Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate on the quarterly report on housing and Rebuilding Ireland. Unfortunately, all we have seen recently is targets with nothing happening on the ground. The housing crisis is a social emergency and poses a major risk to the economy. However, the Government policy response has not been adequate and, as far as I can see, has worsened the crisis. The core failing is the over-reliance on a private market approach to housing provision. Only 15% of the 134,000 new social housing outlined in Rebuilding Ireland will be built by local authorities and housing associations. The vast majority is meant to come from the private sector. However, the private housing market in Ireland is broken and it defies logic to expect the private rental sector to deliver such a vast number of housing units given the insufficient supply and the lack of long-term security for tenants. It is also not cost effective as State subsidies have to chase ever-rising rents. The over reliance worsens the wider housing crisis by increasing demand and reducing supply in the private rental sector. Rebuilding Ireland failed to reach its own target of 2,200 new social builds with only just 650 units built in 2016. Only 175 of 1,000 rapid-build social housing, which was supposed to provide housing to families in emergency accommodation, will be completed by the end of this year. In order for public private partnerships to deliver social and private housing the sale of up to 730 State-owned sites to developers is proposed. A total of 30 ha of State-owned land is currently being advertised to the market by Dublin City Council in three new developments, namely, St. Michael’s estate, Oscar Traynor Road and O'Devaney Gardens. Of the 1,300 housing units planned for that land, just 30% or 390 units will be social housing and the rest will be unaffordable housing. This approach is more expensive than public provision and has a major downside risk visible in the collapse of PPPs in 2008. Private finance will dictate the delivery timescales and the mix of unaffordable private housing will inevitably entail a large transfer of public wealth to private investors.

I previously tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister on the Neary report and the cost-rental recovery model used in Europe. I received a number of responses. The first was from the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, who said the Neary report links very well into the proposals in Rebuilding Ireland – it does not. The Neary report, in effect, said that by setting up a new housing agency and using funding from Europe we could build up to 10,000 affordable cost-rental recovery housing on those lands. That is what needs to be done. Radical efforts must be made. We cannot wait 40 years. The hubs will take a certain amount of people out of hotels but the amount of people coming into homelessness will increase so we will never see the end of hotel and B&B accommodation for homeless people.

I wish to ask one question before I finish. AIB has been in discussions with David Hall from the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation about the distressed loans in AIB. Will the Minister support that approach rather than giving the loans over to vulture funds?

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