Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In Ireland in 1952, over 8,000 homes were built for what is today known as social housing. This was not some brief period of socialist revolution or extreme affluence. People needed homes and the State saw that it had a duty. In three years, this Government has not delivered 8,000 homes and yet it claims it will now take another three years to deliver 6,700 homes. I have news for it. Even if it was still in government in three years, which it probably will not be, that is far too little and far too late.

We needed 6,700 homes three years ago instead of in 2017. Nearly 90,000 households are on waiting lists for social housing, 30,000 more than when the Government decided to ignore the issue. We have 2,500 people in emergency accommodation, hotels and hostels around Dublin, never mind all of the rough sleepers and the hundreds of others who cannot be counted. They cannot wait three years. They have waited too long, enduring sleeping in cars, cardboard boxes, out in the open, in hostels or hotels and on sofas. Families have been torn apart and young lives derailed.

Yesterday's announcement was spin as usual. The Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, wanted us to believe he was allocating a further €450 million for housing this year, when in reality the increase is just €180 million. This will deliver just over 1,000 additional homes on what was delivered last year. Like much of the budget, this is simply a crumb from the table. I grant that 1,000 homes is more than the total built by the Government in its first two years, but it is not enough. In the early 2000s we already had a housing crisis, but we were building nearly 5,000 council homes each year. Now we have a housing catastrophe because all of that work ground to a halt. In the first year the Labour Party held the housing portfolio the number of local authority builds dropped by two thirds. Another Labour Party Minister cut the young person's dole, child benefit, single family payments, the back-to-school allowance and rent supplement, leaving many families and young single people at risk of homelessness. Some hung on and some managed to survive by paying illegal top-ups to landlords, but in the long run thousands became homeless and had to rely on family, friends or emergency accommodation. The Government has been a catastrophe for the low-paid and unemployed. Instead of a return to major housing investment, it has returned to the worst public private partnerships of the early 2000s. This is the model that left standing some of the worst most dilapidated housing in Dublin when profit margins went against the developers' favour. PPPs are universally accepted as an utter failure and have left thousands without decent accommodation or in uninhabitable flats which should have been replaced long ago.

I welcome the planned establishment of a vehicle to deliver off-the-books funding for the construction of social housing. This has been a policy that Sinn Féin has articulated for several years and I am glad that the Government has listened, even if it pretended at the time that it was a fairy tale. It is also welcome that homelessness funding has been increased. Emergency accommodation is at full capacity and we need to invest in follow-up accommodation to ensure nobody will be in emergency accommodation for longer than an emergency period. The Government has lost all credibility in providing emergency accommodation which it has turned into long-term housing without the necessary standards. I ask the Minister to commit to meeting 90% of funding needed in the major urban areas experiencing the worst levels of homelessness. This was the case in Dublin previously, but as spending has had to rise in dealing with homelessness, the Government's contribution to the city has decreased in percentage terms. Funding for Traveller accommodation remains paltry and hopelessly inadequate. It is also unfortunate that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has not taken the opportunity to introduce measures to encourage the full draw down of this funding, which has been a major problem in the past. The funding promised for mortgage to rent schemes needs to be clarified and this initiative should be fast-tracked to enable families to start the process and protect themselves from homelessness.

I call on the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to clarify the funding position of each CIE company and how he sees this aiding the future sustainability of these companies. After years of cuts we need an investment package which will get the companies, especially Irish Rail, on a surer footing. I also call on the Minister to meet representatives of the deferred members committee of the IASS. Recently he showed a lack of understanding of their exclusion from previous deliberations on the pension deficit in IASS companies. The previous Minister passed legislation to interfere with this process and undermine the terms and conditions for members of the IASS. This issue needs to be addressed immediately.

I want to raise a very disturbing issue. I have in my possession a letter from Wicklow County Council to RAS tenants which states that if they do not pay water charges, they will be in breach of and could jeopardise their tenancies. Is the Minister aware that local authorities are threatening RAS tenants with eviction if they do not pay water charges? New families are becoming homeless every week. RAS tenancies are already insecure owing to rent rises and repossessions without the council threatening to throw people out on the street if they do not pay this unfair charge. The Minister must respond because it is an absolute disgrace and makes a mockery of the claims that the Government wants to end the hardship imposed on the low-paid and the unemployed who will not be paying water charges simply because they cannot afford them.

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