Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Figures from a report expected later tonight will show that rents are now eating about 40% of the incomes of a couple on the average wage, that mortgages in Dublin are the third highest in Europe after London and Amsterdam and that 147,000 families are now confirmed to be on the housing waiting lists. I could go on. It is disappointing that we are having the housing debate during the graveyard shift on a Thursday night. Let us be frank, we are led to believe this is the most urgent issue in society yet since I have come into the Dáil there has been very little debate on housing on the floor of the House. That is the reality. I hope this will not happen again, as has been requested, with regard to the Government's action plan on housing in two weeks. I thought the Minister would want to hear a debate on the housing committee report, then weigh it up rather than the weighing things up himself and then having the debate. I hope that does not happen again.

The committee met for two days a week over nine weeks. There were numerous witnesses and submissions. Many welcome suggestions have been made in the report. I put in more research and work than an awful lot of people and argued vehemently for a lot of things. However, there is one striking problem that we have to spend time debating, namely, funding. There is no point in recommending anything unless there is a clear way for it to be funded. I want the Minister to imagine a situation where he lost his wages, his income, and everything but he had money saved up from the good days because he had been wise. He went to withdraw that money that he had saved but was told he cannot use it for his dire situation, the Minister says it is savings but is told that it can only be used if he agrees to give it to somebody else or if he does not spend it because he is adding to his balance sheet. That is the situation we are in.

We have a fund called the strategic investment fund with €5.4 billion. There should be a little more concern that we are not allowed to spend it. If the fund was used for public housing, if councils directly employed people, built on public lands, which we have and cut out the profit element in hiring a private developer we could build 50,000 social and affordable homes to buy or rent for people who need them. That is the case. We could build houses for €100,000 if we did it with direct employment. That is why the public element is so important; it is not just an ideological argument. It is about costs. We cannot house the people on the list if we rely on a private developer here and a private developer there.

When the strategic investment fund was set up it was one of the first things I spoke on when I was elected in a by-election. At the time, former Deputy Joe Higgins and I tabled amendments saying this fund should be used for the biggest strategic need in this country which is housing. We were told that it could not be done. Now it would seem there is a widespread recognition that the EU fiscal rules signed up to by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party over many years are now a massive impediment to us resolving this issue. I will give two examples. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, came into the housing committee and said, "We do not have a shortage of money" and, "The problem is that it goes on the balance sheet and then we break the fiscal rules and the expenditure ceilings." Deputy Barry Cowen, of the main Opposition party said:

[T]he rules and regulations governing the spending of public funds does not allow us to make the capital investment needed to address this. That is the bottom line.

I do not have time to go on. An article in The Irish Timessaid that Fine Gael has not asked for any derogation from those rules. Why is that? The Minister is hearing it from the horse's mouth. Three of the rules are the structural balance sheet, the expenditure bench mark and the debt rule. They force us to go off balance sheet. It is a new mantra which kids on the street must know at this stage.

The problem with off balance sheet is finding a workable model - it was admitted in a question here that was asked by Fianna Fáil yesterday - and also the fact it is far more expensive. It will work out far more expensive and will add to the cost of these houses.

What is this fund that I have been telling the House about being used for, if it is not used for public housing? As we speak, it is being doled out to private developers to build housing, and then maybe we will get 10% of it. This is incredible.

Let us look at the reality of the fund the Minister mentioned, which is the new off balance sheet way of funding everything. Activate Capital is getting €325 million out of this fund, which is headed up, by the way, by bankers who landed us in the mess in the first place by recklessly gambling on property. I do not have time to go into that. Seán Reilly of Reilly McGarrell, the first beneficiary, is one of the maple ten, the former Anglo Irish Bank ten developers. Does the Minister have a problem with that? Did that not make him stop and think for one minute? The first beneficiary of this fund is not public housing but the likes of this fellow who had his loans written down by €153 million. He is building houses up the road from where I live in Ongar and Hansfield, and he has just jacked up the price on each of them by €20,000. That is what happens with the off balance sheet model the Minister says is workable. This is off balance sheet and this is what happens. We will be lucky to get 10%.

See this speech in context