamore in Finglas. They do not understand the reason they cannot be allocated these houses. I am delighted, therefore, that half of the voids in the housing stock are to be brought back into use as it will mean the boards will come down and the houses will be put to use for good families.

The reason half of the voids will remain boarded up is that they do not meet planning guidelines as they are too small to accommodate people. I have no doubt that when more money becomes available, a creative approach will be taken on this issue. I am pleased that some of the €15 million in funding will be used to address 135 voids in the Dublin area. As a result, many of the boarded up homes one regularly sees in Dublin North West, including in Finglas and Ballymun, will soon accommodate families.

While I accept it is not the Minister of State's fault, I wonder why houses become void so quickly. It costs a great deal of money to return these homes to the social housing stock. The local authorities must explain the position. The two housing managers in my locality do the best they can with the resources available to them. However, decisions are taken centrally in Dublin City Council, which uses a tendering process to address the issue of voids. The city-wide tendering scheme does not work as well as the previous scheme under which local managers had a greater say on how money was spent on dealing with voids. Under the previous scheme, some local authority housing managers were more creative than others and put money to good use to return voids to the housing stock and provide homes for people in the locality. The new tendering process being used by Dublin City Council does not do justice to the people who attend our clinics every week. While I accept this problem is one for local authorities rather than the Minister of State, it is one that must be solved.

On homelessness, I heard Cathal Morgan state on "Today with Sean O'Rourke" this morning that 181 new homeless families are being accommodated in hotels. These are families who have found themselves homeless because their rent was increased at the end of a lease and they could not afford it. The families in question would not have been in such circumstances previously. While the problem is multifaceted, the reality is that 181 families in the Dublin area are living in hotel accommodation, including the Travelodge Hotel in Ballymun and the Sunnybank Hotel in Glasnevin. Given that staying for only one or two days in a hotel room drives me demented, I can only imagine what it must be like to make a hotel one's home for more than a couple of days. Families living in hotel accommodation must be given priority. The Minister of State's new housing policy statement refers to housing people first and providing the support services afterwards. This is better approach than providing the services first.

The rent supplement scheme is the reason many people become homeless. As such, a collective Cabinet approach to homelessness is required. I hope other Ministers are listening to the debate. Unfortunately, some people cannot find accommodation under the rent supplement scheme. Again, this is not the Minister of State's fault as rent supplement is the responsibility of another Department. This issue needs to be addressed aggressively to find a solution which ensures that no one is forced to leave his or her home because the rent exceeds the rent cap. Exceptional needs payments must be made to any person who tries unsuccessfully to find alternative accommodation under the current rent cap. The pool of landlords providing accommodation under the rent cap threshold is diminishing and has virtually disappeared.

I find myself as a public representative completely helpless when homeless people come to me these days. I feel like saying, “There is nothing I can do,” because at this stage there is nothing I can do. The best I have done for anyone who has come to me in the past six months, a time in which it has become really tough, is stand up here for the past ten minutes to talk about some of the issues the people in question are facing. I hope this will become part of the holistic approach the Minister is taking.

Ballymun is exempt from rent supplement under the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2007 which provided for urban regeneration areas to be exempt to create a better social mix. I have people attending my clinics, individuals who grew up in Ballymun, have lived there and whose kids go to school in the area, who have been forced to move out because they cannot find rented property at the right price. They cannot use rent supplement either while there are some vacant residential units in some of the regeneration buildings which are privately owned. The social mix-regeneration concept is great and I wished it worked. An estate should never be built that is all social housing as that is not the right way to support people in achieving a prospect of a future positive life. However, the social mix concept in the Ballymun regeneration project just does not work. We have empty residential units in Ballymun. I do not know how many there are, but perhaps it might be checked by the local authority in conjunction with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. To use another phrase, “If we mind the pennies, the pounds will mind themselves”. If there is a small number of housing units in Ballymun that are free but local people in receipt of rent allowance cannot rent them because of the regeneration exemption, we should look at removing the ban on accepting rent allowance in regeneration areas. We need every solution at this stage to give every person affected, particularly the 183 people living in hotel rooms, a roof over their heads, a place that they could at least call home until a more sustainable solution is found.

The policy in the 1960s was to put everyone from the same social background in the one big area, as happened in Ballymun where I grew up. Now, we spend millions of euro dealing with the issues created by the thinking of successive Governments not to have a social mix in housing developments. If we want long term to create better lives for people, we must ensure housing policy has the right social mix in housing developments supported by Government funding such that the rising tide raises all boats. It must be the case that no matter one’s background, where one lives one sees good role models to which one will aspire.

The Minister of State, Deputy Jan O’Sullivan, has done her best with the cards she has been dealt. Unfortunately, it is not a great set. All other Ministers with a role in this area must do the best they can to dig as deep into their departmental budgetary pockets as they can to ensure the Minister of State can continue to come up with creative ideas to address the housing issues we face.

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