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

I find it ironic that the Minister tells us this Bill is an essential ingredient in the plan to tackle the worst housing crisis in the history of the State. The Minister claims the Bill will address the key problems which have caused the housing crisis. What are those key issues and what are the solutions? The Government states that if this Bill goes through it will fast-track planning processes so that developers will not suffer delays. It will streamline the role of local authorities and elected councillors so that developers do not suffer undue delays in planning. It will extend the length of planning permission given to developers and fast-track and streamline environmental impact statements. It will empower the Minister to take up to €420 million from the local government fund. It will place a slight delay on vulture funds or landlords evicting 20 tenants at a time, or ten, depending on what the Minister finally decides, and we are told that the great gain for those of us in the private rental sector is that the landlord will no longer be able to evict for the first six months or any subsequent Part 4 of the tenancy, but can still evict every four years for a multitude of reasons.

So this is the solution to the housing crisis but the problem is that none of us believes that these things are the cause of the housing crisis. We do not have 140,000 families in housing need because developers face delays in planning permission. Does anyone seriously expect us to believe that, or that 6,000 people are homeless because of the need for environmental impact assessments? We do not have record evictions and repossessions, rent rises and the threat of further evictions because locally elected councillors have a say in the planning process. We have a crisis in the housing market because we have a market in housing. As in every market the priority is profit for developers, builders, estate agents, bankers, financial companies, corporate landlords, REITs, vulture funds and equity funds and we have a crisis because of the refusal of this and other Governments to build publicly funded and local authority housing on a need basis. We have a crisis because of the refusal of this and other Governments to countenance the idea of controlling rents and strengthening the rights of tenants, rights which go right back to the Land League two centuries ago. We will not solve this crisis and will, in fact, continue our reliance on the market, with blind faith in the same market that got us here. All the other reasons given by the Minister for the housing crisis are nonsense; it is our reliance on a housing market that has got us to where we are and we will not confront the vested interests of those who are making a fortune out of that market.

I like the writer Naomi Klein very much. She is a Canadian journalist who has written some very insightful things about economy, climate and crises in the world. One of the things she famously said, in The Shock Doctrine, is that every elite in the world knows how to use a crisis. As the saying goes, "one should never waste a good crisis". Even when the crisis is engineered or caused by the policies of the elite within the market system, the elite still knows how to use that crisis. By God, the elite in this country and the Government are using the housing crisis to force through a serious wish list for developers and corporate landlords. There are tax breaks, tax-free incentives for landlords, tax breaks for vulture funds and cheap funds for developers. There has been a cut in the standards for apartments for developers and we are fast-tracking development and handing over public lands to developers for nothing. We have cut the numbers of social housing that must be provided in private developments, right down to 10%. We will go to heaven and back to ensure that developers and landlords achieve the level of profits they need in order to get them to build and rent.

Finally, as in every crisis we are not just presented with false solutions that go nowhere in trying to deal with the actual problem. When we ask questions about the proposals we are shouted down and accused of standing in the way of the solutions. Various Ministers and others have been scathing of anybody in any community who questions projects because of their concerns over the housing crisis. If residents question the closure of a community hall or the bulldozing of a park they are accused of NIMBY syndrome by people whose own record of concern for the housing crisis is dubious and leaves a lot to be desired. One cannot question the logic of modular or rapid housing or a development that might provide housing if it gets in the way of some other community facility. The hypocrisy is sickening and the people in working-class communities who refuse the property rights of developers by trying to protect a facility in their area are lambasted for doing so.

The AAA-PBP wants massive investment in local authority-owned and built housing. We want to see rent controls and an end to evictions at the behest of vulture funds and landlords and we want public lands in the hands of the public. We want the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, O'Devaney Gardens and the Oscar Traynor sites on the northside to be used to provide 100% public housing and that will not be done by this Bill, or by this Government.

It will be of no surprise to the Minister that we will table amendments. We will point out that rent controls are viable, as they are in most civilised European cities and even in the United States of America. We will state that we need to stop evictions and have to fund local authorities to build the good quality, high standard housing that is needed in each area for the elderly and for families. These measures are possible but the political will is not there and this Bill will represent another failure to deal with the housing crisis created by a market in housing. It will join the failed strategy of the previous Ministers, Deputy Alan Kelly and Alan Shatter, to speed up evictions, to put people in homeless situations and to provide profit through all sorts of tax mechanisms which enriched the very few who represent the housing market. We need to solve the housing crisis by the provision of public housing because nothing else will do it and this Bill will fall short.

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