Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Social Democrats are very happy to support this Bill. It is true to say the single greatest failure of this and the last Government has been their inability to tackle the housing crisis. That has resulted in a situation where untold misery is being caused to many families across the country, from the growing number of children who are growing up in cramped hotel rooms to the many families in emergency accommodation of other types, such as hostel-type accommodation, to those who are sleeping on the streets, who are currently at their highest number ever, and, equally, to the number on housing waiting lists, who are also at their highest number ever. Apart from the fact this is causing personal misery for so many of our people, the failure of the Government to address the housing crisis is also putting huge financial pressure on families who have managed to get housing, whether that is through paying huge prices for the purchase of housing, families who are in negative equity or families who are renting. Huge financial pressure is being put on people who are being stretched because of the difficulty in getting a basic roof over their head.

The other point is that the high cost of housing, whether purchasing or renting, is contributing enormously to fuelling wage demands, and this applies right across the board. If we tackled the unacceptably high level of cost associated with all forms of housing, it would certainly take a lot of the heat out of demands for wage increases. The impact of what the Government has failed to do is very clear in human terms and also in economic terms, and action is urgently required in this regard.

We all need decent housing conditions. It is the most basic of our needs that we have a place we can call home, where we can put down roots in a community, and where we can contribute to building sustainable communities so people can have decent lives. Housing should not be about the property market or getting a foot on the ladder, but that is what it has become in this country. This and the last Government, and other Governments, have been quite happy to leave the issue of housing to the market. They have failed to recognise one of the most basic human needs in our country. They have failed to recognise that the Government has a clear role to play in ensuring housing of all kinds is affordable and does not put people under the kind of pressure we are seeing at the moment.

This Bill is to be welcomed in as far as it goes. We know that while there are problems across the housing spectrum, the area of rental accommodation in particular has become the most expensive and least secure form of housing available to people. Increasingly, because of the lack of affordability for people in buying homes, and particularly because of the lack of funding of local authority house building, what we are now seeing is huge pressure on the rental market, which, in turn, is driving up prices, making it both the most expensive and the least secure. We also know from the latest www.daft.iequarterly property report that the annual rate of rental inflation is almost 12%, the highest recorded since it started keeping records in 2002. We know from recent public comments by somebody heading up one of the REITs that: “'It’s a great market... We’ve never seen rental increases like this in any jurisdiction”. He then added: "I truly feel badly for the Irish people."'

By all accounts, it is a great market if one is an investor, but that is not what Government should be about. It should be about ensuring decent quality housing for people, whether they are renting or buying. This is the biggest failure we have seen so far from Government. I am happy to support the Bill in so far as it goes. It helps in a minor way and we should, of course, agree it as an emergency measure.

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