Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is the promise of a strategy and we will engage constructively with the Minister in the Dáil Chamber and in the committee whenever he develops the strategy but there is a lack of firm, hard commitments not only on the long-term development of the private rental sector but the type of legislation on tenancy terminations or the purpose and outcome of a review of standards.

There is nothing on rent certainty, despite the escalating rent crisis and nothing specific on student accommodation other than, again, just a promise of another strategy at some future point. I acknowledge the point made by the Minister that his team did not have enough time to develop that part of the strategy. I suspect the real blockage is not the lack of time but the unwillingness on the part of his Cabinet colleagues to take the kind of policy decisions required to provide long-term solutions to a broken private rented sector.

Pillar 5 deals with utilising existing housing. Last week, as we are all aware, the Central Statistics Office revealed that there are 189,000 vacant units throughout the State. When the Housing Agency published its report based on the 2011 figures, many rubbished it, saying that the 2016 figures would show a significant reduction in the number of vacant units. They were wrong and the Housing Agency was right. While I again welcome the proposal to allocate €70 million to acquire 1,600 vacant properties, that is nowhere near enough. If the Housing Agency spends the money quickly, will the Minister replenish it and make it a rolling fund, and will he ask local authorities to develop actions plans for the long-term reintroduction of such units into the overall public private stock at local authority level?

The plan is undoubtedly better than that of the previous Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly. There is no question about that, but in the view of the party and constituents I represent it is simply nowhere near enough. The Minister has adopted much of the rhetoric of the report of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. He has adopted some of its spirit in his recommendations but the gap between the committee’s report and what the Minister has published today remains far too great.

There will undoubtedly be some improvements for some families following what the Minister has announced today. I will take the Minister at his word, that those of us who will sit with him in committee, privately or in the Dáil Chamber, to try to improve the quality of the plan will see improvements over a period. We will not be found wanting to make constructive, realistic proposals to the Minister as we did to the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Crucially, however, unless the Minister is more ambitious and unless the Government ensures greater investment in the direct provision of local authority and approved housing body social housing, the crisis that is gripping tens of thousands of families in the housing system today will continue and things will continue to get worse.

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