Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will start by asking a question: what exactly is going on in the Dáil Chamber this evening? The radical left has proposed that a right to housing be in the Constitution, something which exists in more than 80 other countries around the globe. Every single party represented in the Chamber has indicated its support for this proposal with the exception of two. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the Civil War parties, are joining forces against all others in the Dáil and, I suspect, the wishes of the clear majority of Irish people in order to vote down a proposal that the right to housing be included in the Constitution.

I want to take up a point raised by Deputy Healy, because I also welcome the fact the Irish Congress of Trade Unions issued a call this morning for a national housing emergency to be declared. I take this opportunity to call on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, in the face of the attitude we see revealed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, to call and organise a major national demonstration to demand the right to housing and the declaration of a housing emergency, and to place centre stage in that demonstration the call that the State should build social and affordable housing for our people on a massive scale. The trade union movement, with hundreds of thousands of people in its ranks, has the potential to organise a major demonstration on this issue and I call for it to do so.

According to Central Statistics Office, the 2016 census shows that 500,000 young adults are living at home with their parents. This is double the number indicated by the census conducted ten years previously. These young people are members of a locked-out generation. They may never own homes themselves. They may be at the mercy of landlords for decades to come. A total of 83% of their parents' generation owned homes by the age of 36. Today, a mere 50% own homes by that age. It is estimated that by 2020 the average age of first-time buyers of houses will be 40. Why is that? It is because the system is rigged.

The Cairn company owns a landbank of 20% of all undeveloped zoned land in the Dublin area. It is valued at €835 million. A total of 12,000 homes could be built on that land. How many will be built this year? The answer is 300. This week, 2.1% of the shares in the company were sold and three people became cash millionaires as a result.

At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Development this morning, Dr. Rory Hearne and Dr. Mary Murphy of NUI Maynooth presented a report containing staggering, mind-blowing statistics and information.

They told the committee that, in order to give payments to a private landlord through the housing assistance payment over a 30-year period in the Dublin area, it would cost the State €274,128 more than it would cost it simply to provide a council house. They took the Rebuilding Ireland target of 87,000 private rental units and said that if this were translated over a 30-year period, the State would spend €23.8 billion more on paying private landlords than on building the houses itself. These are mind-blowing figures. They show that the policy of this Government is criminal. It is a Government of landlords concerned with enriching landlords on the back of the misery of those who have been locked out and at the expense of society.

The people who profit from the housing crisis are tied to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael by a thousand strings - political, economic and social. Indeed, many of the Deputies from these parties profit directly from the crisis. With rents at an all-time high, 36% of Fine Gael Deputies are landlords and 33% of Fianna Fáil Deputies are landlords. Moreover, they worship the very market that caused the crisis in the first place. That is why they are so ineffective in the face of the crisis. Is it not telling that one of the Government's main proposals to tackle the crisis is the return of the bedsit? The essence of a bedsit is shared bathroom facilities. They are cramped and often unsanitary. The Government is using the housing crisis to row back progressive legislation and force people to accept a deterioration in housing standards, going back to the conditions of the 1950s, 1940s and beyond.

On the left, we say what is needed is security of tenure, a ban on economic convictions, a ban on sale as grounds for eviction, and the tackling of the scandal of landlords using minor refurbishment as grounds for big rent hikes. Threshold pointed out last week the example of a Cork landlord who recently hiked rent by 30% after putting on a lick of paint and putting down a few new carpets. We want to put out a call to people who receive notices to quit and face economic eviction this winter to consider seriously refusing to co-operate with their eviction. They should stay put, defy the eviction and defy the notice to quit. In many cases, neighbours, families, friends, housing campaigners, we on the left and others will rally round to support them. We need real rent controls and a ban on rent increases. We must claw rents back to the levels of a number of years ago. A massive programme of direct State building of social and affordable homes is needed.

In 2006, more than 4,000 council homes were built. There were 42,000 people on local authority waiting lists at that time. Last year, when there was more than double that number on the list, 91,600, there were 75 homes built. It is absolutely pathetic. If the rate of social house building that we saw in 2009 had been carried through in the years 2000 to 2016, there would have been an extra 31,136 local authority houses in this country. Their absence is a major contributing factor in the crisis. For that reason, we feel entirely justified in saying that if the local authorities that meet in November to pass budgets for next year do not have sufficient cash and housing plans in those budgets to tackle seriously the housing lists in their jurisdictions in the ensuing 12 months, they should refuse to pass them. They should knock the ball over into the court of the Government and ask it what it is going to do about it. They should provoke a political crisis in the country, if necessary.

At the Fine Gael think-in, the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, said the possibility of repurposing NAMA to develop lands on behalf of the State to step in where the private sector has failed must now be considered for affordable housing. The left has called for that for many years. Let us be clear: the lands and the initiative should be for affordable and social housing alone, not housing for profit or for private contractors or direct builds.

If one wants to see the reality of capitalism today, one need only consider the housing crisis in this State. That is capitalism in action. It entails a bonanza for landlords and developers and a locked-up generation with a growing number of homeless, including thousands of children. The Taoiseach says he is a politician of the European centre. There is no centre about this. This is a right-wing agenda that serves the interest of capitalism, which is red in tooth and claw.

I repeat the call to the trade union movement to have a major national demonstration. Now is the time and place for applying pressure for real action. Meanwhile, we will redouble our efforts to build a political alternative to the bankruptcy of the right-wing parties on this and other issues. We will redouble our efforts to build the left challenge and to have a left Government that will look out and fight for the needs of the many, not the profits of the few.

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