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

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this legislation. Housing is one of the serious issues we are facing in the times we are living in. Housing cannot take place without planning. One would always expect the highest quality and standards to apply to the planning of housing because people have to live in the houses afterwards. Decisions on the quality of people's lives are made when housing plans are prepared.

I would like to mention some of the particular challenges we are facing at present. We have never before faced challenges of this magnitude. We have never had as many people seeking homes, including those seeking their first homes. This problem can be attributed to a number of factors, including the collapse of the building boom and the consequent lack of availability of any kind of finance for undertaking building operations.

We now have a crisis on our hands. I know the Bill will take full cognisance of how rapidly the housing crisis is developing. It is getting worse on a daily basis. I have never in my time in public life seen more serious cases emerge on a daily basis, adding to what is already there, as I have over the last couple of months. It is sad that those most often affected are young. They will be given an impression of what society is about in their first major touching of base with a system they will have expected to provide them with a home by facilitating them with planning, a loan or directly through the local authorities.

Sadly, I listened to a playback of someone who was on "Morning Ireland" six months ago to expound the virtue of renting a house and state how much better it was than to own or build one. I wonder where he has gone to now. That is only six or seven months ago. It is one of the things we in public life see and hear all the time. Sadly and unfortunately, public representatives' views are not taken into account to any great extent any more, which is a sad thing. I am all in favour of regulation and regulators, which we need, but we must also have the human touch and local knowledge at local level too. However, that is diminishing rapidly and disappearing out of sight. I appreciate fully the Mahon report and the need to deal with things that were in need of attention for some time, but I wonder about the extent to which, every day, we are venturing into the marketplace and reducing the extent to which the views expressed to public representatives are passed on and taken into account. That practice is diminishing fast.

We were all members of local authorities at some stage or other. I remember the time not so long ago when the members of local authorities played a direct part in the allocation of local authority houses at their meetings. There is no greater possible expression of democracy than that. Elected public representatives sat directly around a table to give their views. There was fearful hostility to that at all times to such an extent that public representatives were eventually excluded. It is now done by a group of officials around the same table. I will not go into it at this stage because they have a difficult job. However, it must be said that it was not a good development to move away from a situation where public representatives were able to say whether they knew a particular family's circumstances and whether they were a most deserving case or, as happened on more than one occasion, they had another house somewhere else. That happened and I was directly involved and pointed it out at the time. However, nobody wants to hear that because it is all being done at a high level with the application of highfalutin values. Well, it has not worked.

Not only do we have that to deal with, we also have the problem of regaining the confidence of the younger generation. If we lose that confidence, which we are right on the edge of doing, we will have made a major mistake and lost a major asset that we require locally and nationally as a community. I hope the Minister will take into account the fact that every case local authorities deal with in planning terms as well as in housing allocation is a sad one. I have never seen situations so bad. There are people in the county I share with the Ceann Comhairle who have been moving around for two and three years from one temporary accommodation placement to another with their spouses and kids who have to move to different schools if they have a school at all. Certainly, they do not have regular schooling. If they are fortunate enough to have transport, they are being transported cross country 20 and 30 miles in some cases in order to get some modicum of education. It is very sad to see people in those situations. We should have learned from the recent past that family homes are hugely important. That means a place where the parents and one or two children have sufficient space in a home to exist without being crammed in and getting claustrophobia. I hope that is taken into account in the course of what is happening now and that we do not squeeze the biggest number of housing units into each acre in order to get the most cost-effective and efficient result. While we need cost effectiveness and efficiency, we must also take into account the quality of life of those who will live in those circumstances.

We must also be aware that time is not on our side. This is what worries me most of all. In the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that every single available habitable building must be converted as a matter of urgency, on a temporary basis or otherwise. There is no use in saying we cannot afford it. If we cannot afford it, there will be people demonstrating in the streets and we all know what that means. It is coming closer with every day that passes. We have a choice. We can plan for that and do something about it quickly and cost effectively. We cannot presume that we can take two years to achieve what we must because we cannot. It is not that kind of problem. The issue is much more urgent. I call on all of those involved in planning and in dealing with the housing crisis to concentrate on ensuring that we deal with the urgent cases as quickly as possible and then move on to ensuring that we do not have an accumulating housing crisis over the next two or three years because that is what will otherwise happen.

There are people now whose families have been broken up to sleep in two or three different houses. That is not just for a week, a month or even six months, but for the last couple of years. It has been going on for three or four years. There are people who have been sleeping on mattresses on the floor in temporary accommodation for the last three or four years. There are people who have been told by various local authorities that nothing can be done for them and that they should come back in a couple of years. That is cold comfort for a family with small children who need urgent accommodation now. We also hear in the background people who say that not all of these cases are genuine. Of course, there is the odd one that gets on board. That happens in every society everywhere. There is the odd fish who slips through the net and damages the credibility of everyone else. However, those of us who still deal directly with the public, face to face on a daily and weekly basis, should know who is genuine and who is not. If we do not, we should not be in this business.

One of the hardest cases I came across in the last year involved two young people dressed in summer clothes with a small child living in what I can only describe as a tin caravan on a roadside. These are people from the settled community. That is the settled community but I have not even begun to talk about the Travelling community. It breaks one's heart to have to face people in those situations. They expect us to be able to do something about it fairly quickly. There was a time when we could. There was a time when we could make a request which was attended to straight away. Things have changed, however, and those days are gone. Everything moves slowly now. I remember when technology was first introduced and we were all told that modern communications would make things happen very quickly. They did not. God be with the days when a hard copy of a file was available on a rolling bar in one's local authority.

One set of files could be pushed aside to enable one to walk down the middle of the aisle. They were all available in hardcopy. The length of time it took to access a file was probably in the region of 30 seconds. There was no problem at all. There was no technology, just simple good housekeeping. However, we cannot change those things.

Every method of providing a housing unit is one extra unit, which reduces the extent to which prices are pushed upwards, something that applies to urban and rural areas. We all know many people who are indigenous to rural areas in this country and who expect to be able to build houses on their property, adjacent to old-fashioned local authority houses in their gardens or on small pieces of farmland. It is not so easy to do that now; as a matter of fact, it is becoming more and more difficult.

Some people take pride in ensuring that they do not get accommodated. That is nothing to be proud of. The Minister will need to liaise with planning authorities and make it absolutely clear that if we are going to deal with the problem that now lies in front of us, we will have to ensure every means possible, in keeping with good planning concepts, are utilised to deal with the housing problem that currently exists.

We can build good houses, and build them well. We will make provision for roads and recreational facilities. That can be done quickly or slowly; there is no difference. People have been trying to tell us for years that if one prolongs something, it will be better, but that is not the case. Having to wait for a long period of time depresses people.

The Minister will take this on board, but we need to see a manifestation of it fairly soon. We need local authorities and planning authorities, in keeping with good planning concepts, to ensure that people who live in rural areas have a reasonable chance of building homes for themselves and their families and create no burdens for them. Only a few years ago local authorities built houses in rural areas on the basis that applicants for local authority houses could apply for local authority houses to be built on their sites. They did that well, and many are still in place.

We have all spoken about this issue in our various capacities. I remember a time when the housing issue was dealt with, to a significant extent in our county at least, through local authority loans. They have disappeared or are impossible to qualify for and it irritates me that a qualification barrier has been put on eligibility for local authority housing. The income threshold is low. The presumption is that a person who has been rejected on the basis of income should be able to buy a house or fund a loan. There is not a chance they can do that. Not only that, such people cannot even rent houses at today's prices.

I ask the Minister, as a matter of absolute urgency, to do something about that quickly. Let us have a realistic system, whereby people have the option of improving their position in some shape or form, in urban and rural areas, by being able to provide themselves with housing on foot of what used to be called local authority loans. Let us not make things so difficult for them that they become cynical when they read the criteria and decide the system is not meant for them because it is too difficult. If somebody thinks it is possible to qualify under the heading, from where do they get information?

I refer to services such as roads and access, which affect the quality of life in new developments. There is not much sense in building houses if people cannot access them. If a bridge has been in need of realignment and improvement for 50 years and permission is granted to build houses behind it, there will be no way in or out of the place. I can think of several such examples in my constituency, where infrastructure has been in place for 40 or 50 years and not been improved. In other parts of the country, we marvel at the improvements that have been made and similar situations have been attended to. Perhaps local authorities in some areas are better equipped to deal with these things, but perhaps not.

I hope what we are doing now will improve the situation, speed up the provision of housing, try to ensure that good planning procedures are applied and, as a result, we will regain the confidence that some of the public have lost in our ability to deliver the services they have normally expected.

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