Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Donnelly. I am so sorry about this but I have to be in a certain place at 9.55 p.m.

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this important legislation. I will add my humble contribution to those made by numerous Deputies in the course of the debate. Housing and the lack of it have rightly been identified as a major issue. The Government has put in place very considerable investments and supports to address this. It has made available €5.3 billion over the next few years. It is a matter for the powers that be, the local authorities on which we all served, to utilise the funds available as quickly as possible to provide the housing necessary to meet the needs of our people.

I listened carefully to the speeches this morning because I was in a position to do so. I was particularly impressed by the contribution of Deputy Connolly, who clearly has an understanding of the housing problem from having worked directly with the people in need of housing. Her contribution was realistic and based on clear knowledge of the issue. She did not attribute anything to anything other than the need to deal with the issue through the normal system of provision, whereby the local authorities provided housing directly for people within their catchment areas. We all know that policy became old-fashioned over the years. Gradually, it was pushed to one side and eventually everybody relied upon the private sector to provide rental property. This did not work and could never work. Some of us present, including the Ceann Comhairle, pointed that out at the time. Unfortunately, nobody listened to us at the time. It is only now, several years later, that we find the damage done was colossal in more ways than one. One thing that happened at the time in question was that responsibility for the main stream of local authority housing was given to voluntary housing agencies. The agencies are particularly good at dealing with special housing needs and supports but they were not equipped to deal with the whole housing problem, nor could they ever be so equipped. It was not their statutory responsibility. It was a dream, a pipe dream, and it simply did not work.

The measures put in place by the Government are realistic, forthright and urgent. They recognise the need to do something about the matter in the shortest time possible. In such circumstances, we need to allow the matter to take root and settle. We need to go back to the old local authority housing loans. There are several tranches of demand in this housing area. We did away with the old local authority housing loans and the system has become very complicated in recent times. There is now an assessment group that takes some days to assess eligibility for a loan. This is crazy because, as the Ceann Comhairle and I well know, it does not take any more than 20 or 30 minutes, if one has the information, to make an assessment. Either the person has the capacity to repay a certain amount or he does not. There is not much sense in saying that if a person is five, seven or ten years in a job, he or she has a better chance of repaying because nobody has an absolute guarantee of a job at any time, including Members of this House. Suggesting a person has a better chance of getting a loan if he or she has been a certain number of years in the job is one of the most ridiculous suggestions I have ever heard. We all know it depends on the job and how long it will stand for. This is in somebody else's hands. There is no risk-free lending. There is no such thing as a guarantee of the ability to pay and there never has been. That is not what lending is about. We need to clear this up and reintroduce the loans to which I referred as a matter of urgency.

We need to reintroduce the use of private developed sites, or what we used to call private sites, through the local authorities. They were extremely effective and efficient in delivering houses to the people who were at the first stage of being able to provide a house for themselves. For instance, young gardaí, nurses, professionals, local authority workers and civil servants had a great opportunity, and many of them availed of it. They provided themselves with a house without ever burdening anybody else. If they had not done so, they would now be crowding the system and driving up house prices by virtue of creating more competition in the marketplace. Private sites and county council loans can be incorporated into the plan, even after the passage of the Finance Bill. I hope they will all be utilised as quickly as possible.

House prices in this country are way too high. I had the temerity to mention that at a meeting of the housing committee recently and there was absolute uproar. People tore their hair out and beat their breasts stating it was an appalling thing to say. I had suggested a Deputy's salary would not service a loan of more than €250,000. It would not, should not and could not. Two and a half times the income of the main earner was always the norm in the determination of the ability to repay a loan. Now people on the same salary as a Deputy are expected to service a loan of €300,000 to €400,000. I cannot understand for the life of me how people could expect that.

We have inherited much of the high pricing from the boom time. It is a legacy issue. Everybody felt it was better to be living in a very expensive house. We all lived in more expensive houses during the boom. I did not notice any difference. I did not feel any better getting out of bed in the morning and walking down the hall, and I did not feel very lucky to be living in a very expensive house. Everything was relative to the prices everywhere else. Whatever the market determined at the time was what we were committed to.

Consider the circumstances when and if house prices stabilise. It will take a little while because there are people who will be caught in relative negative equity in the climb-down. A house worth €600,000 or €700,000 is pricey. It is not a first-time buyer's house, no matter what happens. We need to be very careful to ensure the lending market is not taken over by people who have resources and need more to extend a loan or improve their chances of building a house at the kinds of prices in question. If it is at all possible, I hope we will graduate in the direction of encouraging a decrease in prices. The Central Bank of Ireland is quite correct in doing whatever it has to do to keep the prices down. There is nothing to be gained from everybody having a house worth €1 million. It creates circumstances in which nobody else can buy. I am not looking at anybody on the other side of this House. God forbid that I would be in any way suggesting that anybody on the other side of the House would have a house like that.

I would love to go on but I must conclude. I am grateful to the Ceann Comhairle and Deputy Donnelly for having allowed me this opportunity. Perhaps my colleague on whose time I infringed will take a full slot if he gets the opportunity in the course of the evening.

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