Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

The policy of reliance on the market has created a housing emergency. A total of 91,000 families are on local authority housing lists, a number that has doubled since 2005. There are 21,000 families on housing assistance payment, HAP. There is a homelessness crisis, including 2,700 children in homeless accommodation and many thousands more are couch-surfing and doubling up with relatives and friends. The policy of reliance on the market has failed disastrously.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach told us that approximately 2,000 social houses are at various stages of construction or planning, as if that was going to solve the crisis. The Taoiseach knows that the current Government policy guarantees increasing homelessness as shown by the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC, in a recent research paper and that it is totally and pathetically inadequate.

I welcome the points made recently by Patricia King, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, who said that the market system has failed and is entirely dysfunctional in housing. She said hundreds of thousands of our citizens are affected and large numbers of children are being damaged. She said Europe must wait, and be told to wait, for payment of debt, that local authorities must be immediately funded to build social houses and local authority land should be used for social houses only. She also said vacant houses should be brought into use with compulsory purchase powers where necessary and that the €3.5 billion raised from the sale of AIB shares should be used to build social houses and not to pay down debt.

More needs to be done. A formal national housing emergency must be declared in legislation. Evictions and repossessions generally must be stopped and the Government must instruct the banks it owns, AIB and PTSB, to stop repossessions and evictions. We must repeal the law which allows vulture funds their right to evict sitting tenants. Yesterday's statement by the Taoiseach confirms that this Government will persist with its disastrous housing policy. It is now obvious that a one-day general strike will be necessary to bring this Government to its senses.

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