Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is a practical approach which offers real solutions and stands in complete contrast to the Government’s ineptitude and incompetence and its approach to the housing problems. There has been much talk of the human stories and of a crisis. We all know it is an emergency but is it really a crisis? It is not a crisis if it is a policy. That is the problem: refusing to invest in social housing has been a policy of this Government. This was planned for. Refusing to think beyond the next budget is the Government’s policy.

I have recently quizzed various Ministers about how their Departments have responded to the housing crisis. The figures are shocking. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly, and the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, know this well because they have reigned over failure after failure in respect of one failed scheme after another to help the struggling homeowner who is facing eviction and homelessness. We all know the results, unfortunately, as has been outlined by my colleagues.

Under the Labour Party's then Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Jan O’Sullivan, and under the present Minister, Deputy Kelly, a State-wide mortgage to rent scheme was launched to give struggling home owners a chance to move from mortgage to renting while staying put in their family homes. The State banks were to be forced to make this work and councils were to be given a fund to help them participate. We were told the mortgage to rent scheme was one of the main planks of the plan to take us out of the mortgage crisis. The Labour Party told us 3,500 families would benefit.

What happened under Deputy Jan O’Sullivan and the present Minister, Deputy Kelly? More than three years have passed and only 246 families have been able to avail of this scheme. Only three homes in the whole of Donegal have been helped by this scheme in three and a half years. Not a single successful conclusion under the scheme has taken place in Galway, Longford, Monaghan or Sligo. We were told it was being revamped in July and was now fit for purpose but since then, only 53 homes have been moved from mortgage to rent under this scheme. The Government owns 99% of AIB but the bank has concluded only a grand total of five sales. We own this bank and can give directions to it but the Government sits on its hands. Of the €20 million fund for local authorities to participate in this scheme, only €6 million has been spent. It is a shocking failure the Minister has presided over for the past few years.

Surely a Labour Party Minister for Social Protection would have protected the advice services available to people feeling the housing crisis. Surely in times of a debt crisis the State steps up to the mark and makes sure the vulnerable people are protected. That is not the case with this Government. When this Government came to power, we had an excellent Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, on which many people relied. It was funded to the tune of €18.3 million per year. In 2013, it received €19.1 million and yet it has received a 7% cut from that point to today. More than €1 million has been taken away from the MABS budget. When people needed it most, the Labour Party stood over cuts to the advice services to struggling families.

MABS is not alone. Over the term of this Government, Citizens Information has suffered a 10% cut at a time when MABS in 2013 reported a quadrupling of demand for its services. If anybody needs reminding, the Labour Party promised that MABS would be strengthened to a personal debt management agency with strong legal powers but as Deputy Rabbitte would say, that is what people say at election time. When people were down, the State was not too long about keeping them down. We see the results in the numbers waiting for housing now.

The Minister for Social Protection’s other great initiative was to set up the independent financial advice service to help struggling home owners and others. She told us the banks would foot the bill and it would cost them €10 million. She told us a crack team of 2,000 accountants would be available; that this was going to be the panacea and the saviour. What happened? Based on the figures the Minister gave me last week, it appears that each of these 2,000 accountants has given advice to one person over the term of the scheme, which is another spectacular failure. When I asked the banks how much of the predicted €10 million the scheme had cost them, I was told they had not even bothered accounting for it. That is how little they thought of this scheme from the Labour Party.

I do not have the time to go into the further failures of the Labour Party but the words of Deputy Gilmore when I first raised the issue of rip-off interest rates in 2011 ring in my ear. He told me then that I need be in no doubt that this Government will act decisively and forcibly with the banks. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Labour Party might let us know when that is about to begin. How many families have been thrown to the wolves as a result of their inaction, of their not acting decisively or forcibly with the banks? When will the penny drop and when will they start dealing with this homelessness crisis, which is now at emergency level?

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