Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The topic for debate is one of the great social issues following on from the collapse of the boom of the infamous Celtic tiger.

Various reports were done on housing construction, rents and affordability. One of the best reports is the one prepared for the Housing Agency by the Private Residential Tenancies Board. Members, however, might not agree with all of it. I do not agree with some of its conclusions but it is one of the most up-to-date pieces of work and it provides great insights into what happened that led us to the point where we are having this discussion this evening.

The introduction to the report provides a most concise explanation for how we got to where we are. It refers to the costly lessons of a housing policy which promoted and almost enticed people into home ownership for more than a decade until 2007. We would all agree that is an exact description. Someone said to me that during the Celtic tiger era if one was not building or buying a house, one was nobody. That was the general atmosphere.

I was a member of the second largest local authority in the country, South Dublin County Council, and during part of that period I was mayor. It was unbelievable the way the housing list was affected. People just stopped applying for social housing. It was almost like pulling a plug. We all know why that happened. It was because everybody and anybody could get a loan from a bank to either build or buy a house. That was the most irresponsible activity for a Government to allow. That is part of what has been referred to as the legacy. The situation got out of control. When the crash came, people were living in houses on which they could not afford to pay the mortgages.

In addition, I can recall as a member of a local authority in 2007 and 2008 that a letter was read out from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to the effect that local authorities would not get money to build social housing. That was it. Social housing came to a full stop. In the following year the same message was sent by the Department.

Reference was made to rent control, which I support. In spite of all the criticism that has been levelled at the Government, it has announced a very good programme to deal with social housing. In the intervening period, when there are so few social houses and when landlords are running away with the type of rents we all know about, emergency legislation is required to freeze rents. We cannot allow them to rise further. It will take 18 months to two years to build houses and we should not allow people to exploit the difficult situations in which families find themselves. We have all heard of cases where rents have increased to €1,400 a month for a three-bedroom house in Dublin. We cannot allow that to continue because not alone is it pushing people onto local authority housing lists but back to live with their families. The first point that is mentioned when anyone refers to rent control, freezing rents or emergency legislation is the Constitution. The Constitution is no use to a family that does not have a home. If we have to change the Constitution we should change it.

See this speech in context