Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

On Tuesday, the Taoiseach said a number of Deputies were being unduly pessimistic about housing. The statement suggests the Taoiseach does not grasp what the previous speaker said, that this is the most serious housing emergency ever faced by the State, bar none. Rents are rocketing and there is a major increase in the number of people reliant on the rental sector. Everybody will have seen the recent Irish Independentrent report, which stated that there had been an increase of 52% in the numbers renting during the past 18 months. This tells us the Government is not ensuring there is a housing supply. More and more people are being forced to compete for a smaller number of properties in the private rented sector. Average rents in Dublin are increasing by anything from €100 per month and in Kildare and the commuter belt they have risen by 15.5%. Unfortunately, keeping rent supplement down is not preventing rents increasing.

Repossessions have increased and the banks, which the Government and the people are meant to own, have given no order not to repossess houses which are rented to people who would like to continue paying the rent. There is no protection for such people and they are turfed onto the street. Everybody thinks homelessness has doubled.

Homelessness has not just doubled; it has increased by 800% according to Focus Ireland. Since 2013, that organisation has seen an increase of 800% in the number of homeless families attending its services. In 2012, it dealt with eight families per month but it dealt with 71 families in April 2015. The debate on this topic should not be left until a Thursday evening when most Deputies have left for their bases. This is the most pressing issue for this country bar none.

This Bill is part of a pattern of relying on private, for-profit construction to meet social and affordable housing needs. It is a case of fiddling while Rome burns. Even during the boom years it was not possible to provide social housing through private construction. Only 3,757 local authority housing units were provided under Part V, with a further 1,963 provided through housing associations because developers took advantage of the get-out clause of providing money or land instead of housing. I saw examples of this in my own council area, with the result that we never saw social housing in nice areas like Castleknock. Social housing was usually delivered in areas developers did not want. That provision is being discontinued but the Bill contains even worse alternatives. Councils will have to purchase the units from the developers at market rates which will be calculated based on site, construction and development costs and profits on the open market. This undermines the claim by Fine Gael and other neoliberal parties that it is cheaper to rely on the private sector than for local authorities to build houses themselves. There is no way the proposed arrangements can be cheaper than giving councils the funds to build houses. The purposes of this provision are to avoid EU and troika rules against increasing State balance sheets and to incentivise private developers through the back door. The taxpayer will ultimately be paying a massive subsidy to developers. We should demand that developers provide these units free of charge given that they are getting the valuable resource of planning permission at a minimal cost. The Government will ask for no such thing, however.

Councils are also starved of the funds they need to buy these houses. They will probably end up entering into long-term leasing arrangements with the developers. In the event that a local authority cannot afford to purchase a house, the alternative option is to enter into a rental accommodation availability lease agreement. Has any council been given sufficient money to purchase these units? The leasing alternative is likely to become the norm for cash-starved councils, with the result that they will pay rent to developers for an indefinite period. This is already happening under NAMA's social housing leasing initiative. They will never become owners of these properties and tenants will not have the security they enjoy in local authority housing. This is related to the social housing 2020 strategy, which aims to deliver long-term leases through RAS and the social housing leasing initiative. It is yet another State handout to landlords. We are paying rents instead of building homes for people. The alternative leasing arrangement is likely to become commonplace because the Bill does not confine it to exceptional circumstances.

The vacant site levy has been decreased since the general scheme of the Bill was announced. It is now 3% in the first year, increasing by 1% per year to a maximum of 6%. It is designed to look like a progressive measure but it contains so many loopholes that it will rarely be applied. Councils will have to jump through hoops to prove that a vacant site is suitable for social housing and that there is a social housing need in the surrounding area. Site owners will be able to claim exemptions for undue hardship. If a developer is in NAMA, that might be considered an undue hardship. It appears, therefore, that the people who crashed the economy will be getting another free run with this levy. The levy is being reduced for developers without standing loans on vacant sites. Why do we not reintroduce compulsory purchase orders on land? They are used for rail and other strategic transport infrastructure. What is more strategic than providing social or affordable housing?

The Bill institutionalises reductions in development levies and tax cuts for developers by providing for retrospective reductions. However, a glaring absence from the Bill is any plan to construct houses in the way they were delivered in the past, namely, by funding local authorities to build them. In two previous decades of housing shortage, the 1930s and 1970s, considerable numbers of social houses were constructed by local authorities. The Government has set its face against this approach for ideological reasons and because EU and troika rules prevent us from adequately addressing the housing crisis. The Government could, however, use the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to deliver social housing instead of dividing it out among so-called private entrepreneurs. There is sufficient money in the fund to end the housing crisis. It is criminal that the State is opting for more expensive ways of providing housing. Continued private control of construction, land and development will make people homeless or force them to pay exorbitant rents, and the taxpayer will have to pay to accommodate people in hotels and expensive private housing. The only viable solution is to start building social housing on a grand scale.

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