John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I take the Ceann Comhairle's advice but a number of us were sitting here all day yesterday listening to the debate and while we are focused on a particular aspect of the Bill now and there are many other amendments, this is an important aspect. I suggested to the Minister last night that he might withdraw the Bill at that stage and get the house in order and then come back in. I think he misunderstood what I said. I was not asking him to completely withdraw the Bill I just wanted to get it sorted because I felt the process last night in terms of the consideration of the amendments and recommitting the Bill to Committee Stage sent out the wrong message. For me, it was the best worst example of this new politics. This House is almost dysfunctional, as is the Government. We are dealing with this issue now, which is a major one for thousands of people - 120,000 people are on our housing waiting lists. We are concentrating on it. Regardless of whether we were in favour or against the Bill in the first place, because of the market reactions, we now must have the Bill. Otherwise rents will go completely out of control. We have to accept the Bill. We are discussing how there would be increases in rents when there are many other aspects of the Bill that are equally as important.

A voice I have not heard loud enough in the debate is that of the local authorities. I suggested in the context of the planning aspects of the Bill and the involvement of local authorities that they know their housing lists, or at least they should, and they also know, together with the HSE, the number of sites that are within their counties that could be immediately developed for specific housing projects or generally for local authority houses. Regardless of what formula the Minister uses to try to control the rents and dabble in the market, which I believe is wrong but now we have to do so, the real answer to the housing crisis is to be build local authority houses. There are 3,500 people on the housing list in Kilkenny city and county. Seven houses are being allocated over the next few weeks. Local authorities have not been engaged with this process for the past ten years. They failed to recognise the fact that increasingly, more people were coming onto the housing lists and that they did not offer any solutions. They pushed those people into the housing assistance payment scheme, the rental accommodation scheme, or the rent allowance scheme and they got caught up in that market approach and did not rely on what they should have relied, namely, the provision of local authority houses. There are many problems in the country, many issues regarding small businesses and builders and this is one area where local authority houses could be constructed for those on the housing lists and builders could be brought in to build those houses and create an activity in the local economy that would have positive effects, but nobody seems to be addressing that. The Minister is saying that millions of euro are being allocated to local authorities but in most local authority areas we do not see the type of activity that would be equal to the amount of money being allocated. The problem seems to be continuing to grow.

There are issues regarding local authorities bringing forward Part VIII proposals where they are trying to build houses and councils are turning down those housing projects. If one examines why that is happening, one will note that there is a very poor planing process in place which causes councillors to protect the different existing housing estates by preventing large-scale houses being built. In a way they are protecting future tenants because some of the proposed plans are for the construction of matchbox size units which will not suit the people for whom they are intended and they will cause social problems in the future. I would have liked to have seen a great deal of this debate concentrate on what we had in place to have houses constructed and ask why it is not working and examine the possibilities of an economic gain whereby local authorities would be given the power and funds to process all these applications and solve in each county their own housing problems. This Bill does not provide for that.

The Minister was asked in the course of the debate about the formula. Various Members raised the issue of an evidence base for this, from where the Minister is getting the information, what information he is using and so on. If he asked any local authority in the country about the rents being paid, they could tell him those figures because they are funding some of them. The monthly rent for a three-bedroomed house in Kilkenny has increased from €600 to €1,200 and in the case of similar house in Dublin it has increased from €1,200 to €2,500, depending on the location. Local authorities are not being used to the extent that they should be used and the information they have is not being used sensibly in the Government's general approach to this. It is not a case of one Department being able to solve all this.

The vulture funds and the banks were referenced in the debate last night. During the debate on Second Stage, I asked that we would have some form of agency, perhaps an existing housing agency, that would take from the banks the number of houses that are now earmarked for repossession and allow the families living in them to work out an arrangement, in the same way as business people did with NAMA, rather than the vulture funds buying them. Richie Boucher told us at a recent committee that bank repossessions will undoubtedly rise considerably. The same is the case with the AIB.

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