Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the Bill and state very clearly that Sinn Féin will support it today. Listening to part of the debate, it seems people just do not understand the purpose of a constitutional right to housing and the positive role it can play in addressing our housing crisis. To fully understand that, one must fully understand why we are in our current emergency.

I agree with the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, that this housing crisis has not just been created in the past number of years and it has been decades in the making. There have been decades of actions and inactions of successive Governments leading us to where we are today. There has been chronic under-investment and an inadequate supply of social and affordable housing by the State. There has been chronic under-regulation of the private rental sector, leading to rising rents, insecure tenures and, in too many cases, substandard accommodation. There has been a failure to put in place real protection for those people living in properties, including buy-to-let properties, in serious mortgage arrears. Crucially, there has also been a failure to regulate the market for land, control land prices and stop land hoarding and speculation. These are all clear failures of governance that have led us to where we are today.

I know the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is new to the job and still learning but if he continues to say what his predecessor, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, indicated that money is not a problem in tackling the matter, with €5.4 billion over six years being adequate investment in social housing, he will never be able to tackle the current crisis. It is that simple. The sum of €5.4 billion is an average spend of €800 million per year. Deputy Cowen is right about the €733 million being spent this year and €788 million being spent next year, as it is half of what the funding was when Fianna Fáil was last in government at the peak of social housing building in 2007. At that stage, the fund did not provide an adequate supply of social housing. We know that because the number of families on housing waiting lists was increasing, as was the number of families dependent on rent supplement. I worked for Focus Ireland and at the time, the number of people in emergency accommodation was increasing as well. The figure of €1.4 billion spent in 2007 was not adequate then, so what makes anybody think €800 million is adequate now?

The first thing any Minister who is serious about addressing this crisis needs to accept is that we need a supply of real social housing owned by local authorities and approved housing bodies of at least 10,000 units per year, costing somewhere in the region of €1.5 billion to €2 billion, depending on the mechanism of delivery. How many real social units will be provided this year? It will be approximately 4,500, and there were just over 4,000 provided last year. The figures for next year are over 5,000 but that is nowhere near what is required, and that is before we even start to speak about an adequate supply of affordable housing.

What does this have to do with the constitutional right to housing, which is the crucial matter? The Mercy Law Resource Centre produced a really important report last year and its representatives came to the special Dáil committee considering issues of housing and homelessness. We had very detailed discussions and deliberations on the matter. It made clear to those of us on the committee that a constitutional right to housing does not guarantee everybody in the State a home or a set of keys. It does not place an obligation on the State to provide homes for free. However, it allows citizens and the courts to ensure the Government progressively realises that right in a proportionate and reasonable way. Where the State in its decisions or inactions is not progressively and reasonably vindicating that right, particularly for those people in greatest need, the State could be held to account. That is the real problem.

I do not believe for a second that Fine Gael is interested in a constitutional right to housing. That is not because I doubt the sincerity of the Minister's remarks but I sat on a Dáil committee considering housing and homelessness, and Fine Gael was opposed to putting that as a central recommendation in our report. The party members told us in that committee that they were not convinced it was necessary and valuable. They were really saying that if one enshrines a constitutional right to housing, a Government would not be able to have the failures we have had for decades, as citizens would go to courts to vindicate those rights and force action.

This is absolutely about ideology and none of us leaves our ideologies outside the door. That does not mean we cannot be open to listening to the arguments of others. None of us leaves party politics outside the door when we come here and nor should we, but that does not mean we should not listen to the arguments of others. If a Deputy is unwilling to support the progression of this Bill to an Oireachtas committee where we can deliberate it and discuss the matters in exactly the manner outlined by the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and Deputy Cowen, the Deputy would really be saying that ideologically and politically he or she would not support this. Fine Gael did not support it last year in the committee when we deliberated the idea and it is not supporting it now. I suspect that when the time comes and we deal with the matter at an Oireachtas housing committee, Fine Gael will not support it. If it does, it will force the party to make the kinds of policy decisions it has refused to do for six years. I suspect from the announcements of recent days that the party will continue to refuse to take such decisions in the weeks ahead. That is deeply disappointing but Sinn Féin will support this Bill nonetheless.

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