Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Tá tábhacht faoi leith ag baint le tithíocht. Caithfidh chuile dhuine bheith ina chónaí i dteach agus tá go leor daoine anois atá á fháil rite leo teach a aimsiú. Caithim a rá nach dtagaim leis an gcineál tuairimíocht ata sa Bhille seo nó le tuairmíocht an Rialtais maidir le tithíocht.

The lack of analysis and a broader view on the part of the Government, not only towards housing but also in respect of settlement policy, is quite frightening. If we do not have a big picture of what the country should like in ten, 20 or 30 years time, we are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past.

We have a housing crisis, especially in our cities. In particular, we have a housing crisis in this city and it is being exacerbated every day by the Minister of State's Government because his Government has a policy of centralisation of everything into Dublin. The Government cannot seem to see that there is cause and effect. If it insists on all the jobs being in Dublin, all the people will be in the so-called GDA or greater Dublin area. For example, the Government cancelled any programme of decentralisation. Instead of having a policy that all new agencies, where it controls the jobs, would be set up outside the metropolitan area, it decided they would go to Dublin. Week in, week out, the Government consolidates all development here. Then it wonders why there is no housing in this city.

Another thing we have to examine is the ability of all in our society to go in the one direction at the one time. This does not just apply to the Government. When there was a demand for housing, people in the private sector seemed to lose all reason and started building houses everywhere - from Donegal to Leitrim, Galway to Dublin, and Louth right down to Mizen Head. They kept building, without in any way doing a proper analysis on whether their investment would make them a return. Much of this was driven by a number of factors, including the media, which, week in, week out, in the Irish Farmer's Journal, national newspapers and everywhere, had property sections feeding into the frenzy.

The amazing thing that also is true is that when certain parts of the country got into oversupply, everyone presumed all the country was in oversupply. No analysis seems to have taken place since this Government came into office. As my colleague, Deputy Kyne, said, in Galway we ensured we did not get into an oversupply situation. I remember campaigning, year in, year out, to try to ensure, as best I, as one person, could, that we did not get into this myopic building. Dublin never had a significant oversupply. It was easy to work out the supply situation. All one had to do was work out the average requirement of houses for the population. We knew that. I have those figures going back 40 and 50 years. Those figures could have been sub-segmented because one knew how many houses were being built in each area. Therefore, it was easily forecast by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government that we were going to run out of houses in the metropolitan areas.

We are going to start building again, but this time let us try to do it a little better. When I was a member of Galway County Council back in 1997, one of the last things I did on the council before I left it was argue that we needed to zone enough land around Oranmore to ensure a small number of property owners did not have inordinate control over the land supply. On the other hand, I was worried that if we zoned a reasonably significant amount of land, we would get a building explosion that would cause huge social difficulties around Oranmore. I suggested at the time, and lots of people threw cold water on it, that we should zone adequate land but we should put a codicil in the planning development plan providing that only a fixed number of houses could be built every year. This was something we introduced subsequently into county plans in Galway. That way one did not get caught with this tight parcel of land where the owner could say it was his land or no land. On the other hand, a huge amount of land was not zoned such that one would get a huge explosion of planning applications and lose control over the amount of houses provided. This time we need to ensure in our planning mechanisms that the number of houses we provide for meets the expected demand.

The next issue we need to stand back and look at is the wider vision for ownership and ownership and renting structures and so on of houses. I was listening to Deputy Boyd Barrett, who seems to want us to go back into a crash programme like the Ballymun flats where the State would build enormous numbers of houses in massive, socially segregated estates. I know he does not like the private sector, but to see the private sector as one amorphous totality is, in my view, not to understand that the private sector is as varied as our society. I do not believe in building huge, monolithic, socially segregated estates. We can look to the past. All one has to do is look at the RAPID areas which the Department has neglected totally since this Government got into office. The common factor in the RAPID areas is massive local authority housing estates and social segregation of an obnoxious kind. I do not believe in that type of development.

I also believe that as many people as possible should be enabled to own their own homes. There is a big difference between an individual family owning its own home and a small number of massive developers in the private sector controlling the development market. If given a choice between living in a house designed, controlled, built and everything else by a local authority and having the pride of owning one's own home, most people would rather own their own home. It is amazing that there seems to be a consensus on the idea that it is better for the State to fully build or fund the houses or pay rent to landlords than assist private home ownership. This goes against decisions we made in Government, but I have to say that I am not convinced that the elimination of the first-time buyer's grant was the great idea it was cracked up to be. I am not convinced that reducing mortgage interest relief, without which a lot of us would not have been able to build our own homes, was or is a good idea, although it is something that seems to have broad consensus among policy-makers. We are pushing people onto the public housing market who could, with a little assistance, provide their own homes and which would be somewhere they would own.

There is another thing I believe which relates to the building of housing estates. We all have to admit that when we canvass in the elections and go into the housing estates where we allowed people buy the houses, even at quite knock-down prices, we will always know the quality of the houses by the sliding door in the house and the flowers outside. It is easily seen: pride in ownership. I am amazed that every time I had to table a parliamentary question on the new tenant purchase scheme, the reply was always that it is coming soon. "Coming soon" is the great answer of the public service for not wanting to say when because it might be too far away and an issue might be made out of it. They keep stringing the person along. However, it cannot be that complicated to write the regulations and publish the scheme.

One of the great advantages of living in rural areas is social integration. I was lucky that, even though I grew up in what is, funnily enough, reputedly one of the better-off parts of the city, it was much more socially integrated than might first meet the eye.

Until recent times, one of the great attributes of living in rural Ireland was the fact that there was a socially integrated society. The person who had a very good job lived beside the person on social welfare. They went to the same school and played on the same team. They were friends and their employment status made no difference. We should try to mirror this, if possible, in urban areas. For that reason, I applaud one of the steps the Minister is taking and roundly condemn another. I agree fully that it was a major mistake to allow the buy-out clause under Part V. There was massive pressure in that regard. I recall representatives of the builders federation visiting me in Galway. As they were opposed to Part V at the time, it was a matter for discussion. I remember saying to them that they were opposing it because they did not want social housing in their housing estates. However, I also pointed out that at night they came to my clinic to complain about social deprivation and anti-social behaviour in the socially segregated areas and ask me why we had created them. Profit was their motive in day time, but at night time it was the social cohesion of the city in which they lived. I told them they could not have it both ways.

The Minister should remove the buy-out clause and leave the percentage figure as it is, not take the route advocated by Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett of building huge, segregated housing estates. The Minister should have courage and stand up to the vested interests in the industry. Ultimately, we would all reap the harvest, as one sees in the social deprivation to which Trutz Haase and other sociologists point when one opts for social segregation. When one looks at the figures, it is no coincidence that the areas of greatest social deprivation, with the highest prison populations and the greatest levels of anti-social behaviour, are in urban areas, with high concentrations of local authority housing. We must, therefore, integrate urban societies in the way rural societies are integrated.

It is very important that we do not pull back on anything related to the standard of housing. It is absolutely crazy to hear talk that we should not be so strict when it comes to housing standards, building standards and so forth for urban housing, while, at the same time, putting an extra €10,000 or €15,000 onto the cost of a one-off house in a rural area where the person concerned supervises the building of his or her own house and where in my experience the chances of it not being built correctly are very slim. The Minister is from a rural and an urban constituency. Did he see many building problems with one-off houses people built for themselves on their own land, where they had commissioned and supervised the building? I doubt it. Is it not ironic that people are talking about not being strict with big builders?

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