Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful to Sinn Féin for bringing this issue before the House in this format because it gives us a greater opportunity to look again at the housing issue and the origins of the problems we face at present.

This crisis, and it is a crisis, does not have its origins in the last three and a half or four years, or even in the last ten years. Its origins are in bad planning in the last 20 years. A decision was taken 20 years ago to phase out local authority house building as a project and to shift it instead to voluntary agencies. Voluntary agencies do a great job in general. In particular, they look after special housing needs and sheltered housing better than anybody else and much better than local authorities can. Of course, this was a great opportunity for the Government of the day, which will remain nameless, to wash its hands of responsibility and to hand it over to the private rental market. There was no housing policy, no plan and no provision for the future. All that was done from time to time was a count of the number of people on the various housing lists. They were then counted again, after which people said there were a few things wrong with the application forms and some of the people should be struck off because they were not really in need of a house.

In the meantime it became more obvious that the Department of Social Protection was supposed to fill the housing void and provide the funding over a prolonged period to pay for the houses that the applicants for local authority houses required. Housing policy was handed over to the Department of Social Protection, much to the annoyance of that Department and the various Ministers in the intervening period. It was an appalling disaster and we are now reaping the whirlwind.

Some Members of this House have said in the last couple of weeks that this is a crisis which has only become obvious now and that the Government should have done something about it. Four and a half years ago was way too late to have done something about it, and if any Member of the House thinks that a problem of this nature can be resolved in six weeks, six months or six years for that matter, they are wrong. It requires emergency measures in the first instance and a long-term plan. In fairness to the Government, it has introduced a plan. It might not be sufficient to meet the requirements that are now envisaged by the Opposition, but it was introduced by the Government. Nothing had been done previously. Previously, the issue was postponed from next week to next year to thereafter.

The problem now is that there is an urgent need to deal with the immediate emerging problem of homelessness, which is caused by a shortage of supply. That is strange when one considers that we had a housing boom just a few years ago and Members of this House were talking about demolishing houses all over the country, saying bulldozers should be used and so forth - so much for that plan and for their insight into the future. The Government's policy is correct. We need emergency housing in the first instance and we need it quickly. We must recognise that people cannot exist without a home.

The last point I wish to make is important. I have listened to people over a number of years expound the theory that Irish people have a predilection towards ownership of their houses which they should not have. We have all heard this debated many times. Why should they not have it? We have a right to own our houses. In particular, it is important that the householder has an opportunity to pay his own mortgage as opposed to the landlord's mortgage. I do not see the merit in paying somebody else's mortgage if it costs the same to pay one's own.

There is another issue, which we have inherited from our history. We have a feeling that we should own our own house. That is built into every person in this country. It has a benefit. The benefit is that the person has an investment, something they wish to retain, improve and work for. They have an incentive to do what they wish to do for themselves and to provide for themselves, and they will do it.

Another point I wish to raise has also been raised by other Members. Where have the local authority loans gone? Every effort was made to squeeze them out of the system, and that has succeeded to a great extent. It is virtually impossible to qualify for a local authority loan. The nonsense that takes place to assess a person is laughable. For a ten year period it was made impossible for people in that income bracket to qualify for a loan and they were squeezed out of the market. As they were squeezed out of the market, they became more vulnerable. We should look again at the local authority loans fund with a view to ensuring that it is re-opened.

Finally, under the 1966 Act the local authorities have a function in respect of housing. They have a two-pronged system whereby they build houses with the support of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government or they offer loans to people who wish to build their own house. An earlier speaker already referred to the possibility of private sites. This was very successful in many schemes throughout the country. There was great work where people in the relevant income bracket built their own homes. They simply had to qualify under the local authority guidelines and they were able to build their own house on a serviced site. It was an excellent provision.

All of those things happened in the recent past. They were all well capable of being resolved satisfactorily. If they had been addressed, planned for and if provision had been made for them, we would not be in the current position. There would have been an adequate number of houses. A local authority, such as the one of which I was previously a member, must provide 800 houses per annum, either by loan or by direct build. That is the way it is.

See this speech in context