Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to flesh out some of the things Deputy Coppinger said. An ideology is being sold to us that somehow everybody must own his or her own house. I do not know if it is a hang-up that goes back to Michael Davitt and the Land League, but I think it is more political than that. It is an agenda that has always been driven, particularly in the last few decades, by those with a vested interest in development and building. In fact, however, one should look to other European countries. I lived in Germany for a while and people there rented all their lives. They rented with strong legislation that stopped landlords from putting up the rent. The legislation also ensured that tenants lived in decent conditions and could not be evicted at the drop of a hat. One would never hear of a landlord in Germany saying: "Oh Jesus, I need to sell this place, so you have to go," which is what is happening to tens of thousands of families across this country at the moment.

While there is a social housing policy in Germany, there is also a big focus on ensuring that people live in decent conditions with security of tenure and fixed rents.

This is typical of European cities. In Ireland, we have a hang-up about owning our own home. I say that hand on heart because in the 1970s or 1980s my parents bought the house in which I grew up, having lived in and paid rent on it for 30 to 40 years, which was typical across Ireland at the time. In a housing crisis of the type with which we are faced today, we will be making a big mistake if we go down the road of allowing more council houses to be sold off. The Part V provision is a bit of a joke in terms of how it was abused by the developers, many of whom, as stated by a Deputy earlier, were allowed to pay a fee rather than hand over houses, and many of them did. Many developers never passed on that money. There are real difficulties in terms of the approach being taken in this area.

In 2006, some 11% of the entire housing stock in Ireland was social housing that was in the hands of the local authorities. Since then, as a result of the housing crisis, demand for social housing has increased but the stock available to us has shrunk. This Bill will do nothing to address that issue. It will only worsen the situation. I would have thought that at the very least Fianna Fáil would recognise that their friends in the construction industry are not developing and building and so what we have we should hold onto for as long as we can to meet the desperate need of social and affordable homes required by people on the housing waiting lists.

I am strongly against the adoption of this Bill.

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