Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This question relates to the Cabinet sub-committee on the Construction 2020 strategy and housing and mortgage arrears. I put it to the Taoiseach that there probably is no sub-committee of the Cabinet of which he is a member that is guilty of a more spectacular failure and gross incompetence than this one and all those involved in it. The result of its endeavours or lack thereof is the worst housing and homelessness crisis in the history of the State. The position has worsened every single year since the Government took office and since the sub-committee has been deliberating on the issue of housing, as well as overseeing and informing the housing policy of the Government. When one considers what is happening, is this not proof of gross incompetence and utter failure? First, the problem concerns the response to the unprecedented crisis we face, with families and kids in record numbers sleeping on the street or in hostels and with housing waiting lists having spiralled out of all control to the point that one is now facing spending 18 to 19 years on a housing list. When the Taoiseach took office, the list in Dún Laoghaire was approximately 12 years long.

It is now 18 years long. That indicates how many people have come on to the list and how little social housing the Government has delivered.

When these points are put to the Taoiseach, he says, "We inherited a crisis. It is not really our fault. We are now trying to deal with it." That is just not an honest response. He is not telling the truth about what the Government did, which I can only assume was based on advice from this committee. When the Government came into office, it made a policy decision in July 2011 to cease construction of social housing. It is in a circular issued by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, which made clear that the intention and belief of the Government was that it would be possible to provide for the social housing needs of the State by leasing from the private sector. It was stated explicitly.

Is it not the truth that policy has led us to the mess we are now in? The belief was that somehow the private sector would deliver the social housing when it self-evidently was never going to do that and has not done this. Based on that misguided belief, the Government stopped building social housing. Even now is the Taoiseach not being dishonest with this House and with the public when he says he switched to a policy of delivering social housing? I keep trying to alert anybody who is interested in this debate to the fact that when we read behind the Housing 2020 strategy and the Government's claim to deliver social housing, the actual figures make it absolutely clear that 80% of the housing the Government hopes to deliver, it hopes will be delivered by the private sector through leasing. That is a fantasy. That cannot happen.

See this speech in context