Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The motion was tabled by the Technical Group because of the housing and homelessness crisis. It is disappointing that there is no recognition in the Government's amendment that countrywide there are families in crisis. These families have been let down by the Government and there is no point in it trying to deny this. It has made choices in the past three years, including to support the troika and cut the deficit, while starving the country of investment, when clearly everybody, including many eminent economists, was pointing out that investment would stimulate the economy and help to ease the burden. The Government in making these choices allowed the problem to mushroom out of control. This issue needs to be addressed urgently.

The Government could have opted in budget 2014 not to reduce the deficit and, with growth in the economy, it would still have met the deficit reduction targets. It could have initiated an investment programme in the last budget, but it decided not to do so. It chose instead to continue with deficit reduction, thereby taking money from the economy and vital services such as housing provision and capital developments. It did not have to do this, but it chose to do so. It is its choices that have led to the crisis.

Reference was made to the need for imaginative solutions to the housing crisis. These imaginative solutions, as per the 2014 programme, include 350 units to be provided through the mortgage-to-rent scheme, a scheme that in the past two years has provided only 38. We will be here next year lamenting the fact that 340 or 345 of these units remain to be provided, at which time the Government will probably hold up its hand and say there was nothing it could have done about it. Another imaginative solution is the construction of 200 new houses under the social housing investment programme. That it is proposed to construct only 200 new houses is a disgrace. The Government continually refers to housing construction, in terms of overall GDP, as being too low and the need for it to rise to 12%, yet it is doing nothing to stimulate that construction or provide homes for families.

During the past three years only three houses have been constructed in County Donegal. They only reason they were constructed was they had been already tendered for and contractors identified when the Government cut the house construction programme. It was only through hard lobbying that the families now residing in these houses were sorted out. There has been much talk about there being 16,000 families on the housing lists in Dublin. There is no doubt but that there is a crisis in urban areas, but there is also a crisis countrywide. Proportionately, when one compares the populations of counties Donegal and Dublin, the 2,600 families on the housing waiting list in Donegal equates to 24,000 to 25,000 families on the housing lists in Dublin. The Government is not doing enough to address the crisis. When one takes into account the number of people in County Donegal in receipt of rent allowance, there are 4,000 individuals-families in urgent need of housing.

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