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

The Minister knows well it is true. His friends in Fine Gael overruled him on the issue. With such puny housing construction figures, tenants can expect equally exorbitant rent increases when their next rent review takes place.

Rent controls and certainty are the only solution to the housing emergency, which should have been tackled in 2013 at the latest. Allowing the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB, and local authorities to set a local standard rate and tying future rent increases to inflation, which has not been above 5% in recent memory, would bring real security to tenants. Instead, 95% of people on rent supplement are unable to meet the demands of the private rental market. This is a systemic problem which cannot be dealt with by well-meaning housing bodies on a case-by-case basis.

Regulating rent would allow for an increase in rent supplement that would not result in higher rents. The Labour Party has the shameful record of having cut rent supplement not once but twice in this Government's term, thereby putting families out on the street.

Sinn Féin wants major investment in the construction of social housing. The Government has only earmarked €312 million for council construction as part of the first phase of its housing strategy. It is clear that very little of this money has been delivered. In September 2015, only €11 million had been provided to local authorities for housing construction in the preceding nine months. A government that cared about housing the people who need homes would spend less time moving money from one Department to another and pretending it was new money and more time focusing on using this money and the associated fiscal space to build social housing through the councils, as well as providing affordable housing and rents at cost.

A government that cared about providing housing to people who need it would spend less time moving money from one Department to another, pretending it was new money, and more time focusing on using that money and the associated fiscal space to build social housing through the councils, as well as providing affordable housing and rentals.

If the Government really wanted to address the housing crisis, it would support the Sinn Féin motion and act on its proposals. The solution is clear: we need to build social and affordable housing. We need to regulate rents and keep rent supplement recipients in their homes. If we continue to subsidise the private market without regulating it, if we continue to deny the State's responsibility to build housing, if we continue to treat rent supplement recipients at risk of losing their homes as exceptions rather than the rule, then we will get nowhere. If we continue as we have, then we have accepted that children will be raised in hotel rooms and hostels in this so-called republic in 2016. I do not accept that and neither will the people.

The Government promised to end homelessness in 2016. The Minister should remember the promise made by the former Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. At the time I argued that it was impossible, but she plainly said it would be ended in 2016. It is ironic that since that promise, homelessness has been at its highest, with some 73 new families per month reporting as homeless. Moreover, there are at least 130,000 applicants on the waiting list and 5,000 people are homeless. According to other sources, there are more people who are not being taken into account in the homeless figures, particularly foreign nationals. There are 1,500 men, women and children in bed and breakfast accommodation. That is the real scandal.

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