Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach talked earlier today about the progress that has been made in dealing with the housing crisis and sounded very proud indeed of the Government's achievements. He is bound to say so but I think we need a reality check in this House. The housing solutions have included everything from family hubs to emergency accommodation, contracting out the State's responsibility to house its citizens to private landlords at huge cost to the State and uncertainty for tenants. That progress sees more need, more suffering, more distress and, as winter approaches, more fear as a result of the Government's failure, not its success - over 100,000 people on the waiting lists and over 8,000 in homeless accommodation.

One of the more amusing narratives is to suggest that in dealing with the housing crisis we have not been able to completely solve it because there is a minority Government and if only we had a strong majority Government we could sort it all out. The reality is that we have a majority Government. It is one led by Fine Gael and propped up at every hand's turn by Fianna Fáil. The housing crisis persists because we do not have the political will to solve it. It persists because groups and individuals who support those parties and who form the backbone of those parties to whose class they owe allegiance are doing very well out of this crisis, thank you very much.

This is the fourth piece of legislation that our group has put before this House to try and deal with the crisis. We proposed changing the remit of NAMA to provide social and affordable housing and to stop selling off public land and public housing. That was rejected by this House and by the Government.

We proposed an Anti-Evictions Bill to keep people in their homes and that was rejected by this House. In fact, there was a tied vote and the Ceann Comhairle used his casting vote to scupper that legislation. We proposed rent control legislation that would reduce rents to 2011 rates, which is where most workers' wages were at, and to control the rampant profiteering of landlords, real estate investment trusts, REITs, and vulture funds and that was rejected by this House and by the Government. We now propose to give citizens a constitutional right to decent housing and to join other European countries like Belgium, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Around the world, the right to housing is included in 81 constitutions, so what is wrong with this little country, with one of the fastest growing economies and one of the biggest housing crises ever? Why, having failed to get this House to reduce rents, to prioritise the building of social housing and to stop evictions, have we now turned to putting the right to housing into the Constitution? We have done so because in every debate, the adherents to the free market and to private property rights in this House have told us that our proposals are unworkable, unconstitutional, would be struck down by the courts, would result in an increase in the ghettoisation of poor people and would be a breach of the EU's fiscal rules. This is an attempt to scupper those excuses, which are really masking what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael constantly do, which is to back up the builders, developers, corporate landlords and speculators who form the backbone of their parties' support. It is a fig leaf to justify a policy that sees people living in hotels or bed and breakfasts and allows them to stay there in one room, just like they did in 1913.

This crisis sees over 100,000 in housing need and on the social housing list. It also sees, on the other side, some people doing very well out of it. The three main owners of Cairn Homes made more than €20 million from selling their shares in the company, now valued at over €1 billion. This year they built 100 homes while last year, they built just 90. The crisis allowed these rich people to accumulate so much wealth that they now own 20% of zoned development land in Dublin. It means they can buy nine acres of prime land from RTE for more than €100 million. Cairn Homes, like other developers, are not in the business of meeting housing need. They do not, as the Taoiseach suggested earlier today, build homes; their concern is to make profits and that actually means it is not in their interests to see this housing crisis solved. It is also not in their interest to build homes on the scale that is needed and certainly not social and affordable housing. We have 8,000 homeless, as well as people dying in tragic circumstances on the streets, record rising rents and landlords using loopholes to evict people and raise rents beyond levels that are tolerable. We have boom times for estate agents and REITs. We see so-called affordable student accommodation now coming on stream at a rent of €250 per week.

Giving all citizens a constitutional right to a home will not solve this crisis overnight and we do not claim it will do so. Of course it will not but it will remove the fake arguments put up here and in the media to explain why we cannot invest in and build public housing to the effect that property rights mean that we cannot control rents or that fiscal rules preclude serious State investment to provide massive public housing, which would be scuppered if we had a right to housing enshrined in our Constitution.

I will finish by commenting on something the Taoiseach said today, which struck me as incredible because it shows the level of ignorance and the sheer class bias on this issue and the concept of public and social housing. The Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, stated he is opposed to giving everyone a house for free. That is a dig at those who live in social housing. It is a dig that shows his ignorance and his class bias because nobody gets a house for free. Those who live in social housing pay a differential rate, in case the Taoiseach did not know. This is actually the reality and his own stupidity or class bias is blinding him to that reality. We need to build mass numbers of good quality public housing that we can finance. It is not just the poorest who have no option now - it is all sorts of people. It is people who have good jobs and people who want to buy a home but who have no option. It is the people who are witnesses to that situation one constantly hears on the radio. This is not just about the poorest of the poor or those who lived in the squalor of the ghettos of 1913 but is about many ordinary, average-earning workers. It is now clear that the market will never provide decent, affordable accommodation in order that the majority of our citizens can live with dignity. This Bill would allow the State to prioritise housing in a way that has never been done in its history, to view housing as a fundamental human right that is not left to the market or to the whims of those seeking the maximum profit but to the State to provide, as a human need. This Bill will prioritise the need for housing over the owners of companies like Cairn Homes, IRES REIT and the multitude of vested interests whose wealth is growing on the backs of the misery this crisis is producing.

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