Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This would move towards ghettoisation. At present those who are homeless and in a needy situation end up in hotels and bedsits. This has gone on for decades and it remains the situation. One can imagine what a prefab would be like, with shivering in the winter and sweating in the summer and the toilet conditions. It is certainly not the way to go.

Much of what is being asked for in the motion is being implemented. The Minister is putting together a local authority housing construction strategy which will be launched in the budget, as he indicated yesterday evening. It will be a substantial programme. We will have to wait to see the detail, but it will be announced in several weeks. It has been confirmed the recipients of the housing assistance payment will not be removed from housing waiting lists, despite rumours put out by Sinn Féin throughout the city. Legislation is on the way to create a tenancy deposit scheme and the rent allowance is being reformed whereby local authorities will take responsibility for it rather than the old system of it being left to the landlord and tenant, which was not working.

I will give an indication of what social housing has been delivered by the local authority in my constituency even in these difficult times. This includes a total of 53 housing units in Sean Tracey House, off Sean McDermott Street; 100 housing units in Peadar Kearney House on Railway Street; and 100 senior citizen units in Father Scully House on Gardiner Street. A number of other social and voluntary housing projects are planned, such as Croke Villas in Ballybough and the conversion of four derelict houses to nine apartments; a new senior citizen complex at Dunmanus Court with between 40 and 50 units; the redevelopment of St. Bricken's senior citizen complex in Arbour Hill; 35 apartments on North King Street; and NAMA has indicated it will give 57 units for social housing in the area also. Dublin City Council has been given the necessary funding to deal with all of the voids and vacancies in the area.

A considerable amount of work is being done at present considering all that happened under the previous administration, as Deputy Wallace well knows, is public private partnerships were given under the aegis of a particular developer, who had everything on the north and south sides of the city, and they all collapsed. Not a single house was built on any of them. We are remedying this at present.

I welcome the social housing strategy being developed by the Minister and I look forward to its delivery in budget 2015. I recognise there is a housing need and a housing crisis, and that housing must be the priority for the Government as the recovery begins.

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