Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am also glad to be able to speak about the Bill, which is timely given the Minister's announcement of his grandiose plan yesterday. We will be housed out of it before we are finished, pardon the pun, but that will not give any houses to the homeless. I remember when Part V was introduced. I was a member of a county council in south Tipperary and was a big supporter of it because the boom was going strong and we needed to get a grip and get some houses for local authorities. I remember being involved with a lot of schemes and helping smaller builders who always played their part and were glad to do so. There was a lot of resistance from the Construction Industry Federation which did not want Part V. As I said last night, it is the same today. We have builders, small builders and developers. Deputy Wallace is not here but last night he did not know whether he was a developer or builder. He was confused and I did not meet him today to find out which one of them he is now. Large builders and developers did not want Part V.

I do not have any hang-up about selling these houses and I think I can support the Bill because there is discrimination between people in social and affordable housing and Part V housing and those in local authority housing. Small schemes with 10% might have only two houses and one might be social and affordable while the other is a straight local authority house whereby if somebody leaves a house, a tenant is appointed. The person in the social and affordable house would have bought it because they were able to buy it with a housing assistance loan, local authority loan or a mortgage so why not have equality and parity of esteem for tenants? I know about the argument that we do not want to denude Part V estates of private tenants but I think it is unfair. There are all sort of anomalies in the scheme whereby older people who are trying to buy their house cannot do so. Schemes are so ridiculous that somebody with life savings who wants to buy the local authority house in which they might have lived for over 30 years is not allowed to do so because they must go for a loan for which they will not qualify because of their age. Most pensioners only have the old age pension and many do not even have the contributory pension. How are they going to get a loan? They have the money. The vulture funds can come in and buy with money that could be from anywhere. It could be from money laundering and bank robberies. They can buy a whole street or estate.

We must look at housing and it will take a bit of time and effort. I again appeal to the Minister to look at it. I bumped into an auctioneer in a hotel not far from here. He said that what we are discussing here is amazing and that he could not fathom us but there was nothing new about that. One of the main drivers of the strategy was that we would not have families living in hotels. The man told me that he once owned a hotel but got into difficulties and sold it for €800,000 a couple of months ago. He said that the new buyer is signing a lease for ten years with Dublin City Council which will use it to house families. Where are we going? What is going on? Does one hand not know what the other is doing? The man sold it because he had to and we are bringing in policies that will mean that there will be no more people in hotel accommodation. The best part of it is that a ten-year lease at €750,000 per year adds up to €7.5 million. At the same time, we are in a flurry here talking about how there will be no more children in hotels. Are we really dealing with the problem or are we just playing games? Are officials in Dublin City Council and other councils so out of touch that they do not know what is the Government's policy? I know Deputy Danny Healy-Rae disagrees with me about whether councils got the money to build houses in the past number of years. A Minister from Tipperary announced money like it was falling out of the sky. The county manager was smothered with the money the local authority was getting to build houses. He did not know whether he was coming or going and he did not build a house. I told him months previously that he would not build a hen house. He built nothing because it was just announcement after announcement with a big fanfare and nothing being delivered. We need a lot of soul searching and thinking and this Bill is an effort to bring about fairness in the middle of it all.

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