Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

While I support this measure, it is paltry. So too are two other major housing measures introduced by the Government. The first is the 20% deposit requirement for banks, about which many people are up in arms, and the second are the budgetary measures taken today.

It is a pity the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection has left the Chamber because I wanted to discuss three harrowing cases of which I have had experience in my constituency. One case concerns a young women who had a baby by caesarean section and was discharged from hospital with major scarring to live in a Travelodge with four of her other children. She was evicted the following weekend to make way for paying customers and has lived in three different hotels and hostels. I had to pay for two nights accommodation for her because the councils are not even providing emergency accommodation. Yet, the Government has come here today with no sense of urgency whatsoever about the housing emergency facing the State. There is a family living in tents in a garden in Dublin West and everybody saw the elderly couple evicted onto the streets by a bank which repossessed the property they rented for 15 years.

It seems as though anything we say on this side of the House is water off a duck's back to the Government because it does not seem to take any notice of the fact that a crisis is unfolding. Another measure the banking governors introduced, presumably with the approval of the Government, was the requirement for a 20% deposit for young people or first time buyers. We are all opposed to the speculation that was allowed to happen in the banking sector over recent decades. However, people who have come to me about the measure have said it means only rich children will ever be able to buy a house because their mothers and fathers who have resources will be able to lend them money. Ordinary people on low and middle incomes will not be able to do that. The ability to buy a house has now been put further out of the range of people. The banks should have been taken over to resolve this crisis. It should not have been passed on yet again to young people. Real measures are needed to deal with the blockage to people acquiring housing, but the measures introduced in the budget today are pathetic.

In today's measures the Government has dedicated €2 billion over four years for the building of new homes, which amounts to 10,000 houses over four years. Some 2,500 houses will be built next year. There are 100,000 people on the housing waiting list and 10% of the need will be dealt with in four years' time. Yet, the Government tells us it has ended austerity and that there is a recovery. It is incredible that it would act in this way. In 1975, 8,500 council houses were built at a time when the population was lower than it is now. In the midst of the largest housing emergency facing the State it is proposed to build a quarter of what was built then. Does that give the Government any idea just how meagre its proposals are?

The Government hopes to achieve its aims this by throwing lots more money into the hands of developers, landowners and landlords. It has given more tax breaks to landlords and land speculators, with the reduction in a windfall tax. There is no need for such a reduction. Sufficient land is zoned for housing in most of the areas of need. The problem is that no houses are being built but the Government has thrown more taxpayers' money in the direction of developers. Why did it not see fit, for example, to restore the cuts in rent supplement? It has been cut by 27% over four years, making six people a day homeless as a direct result. The Government may not see the connection but everyone else does. It said it did not cut social welfare, but it did nothing to restore those payments which means that, on average, people have to pay at least €60 or €70 per individual in a house each week even though they are not working. The cuts have made people homeless and vulnerable to eviction.

The Government should take alternative measures to paying developers €250,000 from NAMA to drive around in nice cars in the hope they might start building houses, something which everybody knows has happened, relying on the private sector which has no interest in providing social and affordable housing because its interest is profit and profit alone and carrying on the ideological opposition to council housing. Very little of the housing proposed in the budget will be council housing. Rather, private housing will be provided by housing associations, which is not the same as council housing. They are charities which provide houses on the basis of selection, not waiting lists. It is a model more like those in the 1800s than those with which we all grew up.

We need emergency action to end the housing crisis. We need to nationalise the construction industry because there is no other way we can stop the logjam in the sector. The banks should have been taken over. Instead of fleecing people we could have provided housing for people's needs. Instead of paying, for example, €8 billion in interest on the debt this year, we could use the money to build 45,000 houses which would dramatically assist in the housing crisis and would put 45,000 back to work with real jobs, rather than JobsPlus, JobBridge and all the other measures proposed today.

Unfortunately, what is proposed is a drop in the ocean. We can only conclude that it is not in the interests of the Government or capitalism to end the housing crisis.

It is clear the Government is delighted that mansions on Ailesbury Road are rising in price, that prices of houses in wealthier areas are increasing , that people at the top see their negative equity reducing and that banks will now be able to reduce their balance sheet losses. These are the facts that the Minister, Deputy Noonan, said indicated a recovery. Meanwhile, people at the bottom and in the middle have no hope of finding a home and nothing done in today's budget will change that.

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