Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are 1,500 children living in emergency accommodation. Previous speakers have explained that three families a day are going into emergency accommodation. Some 707 families nationally are in emergency accommodation today. If that says nothing else, it says that whatever the Minister is doing, "It just ain't working". He should stop the pretence, admit the failure and respond to this crisis with emergency legislation that might resurrect his fortunes and resolve the difficulties that exist. It is the greatest and gravest issue we have all faced over the last 18 months to two years. I lost my temper with the Minister's predecessors, the former Deputy, Phil Hogan, and Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. I thought that might spur the Government into action.

We have made suggestions and proposals. I have issued policy documents in the areas of housing and home ownership, rent certainty and all issues surrounding rent. I do not say I have a monopoly on solutions. It is my duty and obligation, as a Member of this House and as an Opposition spokesperson in this area, to put forward real, credible, constructive alternatives and proposals. The Minister can steal them if he wants. It is the job of this forum to find resolutions to the issues that exist in our constituencies. Those issues have formed this perfect storm, as the Minister calls it. We have all heard of perfect storms in recent years, whether here two years ago or in the states on a regular basis. What follows a perfect storm? A state of emergency. The Minister will admit to a perfect storm and talk about all the issues that contrive to create one, but he will not bring forward emergency solutions to deal with what it leaves behind.

As I said before, what is lacking in all the Minister's responses, speeches, presentations and commentary on this issue is urgency. There is no concept of urgency, visible or otherwise. Some 2,600 local authority homes are vacant. There was a lot of fanfare in Heuston Station about proposals for capital spending over the next five, ten or 15 years, I do not know which, but €29 billion is being talked about, supplemented by a further €14 billion from the semi-State sector. That is fine and dandy and might win an election two terms away, but it does very little to address the immediacy of the problem that 2,600 homes are vacant.

The Minister wants to live up to the expectation he and the Taoiseach gave the rest of us when they said that money was not an obstacle in rectifying vacant homes, yet it most definitely is an obstacle. I have proved that €1.6 million was cut from local authorities year-on-year. If he wants to really do something about this, the Minister should come back in here in a month and say: "problem solved, money given, job done".

I heard the Minister discussing NAMA. The dividend from NAMA has been nothing short of useless. I will tell the Minister about the dividend from NAMA. His line Minister for Finance and his Government, in which he has collective responsibility along with everyone else around the table, has forced NAMA into a quicker wind-down. Some 11,000 residential units with full planning permission were sold in this city this year by NAMA to private developers in job lots. What does that say about a social dividend from NAMA? What does it say about the social conscience of the Government or anybody in it? It leaves a lot to be desired. I refer to what NAMA can and cannot do. I will tell the Minister what it is doing. It is lending to private developers who are on its books to the tune of 4%.

The Minister talked about the great thing he has done in putting forward funding of €500 million made up of €375 million from the National Pension Reserve Fund and €125 million from a hedge fund in the USA. Now they are coming in to piggy-back on the profits as well. He failed to say what rate they will be charging - 14% to 16% - while NAMA, an arm of the State, is charging 4%. The Government is borrowing on a daily basis at 1% to meet the demands of public services. He thinks he has all the answers and the solutions and that the private sector is going to help him.

Of course, it is a dirty word for somebody in my party to talk about what the building sector can do for this economy. The Government thinks it can win an election in six months' or six weeks' time based on what happened five years ago. That is not going to wash with the public. In the context of whether the Minister wants to do something serious about private supply, the Government looked at the licensed and hotel trade and I commended it when it reduced VAT from 13% to 9%. That had the desired effect. The building sector is asking the Government to do something similar. It should look at the development levies which do not meet the market conditions today and instruct local authorities to reduce them to levels that are compatible and allow builders to compete with the NAMA rate of 4%.

The banks are not lending. They have let the Minister down again. He did not let them down when he allowed a process by which many more people could be dumped into homelessness and thrown into circumstances of over-hyped rates of rent. He gave the banks a veto and allowed what I describe to occur for the past two years.

This Legislature amended the insolvency legislation and eventually took heed of what was being said, not only by me and other Members but also by outside experts, namely, that the Government should at least allow the courts the option of adjudicating on decisions of banks in regard to refusing resolutions in respect of distressed mortgages. We went away for the summer believing that legislation was in place but I was told last week by the Courts Service that it is not in a position to adjudicate independently because the rules within the court system have not been amended. Who is responsible for that? Is it the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Justice and Equality? It is the coalition Government and every single member of the parties that comprise it. I have no doubt that they, too, are receiving representations in their clinics from people in distress. The amendment, which the Government was two and half years late in bringing forward, has not been enacted, despite the fact that this Dáil passed the legislation. That is an absolute disgrace. I want an answer to this before this debate concludes. I again ask the Minister to please allow reasonable time to debate this issue and the concrete proposals from my colleagues on this side of the House, and perhaps even from members of the Government parties. If one in two of my representations concerns housing, it is the same throughout the country.

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