Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

Reading through the Bill gives no sense whatsoever of the emergency and crisis in our communities and society at present. Almost 100,000 people are on the housing list. Many people are couch surfing and in emergency accommodation. Last month 65 families, all from the private rental sector, approached the local authority homeless section seeking emergency accommodation. In May the figure was 64 families. If a natural disaster, such as a flood, wiped out 200,000 houses we would have a national emergency trying to deal with it. What we have is a national disaster. We are speaking about cutting back on one area where we could, as a State, enforce social housing in the way it was presented previously. I believe we should move away from the 20% social and affordable housing model in Part V.

The Bill should be just taken off the agenda. To see all of the Government backbenchers coming in to vote for it but not sitting in the Chamber trying to challenge what is going on is unbelievable. It is shocking. It shocks me that we are still in this situation. The opportunities the State has to get developers to provide social housing is being halved from 20% to 10%, which is a disaster. The next step will be that developers will actually go to local authorities to tell them they will come to a leasing arrangement with them rather than providing social housing. We will never get a social house out of this. Developers will immediately jump at the leasing aspect of it whereby they can make money more easily. It is a disaster. It is mocking the people of the State debating this and for the Government to have presented it as an alternative way to try to deal with the housing crisis.

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