Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. I would like to express my sympathy to the friends, family and relatives of the ten members of the Traveller community so tragically killed. I also express my sympathy to the family, relatives and friends of Garda Tony Golden, who was tragically killed while performing his duties.

This Government is a master of spin. It may have managed to lead RTE into believing it was announcing a major new investment in housing or some kind of decisive move against homelessness, but anyone who knows much about these issues or cares to look behind the spin is aware of the scam those claims represent. The entire housing strategy being pursued by the Government is an operation in spin. The best thing campaigners will say about it is that it exists and that at least is positive. Numbers were plucked from the sky and housing need defined on a whim.

Tens of thousands were condemned to relying on the private market which cannot and will not house them adequately without billions of euro in subsidies. Thousands more, it was decided, would sort themselves out over time. A bare minimum of the State's responsibility was decided and with that, a plan to pretend to be providing housing was devised, which would do well until an election with results projected for just before the general election after next. Some €3.8 billion was promised over six years, amounting to a modest increase in the annual budget. This figure was announced, re-announced and repackaged to generate as much confusion in the public domain and as many column inches as possible. Even the Taoiseach regularly mis-states the planned spend, confused by his own Ministers' misinformation.

In reality, an immense sum was being ring-fenced for the subsidy of private landlords and developers over six years, with a meagre sum apportioned for local authorities to build or refurbish - a meagre sum which for many councils has proven very hard to get. How many homes were councils set to build by 2017 under the Government strategy?

In Dublin city, it was just 167 while across the State, it was just 1,750. This is barely enough to house the people on the waiting list in Waterford, not to mention the 43,000 people in need of housing in Dublin city.

The budget is a continuation of this kind of spin over substance. There is more focus on private profit over the public provision of a housing solution. The obscenity of the profit being made off our homelessness crisis by hotels in particular is hard to take. Dublin City Council is paying millions each year to put families in hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, which are often located miles from the schools these families' children attend. Modular housing may offer a more suitable option for an individual family but the concern that families will be dumped in emergency accommodation villages for periods well beyond what constitutes temporary is real and fair. We need homes and we need communities. That is the only solution. Anything else is a stopgap measure. That is not just my opinion. It is the reasoned opinion of all involved who have grasped the nature of the crisis.

Focus Ireland, one of the leading campaign groups that advocates for homeless people and for housing solutions, said of the budget that it "completely failed to deliver on stemming the rise of homelessness." Of the increase in the homeless budget, it said that "all of that will be paid to hotel owners or to provide modular emergency housing." It said that there is "nothing at all to slow down the shocking number of families becoming homeless." There is nothing to stop an increase in the 740 families with 1,500 children who are already homeless and depending on emergency accommodation. When we spend nearly €3,500 a month on each family to put them in a hotel, how soon will €17 million be forgotten while homelessness remains a daily nightmare for more and more people? Some of this will, of course, be spent on modular homes, which may well be finished to a high standard but are not the solution to our housing shortage and will not provide the new communities we need to create a home for the thousands who have none.

The Peter McVerry Trust, that thorn in the side of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government's spin doctors, did not have much that was positive to say yesterday either. Not only did it say that the budget fails to adequately address the crisis, it said that the Government fails to even understand the nature of it. It said the budget did "nothing of note" for homeless people. The €17 million proposed will barely help services stand still with no change in the numbers. The problem is the Government has failed to act to stop the flow of tenants into homelessness and so numbers will rise. They have quadrupled this year alone and rents in Dublin have risen by 9.2% during in past 12 months. The measures needed were floated endlessly but were never grasped by the Government. To people struggling to pay rent each month, it appears that the Government simply does not care enough to act or understand.

Focus Ireland says that there will be a need for at least 160 extra beds this winter. Inner City Helping Homeless meets 150 people a night who are sleeping rough and says it misses many more. There are also 40 to 50 people sleeping on the floor of the night café run by Merchants Quay Ireland. We are on a collision course for more tragedy and more Jonathan Corries. I say this not to score points but to really plead with the Government. Whatever about yesterday, we cannot let people go without shelter this winter for lack of action.

A major announcement yesterday, albeit a leaked one, was that NAMA, the organisation which has struggled for four years to provide just 1,300 out of a promised 4,000 houses for use under social leasing, had looked under the cushions and found 20,000 homes it was willing to invest in to bring to sale. How on earth have these homes not been made part of NAMA's promised social dividend? NAMA has failed utterly to live up to its commitments on social housing. There has been no stock transfer, very little discounted sale of property to social housing and a fraction of social leasing delivered which barely constitutes social housing anyway and now it will be playing big-time developers and selling off homes as part of the Government's ill-fated and ridiculous plan for housing. The speeches yesterday said they would be affordable and starter homes. To most people, "starter home" is a nice term for a shoe box with windows and affordable housing has become an oxymoron. The Minister described affordable yesterday housing as housing below €300,000. Perhaps that is affordable on a Minister's wage but to the 50% of people earning less than €27,000 a year, that is nowhere near being affordable and credit is simply unobtainable.

We welcome private investment in sustainable new housing developments but it is not the solution to the crisis in affordable housing when most of the population are unable to afford private rates. This is why when demand for rental property skyrocketed after the collapse due to a lack of credit, development did not follow. The mass of people in need of rental homes pushed rates up but many of these people could never have afforded these rates for long in any event. NAMA developers get another hand out to profit from the needs of the Irish people. I await more details of this plan from NAMA. I hope the Government will be an aid in getting such information given NAMA's notorious approach to keeping this House informed of its actions. What scrutiny will be put in place?

The Government seems to want to throw every number at us bar the figure of how many houses local authorities are actually expected to build next year and exactly how much money will be provided for that. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform said that €500 million is being provided but the capital budget for housing is just €432 million for 2016. The only way the Minister could arrive at such a figure is to combine the capital budget, which is supposed to pay for construction, and some other monies. This kind of misleading approach is to ensure that when the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection makes wild claims that more money is being spent on housing than ever before, it does not sound quite so silly. It is still nonetheless very wrong. In fact, the capital spend on housing for 2016 is only €35 million more than it was in 2011 when this Fine Gael-Labour Government took office and started slashing it. By 2013, it cut nearly €100 million a year so in fact they are only beginning to make up for its cuts. In 2010 the budget for housing was over €1 billion, which is more than the allocation today. Talk about fairy tales.

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