Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like an hour to speak about housing because it is hard to know where to start. Ireland is facing a massive housing crisis. The Government did nothing about it for four years and I do not think it is doing anything serious about it now. It is simply sticking a plaster on the issue while ignoring the underlying problems. We do not have a housing strategy. The Government must not be consulting the people who work in the industry because there are serious problems with housing provision in Ireland. The new building control regulations introduced last year are a complete cop-out because the Government does not want to pay for independent supervision. The cost has been passed to the architects, who will pass it on to the insurance company and it will in turn come back to the citizen. What has been done with technologists and self-builds? It is lunacy.

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government told us he planned to build 18,000 social housing units by the end of 2017. We are now learning that only a quarter of these will be council owned. The Minister was being deceptive. We need to build a considerable number of social housing units. The State has not engaged in providing social housing for a long time but it needs to start doing so because people will no longer be purchasing houses to the extent that they did in the past. They will not be able to get the financing and the properties will be too expensive. I do not understand the logic behind the Government's argument. It is more spin than anything else.

Kennedy Wilson, the North American company which purchased a number of distressed assets and formed a cartel in the rental market, is building 164 units in the Clancy Barracks site in Kilmainham. Last year it requested and received a social housing exemption. In other words, we are going to continue the process of ghettoisation. There is a way to avoid this. I am not saying we should shaft the developer-builder. The format was wrong in the past but it can be fixed as long as the builder gets the site value for the house he or she is providing. However, there should be a minimum provision of 10% social housing on every site.

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