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

The spring economic statement may have been heralded from on high by this Government but in reality it was all whimper and no bang. The announcement amounted to telling us that through mostly external conditions economic indicators had improved over the last several years and that the prospects were good for a Government hoping to buy the votes of the electorate in 2016 with promises they will not have a chance to implement.

No single issue exemplifies the Government's inability to address a problem as much as the housing crisis. It has singularly failed not only to address the crisis in a timely manner, but even to recognise it. It took the death of a homeless man, Jonathan Corrie, just metres from the gates of Leinster House for the Government even to admit a crisis exists. For four years, the Government tried to pretend there was no crisis, until it all came crashing around their heads. If we were to look behind the spin of the Government's current plans, we would see clearly that it still believes that somehow the private market will save it from having to make a real change to the way it deals with housing.

In February 2013, in an exercise of utter delusion, the Government committed to ending homelessness by 2016. It then set about trying to implement a series of policies and uphold others that have actually increased homelessness in real terms almost every quarter since. Its first act on housing policy was to declare an end to large scale social housing projects and in its first budget it cut capital funding for housing by 40%. In all, the Government cut more than €500 million from the annual budget in its first three budgets. The construction, acquisition or renovation of social housing ground to a virtual halt in the State at a time when it had not been cheaper in a decade. In 2013 local authorities built just 293 homes.

Currently, there are 411 families in emergency accommodation in Dublin, with almost 1,000 children sleeping in hotel rooms for lack of a home. Many of these have been forced to do this for months on end. There are 3,000 people in emergency accommodation across the State and at least 40 new families are presenting as homeless in Dublin every month. These numbers are only going up and have almost doubled in less than a year. When the Minister announced additional beds for homeless over Christmas, this only revealed a hidden problem as beds were filled immediately and rough sleeping continued. The Inner City Helping Homeless group counted 139 rough sleepers in Dublin. Other groups have reported lower numbers, but the 60 sleeping in the new Night Café are not counted on any official figures and coupled with more conservative rough sleeper figures, they show the problem continues unabated.

Rents have increased by nearly 40% in Dublin since the Government took office. Rent rates have now risen well above rent caps for rent supplement. Rent supplement recipients are losing their homes weekly, due to rent hikes and demands for under the table payments they cannot afford, while low paid workers are suffering increased deprivation in order to make rent payments. Children are going hungry or parents are going without to feed their children and keep their landlord from moving forward with the threat of eviction. Many of these homes are no better than slums, with over 90% of flats in Dublin failing council inspections for basic standards. This is an emergency and we need dramatic and radical action to begin to tackle it.

Last year, the Government announced it would spend €3.8 billion in the next six years on housing. Ignoring the fact that much of this Government will be served a P45 by the people long before its plan comes to fruition, this amounts to just €630 million a year for housing - about half of what was spent in 2008 alone. Much of this money it seems will be spent subsidising further the private landlords who have so far failed to do anything to ease the crisis, other than hike up rents and evict tenants on to the streets. Of the 7,400 homes promised to be delivered this year, some 5,000 are expected to be provided by the private market. This is despite the fact that private housing construction has slowed and the number of private rental properties available is at a record low, the very reason we have a rental crisis, if the Minister cared to pay attention. The Minister admits it is a big ask to find 5,000 properties for rent. Most councillors, local authority officials or honest observers believe this is verging on fantasy. The private housing market is the problem, not the solution.

We need to take immediate wide-ranging action to tackle the problems faced by renters and those in homelessness. First, we must implement a system of rent control without delay. This would need to set a price range for landlords, based on the size of their property and the average income in the region, tied to the consumer price index. This would mean many properties currently rented would need to lower or freeze their rents. We also need to end the process of yearly rent reviews, which inevitably lead to rent hikes. This can be done by limiting the number of rent increases between tenancies. At present, increases can only be justified by clearly demonstrating increasing costs or improvements to the home outside of the basic requirement for landlords. We must end the removal of HAP recipients from housing lists in an attempt to under-represent housing need.

We must also carry out a review of all departmental lands and buildings, with a view to designating suitable properties for housing. We should set up a dedicated body to identify disused commercially zoned land for the same purpose and implement a suite of punitive measures for owners of disused land which could be used for housing. Local authorities could be empowered to take these properties in charge if the owner refuses to act. We should encourage and support community land development trusts and community led housing co-operatives, as is done across Europe. We should make an immediate investment of €1 billion from the strategic investment fund to build upwards of 6,500 homes in addition to current plans. I was amused to see Fianna Fáil steal this idea from us at the weekend.

The Government was able to take €500 million for Irish Water and not even fix a leak. Imagine what a stimulus of €1 billion from the strategic investment fund would give to housing. The Government should restart the scheme to buy back former council homes from older people, in exchange for a senior citizen's residence. It should restore the young person's dole, the loss of which has led to many unemployed young people, especially those coming out of care, becoming homeless. It should work with approved housing bodies to help them access HFA funding and should encourage and support local authorities to establish arms length trusts to raise finance and build social housing off balance sheet. We have suggested this time and again and believe it can be done. The Government must end discrimination against rent supplement recipients by landlords and legislate for that if necessary. It must implement a binding code of conduct for banks when dealing with distressed buy-to-let mortgage holders in order to protect tenants from eviction.

There are many more initiatives required, but if the policies I have put forward were implemented, they would go a long way to beginning to turn the tide. No one claims this is an easy problem to tackle. I do not envy the Minister the task in front of him, but it has only grown worse due to the policies of the Government over the past number of years. The Minister of State and others have said we need to build more social housing, but they show no urgency to do that. He said he would announce the allocations for local authorities in the next few weeks, but why has not been done by now? This crisis has been going on and on and every time the issue is raised we are told the Government will get to the issue in a few weeks.

I believe housing is a right for everyone. Some of the Minister of State's colleagues refer to the North continually, but housing is not a major issue there as there is plenty of both social and private housing. Rather than keep throwing the issues in the North at us, perhaps the Government should take the example of the North and work at achieving a similar system to that used in the North. We might go places then. The Minister of State also mentioned Part V kicking in and mentioned new private housing being built. However, the Government has dropped 10% of the take local authorities were to get towards social housing through Part V provisions in regard to private housing. This is a calamity. Originally, the percentage was 20%, but it has been reduced to 10%. We should also consider affordable housing and financial contributions.

We are in a major crisis and perhaps we should declare a national emergency at this stage. If we drew a graph depicting the homeless situation now in comparison to what it was, it would be clear that the number of homeless is continually increasing.

7 o’clock

It is clear to see it is rising: it will not go lower but it will get higher. I do not know what is wrong. I remember at the time of Jonathan's death the Minister of State was on the radio and denied there was a housing crisis. It is time to wake up as we have a major crisis.

See this speech in context