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

I too welcome people affected by the housing emergency to the Gallery. I welcome the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, who came into the Chamber recently. I hope he can stay off his phone and stop his conversation with the junior Minister for long enough to give due respect to the people here and to us.

Some of the contributions from the Government side were embarrassing. The Minister said yesterday that houses do not appear by magic but it would seem they do in Dublin West because the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, was able to conjure up 44 social houses yesterday in Waterville. Nobody else had heard about them. No other public representative was told about them and she did this because protest works. People should take heed. In Dublin West we have made housing an absolutely central issue. We have organised public meetings, occupations of NAMA houses and made it an imperative for the Minister to find social housing. I encourage everybody to take part in the protest on 1 December at 5 p.m.

The Minister also asked why the Anti-Austerity Alliance did not allocate 50% of housing when we sat on councils. We were never in power and a homeless person was a rarity when I was on a council, now that is an everyday occurrence. The Government’s line is that there is no quick fix. Somebody even said there might be pyrite if houses are built too quickly. If houses are built any slower we will see more and more people lying on the streets.

Houses are being built. In Dublin West there are two NAMA estates, one, Diswellstown Manor, has planning permission for 225 houses; a three-bedroom house is for sale for €395,000, a four-bedroom house for €480,000, and the Minister tells us they are starter homes. He and the Taoiseach have had the cheek to say NAMA will resolve homelessness. It will be lucky if 10%, 25, of those homes are allocated to people on the list. The same is true of Hamilton Park, a three-bedroom house costs a minimum of €395,000. Not too many of the people sitting in the Gallery will be able to muster a 10% deposit of €39,500 after paying their monthly rent of €1,500. What will the Minister do about that? He says that our proposals are unconstitutional. Where? If they are, amend the Constitution. Why is homelessness, people living in hostels and hotels all right?

The key points of our motion are that we call for an emergency to be declared because if it is not declared, the emergency measures needed will never be taken. We call for an audit of all vacant houses in the country to find out who owns them, can they be acquired and how they can be used. The Government should ban economic evictions and repossessions, allowed by AIB, which the State controls. It should allocate NAMA hotel rooms, one-eighth of all hotel rooms, to homeless people, refurbish them, make them habitable for families, with proper cooking facilities and so on. It should introduce real rent controls linked to inflation and backdated to 2011 when rents were at their lowest. It should acquire buy-to-let properties that are in danger of being repossessed. That would increase the Government’s housing stock. We should build social and affordable housing on a major scale for rent or purchase. That can be done by changing NAMA’s brief. The biggest construction operation on the planet exists here in Ireland. Instead of being a nurse for the developers to get them back on their feet it could be turned into an agency for the building of social and affordable housing. NAMA has massive cash reserves. We do not have to look too far for the money. It has €4 billion from overseas sales and €3 billion set aside for development. That could build 70,000 houses if the Government used the land NAMA already has, at an estimated €100,000 per house. A total of €2 billion could be taken from the Strategic Investment Fund. Rents and other mortgage payments could come in to repay that money if the Government used it. We could tax wealth and corporations that have more wealth than entire countries. Instead of taking a case alongside Apple, the biggest company on the planet, we could agree that it should pay its tax of €17 billion. That would build a lot of houses and would give the Government a fund to build social and affordable housing.

I am glad the Minister has stopped talking just when I have stopped. His arrogance is beyond belief.

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