Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Táim buíoch don Cheann Comhairle as ucht an deis labhairt faoin ngéarchéim tithíochta anocht. I welcome the approval of the Dáil of a Sinn Féin proposal to establish the all-party housing committee to produce a report on solutions to the unprecedented housing crisis the State and its citizens face at this time. Sinn Féin looks forward to working with everyone on the committee. Our goal must be to produce a report with practical recommendations and solutions that the next Government will implement. The construction of social housing has been in decline for ten consecutive years under the outgoing Fine Gael and Labour Party Government and the Fianna Fáil-led Government that preceded it. This emergency is a result of Government policy. Critics of the State's housing policy rightly point out that in worse economic circumstances, local councils were provided with the resources to build houses for families in need. Local authorities, therefore, need to be properly resourced now.

Just this morning, in the centenary year of the 1916 rising, we learned that nearly 6,000 citizens are in homeless emergency accommodation. That includes 1,881 children. While this is a State-wide problem, the majority of these are in emergency accommodation in Dublin. Yet, it is a fact that in Dublin city alone, there are more than 56,000 houses zoned, including 14,000 social houses with planning permission. It is done and dusted. Construction of these houses could commence tomorrow if the political will existed. In my own constituency, there are more than 5,000 applications for housing on Louth County Council's waiting list. Yet, only nine social houses have been built there in the past two years. Citizens need real homes, not hotel rooms, bed and breakfasts or hostels.

The problem is that the outgoing Government does not believe in the right of the citizen to a home. That is the main impediment to resolving the housing crisis. Sinn Féin takes a very different position. We believe in the right of every citizen, man, woman and child, to a home, whatever their circumstances. This is achievable. We have identified €2.2 billion in investment in housing that could provide 36,500 new homes over five years. We want to see boarded-up houses, apartments and voids opened up and refurbished. We want to see a minimum of 4,000 of NAMA's 20,000 private houses used as social houses. We want compulsory purchases of housing stock which has been gifted by NAMA to vulture funds. We want to deliver security and certainty for tenants, to support home owners and buyers and to stop the profiteering of banks at the cost of mortgage holders. We raised all of these issues with the Government in the last term, well before this problem fell to the depths it is at now. We warned of this years before because these were the issues we were hearing about on the streets and in our constituency offices. We believe that this crisis can be reversed and brought to an end. Our representatives will be bringing these proposals and more to the new housing committee as soon as it begins its work.

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