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

This is an important amendment and I warmly support Deputy Catherine Murphy in respect of it. It relates to the fact that the core problem in providing the social housing desperately needed by 100,000 families is finance. It is all about finance. If one looks at the medium-term review, which the outgoing Secretary General at the Department of Finance keeps telling us to read, one can see that it is planned that there will be very little money. It looks as though the Government that is elected in 2016 will have a much easier time in terms of managing fiscal targets to 2020, according to this medium-term review. Even at that, very little money is available for social housing.

I note that the issue was addressed today in the report by the National Economic and Social Council entitled "Social Housing at the Crossroads: Possibilities for Investment, Provision and Cost Rental". That body is right to draw attention to the fact that because social housing is included in the general Government deficit, it is virtually impossible for people who accepted the blanket bank guarantee and the remit of the troika to raise funds for social housing. If one looks at our EU partner countries such as Sweden and France, one will see that in those countries local authorities and public corporations can access funding to provide social housing outside the general governmental deficit and funding structures. One of the issues mentioned in the NESC report is the necessity for a new public corporation to dramatically transform NAMA into an organisation which seriously begins to address the housing crisis. Certainly, it has access to the kind of funding that is necessary.

I remember, as will the Acting Chairman, that in the late 1980s, the then Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Government abandoned the provision of large-scale social housing. It simply walked away from it. I remember, as the leader of the local authority, leading a walk-out of councillors from an address being given by the then Minister responsible for the environment portfolio, Mr. Michael Smith. He was totally abandoning the process whereby over a number of decades, local authorities - and his own party in the 1930s - were able to provide in one of the poorest countries in Europe a significant tranche of social housing across cities, towns and rural areas. That was abandoned by Fianna Fáil's Haughey-MacSharry Government in the late 1980s as well as by subsequent Governments. The Acting Chairman knows well that we laboured here for 14 long, bitter years even though the country was building 100,000 units per year in a mad, frantic alliance of Government, developers and banks which brought us to an incredible tragedy in 2008. Social housing provision was minuscule and families who were waiting were dealt with in an unregulated and contemptuous manner. The lists built up and up, and we have seen the results in the last six years.

This is a very significant amendment which addresses the core of the problem. We must put significant finance into this. The Minister of State has spoken about providing 4,000 units, rising to 6,000, but we need much more. We need to declare a housing emergency and to place a cap on rents in the private sector. We need strong action by a vigorous Government. Unfortunately, the Government, which seems to be outgoing in terms of its personnel, did not deliver, as was the case with its predecessor, which left us with the terrible tragedy we are experiencing. The amendment is well timed.

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