Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry I do not have more time. The Minister will not be shocked when I say I would have liked to see a lot more in the report, but I will not shoot him, rather I will give him the benefit of the doubt and I am hopeful he will deliver a lot more in time. Rome was not built in a day, but it was started. I accept that it is a start and will not dismiss it out of hand.

I will address the issues that we still need to address. I do not think the issue of affordability has been dealt with. We still have a huge problem with how we provide housing and dealing with this issue is a huge challenge. I am not saying the Minister should be able to sort it out overnight, but as he learns more about it, I hope he will take a stronger line in some areas. Land-banking is a massive problem within the industry that will stay with us for a while longer. It does not look as though the funding issue has been addressed either, as I would like it to be. The EU rules must be challenged. We are still very much restricted by them and they are stopping us from borrowing cheaply to invest in State housing provision.

We have discussed the issue of affordability a lot at the housing committee and established that there is a big difference between the cost of providing local authority and private sector housing. The difference can be up to €100,000, which is an awful lot of money. We are not providing quite as many social houses as we thought. My understanding is we were recommending 50,000 local authority new builds, but perhaps I have misinterpreted. I understand we are looking at a figure of 26,000 local authority new builds. This represents a missed opportunity.

In a building regulations blog someone wonders why the Minister did not establish a fund of something under €100 million and buy 50,000 or 60,000 houses to take people out of emergency accommodation. Investment funds are still buying houses for less than the cost at which we can build them. Why does the Government not take that position?

The Labour Party suggested we rebrand NAMA. I would prefer to abolish it. I am very concerned that we will expect NAMA to provide 20,000 houses in the next few years. This is an organisation that looks worse by the day. It lacks accountability and transparency and has been seriously economical with the truth. It is dysfunctional. The Minister might think I am making it up, but I am not. It is not an organisation on which he should be hanging his coat to help him resolve the housing crisis. We are going to use land owned by the people, yet nine out of ten units will be available through the private sector and NAMA will be doing deals with developers and investment funds to provide it. Many of the people in question have actually grown from a dysfunctional property market in Ireland.

Some of their strength is based on ill-gotten gains. They are people who formerly worked in NAMA and got involved in this area. People were asking why the private sector is not building and they get a couple of things mixed up. There is an entity called the builder and an entity called the developer. The builders are prepared to build, they are able to build and they want to build. The developer is a different animal. It is true to say it is not financially attractive enough for him at present. It is for the builder but not the developer. One of the main causes of this is that the so-called developers, of which there is now a new, much bigger version, namely, investment funds or vulture funds, are still preoccupied with picking from the carcass of what is left of stressed assets from the failed financial institutions and NAMA. That is a huge problem for us. Builders are prepared to build. They are not saying there is not enough money in it for them. They cannot get the money. People should stop confusing builders with developers.

See this speech in context