Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

After being a member of the housing and homelessness committee, I awaited the Minister's plan with much hope. As has been well documented in the House, this is not just a crisis for the Minister and his Department to deal with; it is a real-life emergency. As a member of that committee, I was disappointed that more of our proposals were not taken on board. However, I compliment the Minister and the Department on delivering the plan on time and giving us the opportunity in the House to debate it before the summer recess. I welcome most of the housing action plan and it is extremely important that the plan is given a chance to work. Every man, woman and child in emergency accommodation tonight deserves a chance for the plan to work. The 23 children in emergency accommodation in my constituency of Waterford deserve for this plan to be given a chance to succeed.

There are a few areas of concern. We all remember last year the launch of the plan by the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, and I remember the phrase "shovel-ready sites". Unfortunately, we have not seen too many shovels at work and local authorities only managed to deliver 28 houses in the past 12 months, with the rest delivered by approved housing bodies. I keep repeating the role local authorities will need to play. The local authorities delivered social housing in the past and did it well but the problem escalated when local authorities stopped building. Their input must be reimplemented on a large scale and I look forward to seeing that happen. This cannot just be another plan and we need to see the bricks and mortar.

I welcome that the Government has promised to end the practice of homeless families staying in hotels by next year and to build 47,000 units of social housing. The commitment to streamlined procurement and approval of new social houses is also very welcome. The procurement and approval processes are out of date and they bear no relation to the emergency housing issue we are now experiencing. They are in need of urgent reform and simplification. There is always a risk in developing more procurement powers for local authorities and approved housing bodies. Given the snail's pace at which the Department approves new social housing projects, the risk is worth it. We dealt with this issue a lot in the committee and the frustration was great when dealing with procurement matters. In my home town of Portlaw in Waterford, we saw plans last June and the local authority had already built 24 houses on a site. There were no objections and the finances were in place, but not a sod has been turned 13 months later.

With regard to improved social housing delivery, I welcome the proposals for a new financing model, including the commitment to request that financing of social housing by the State be considered off-balance sheet to improve approved housing bodies' ability to access finance and establish a new housing procurement agency with staff from the Housing Agency, National Treasury Management Agency and the Department dealing with housing, planning and local government, as well as the Department of Finance. This is so local authorities and approved housing bodies can deliver their social housing programme.

I also urge the Minister to work with the credit unions. This morning we all heard in a briefing that they are restricted by the Central Bank in how they can currently invest. The credit unions have €10 billion on deposit. To use even a quarter of this to provide social and affordable housing would make sense. They are really anxious to get involved and we should take them up on the offer. They have much to offer if they were allowed into the market.

I am concerned that a moratorium on repossessions was not addressed. Unless we prevent people from being evicted, especially in cases of negative equity, it will be difficult to stop the ever-increasing waiting lists.

I would have liked to have seen more detail on student accommodation. Thousands of students are already facing difficulty in securing third level accommodation, especially in the larger cities, for the forthcoming academic year. While the Higher Education Authority estimates an existing level of unmet demand of approximately 25,000 student bed spaces nationally, this strategy has proposed that 500 new student accommodation places would be built on DIT's Grangegorman campus. I would like to see proposals on how universities and institutes of technology could gain better access to finance by borrowing independently from the State.

Aspiring home buyers hoping to get a foot on the property ladder also felt let down. There is not a lot in the report on first-time buyers and the difficulty of trying to get a 20% deposit together, especially in cities where it can amount to €50,000, which is outside the reach of most people.

There are gaps in the strategy that have to be filled but I sincerely wish the Minister well and look forward to seeing these houses, homes and apartments under construction as quickly as possible. As stated in the overview of the action plan, good housing anchors strong communities. I genuinely hope this plan is successful and look forward to seeing its implementation as soon as possible.

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