Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have had an undeclared crisis in housing for the last number of years. The Government refuses to call it for what it is. What the Government is doing is clearly not working. The homeless figures are increasing and the waiting list for housing have remained high, with 91,600 households currently on local authority waiting lists. There are also 4,922 homeless adults and 2,777 children currently in emergency accommodation, an all-time high.

Once again the Government has failed to meet its target date for ending reliance on emergency accommodation. The Government needs to do more as it is clearly not doing enough. It is pandering to the private sector and its reliance on the market is a cause of grave concern. At the moment average house prices across the country are almost 12% higher than this time last year. Rents in Dublin are at an average of €1,400 per month, making it impossible for people to buy or rent a house. The answer to this is to ratchet up the delivery of social and affordable housing. The Minister has acknowledged that we need to build more houses but what we need to concentrate on is social and affordable housing. It is time for the Government to be more ambitious and radical in its approach.

The answer to the lack of social and affordable housing is straightforward. Local authorities should be given the lead here. Rather than relying on the private sector, the Government should provide local authorities with the funding to build these houses. They can, in turn, sell as well as rent the properties at an affordable rate, with any moneys earned put directly back into the local authorities for housing.

Co-op housing bodies, such as Ó Cualann Housing in Ballymun, were mentioned earlier; Ó Cualann is delivering affordable housing in the €150,000 bracket and next week five of these houses will be handed over to their new owners. I know that the Minister will be in attendance and I hope I will be too. This is an example of how affordable housing can be delivered using local authority lands and infrastructural funds. We need more of these, however, and there is scope for more.

I call for an inquiry into the price of housing and into what appears to be a cartel of price-fixing builders and setting the pace of price rises. By any stretch of the imagination, it is clear that huge profits are being made and that some builders are sitting on lands waiting for prices to further rise. Recent figures from the construction industry show the construction of a three-bed 113 sq. m. house, with the land and acquisition costs, is €57,500. Finance costs for the builder coming in at €20,002. This gives the builder a minimum profit margin of €37,980. These are highly inflated figures when we consider the land acquisition figures and the fact that some of this land has been sat on for many years. Much of this land had previously been bought at knockdown prices so it is excessive to use today’s figures for land acquisition costings. This gives a false and inflated view of the actual cost of the land.

There are also thousands of shops lying idle around the country, in some cases for 20 years or more. We see this in my own constituency of Dublin North West. We see shops left idle across the country. I cannot understand why we allow this to happen as these could all be converted into liveable accommodation. Having done an audit on vacant houses, let us now do one on idle shops and see how many there are. I suspect that they are well into five figures.

In his opening address, the Minister mentioned the 200,000 or so vacant houses. There is scope to examine some of these to see if they could be taken over by the local authorities for housing. The latest figures also show that there are approximately 80,000 families currently in mortgage arrears and every day five families lose their homes. This is unacceptable. The much-discussed mortgage-to-rent scheme has delivered very little. This is another issue that needs to be looked at more carefully as this scheme needs to deliver more than it has.

NAMA's remit should have been changed a long time ago to prevent the selling-off of large portfolios of properties. This has, no doubt, contributed to the homeless crisis and to the housing waiting lists. The Minister also mentioned fast build houses and I know that 39 of these units will be delivered in Finglas shortly. The timescale for this, however, has increased dramatically. The Minister also mentioned that he planned to build another 500 or so of these units by 2018. It is very obvious that this figure will not be met.

Private public partnerships have failed to deliver in the past.

The Minister's targets and ambition are not very good. While the use of homeless hubs is a hell of a sight better than people being in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, such hubs certainly should not be used for long-term housing. They should be used for the short term and we should ensure that they are only used for the short term. It would be unacceptable for people to end up in hubs for long periods.

Greater use of compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, by local authorities would also help. Many houses and places are lying idle. They are boarded up for years and years. In my own area alone, there are literally dozens upon dozens of them. There is no sign of anything being done with them. They are overgrown. The councils are ending up with the nightmare of dealing with these properties. We need to put pressure on the local authorities to make more use of CPOs.

The senior citizens financial contributions scheme, which has not been reintroduced, should be reintroduced at local authority level. There should be more concentration on building accommodation for senior citizens. That would free up large amounts of housing for local authorities.

Since I was elected to the Dáil in 2011, five different Ministers have been responsible for housing. That does not say to me that we are taking this as seriously as we should. This is the worst crisis to hit this country in many years. I am not saying that the Minister will not do his job but the previous Minister was only in his position for a year. I hope the Minister will be here for a lot longer than that and will see this through. It is not good enough for us to change Ministers when they are only settling in: they are only getting to know the problem when all of a sudden they are gone.

The impact of the housing crisis on men, women and children the length and breadth of this country has been enormous. Young children are living in hotels. The issues that presents in terms of the welfare of children and families are massive. I have met many families who have gone through the mill. They have been dragged from one end of the city to the other with their children. The impact this has had on them personally has been enormous.

I praise the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, the different agencies and the Minister's officials who have put together the outline of a good plan. It is a good plan, but the delivery of it and the timescale involved is key. We are not meeting the targets and it is very obvious that we will not. We need to build at least 10,000 social housing units a year to get us anywhere near where we need to be. I have identified some of the problems but let us get the local authorities building housing. The voluntary housing bodies are doing a certain amount and that is welcome but the local authorities need to deliver more social and affordable housing.

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