Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with my colleagues. I compliment Deputy Healy for having tabled the motion. Like all of us, he is obviously frustrated with the lack of progress we have seen in this area in recent years, despite the best intentions of many. I note in his motion the various references to the Constitution and to articles concerning the right to housing. The House agreed some weeks ago that the issue of enshrining a right to housing in the Constitution would be transferred to the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach for consideration among other rights-based initiatives. We ask the Government to move as quickly as possible in order that this would be properly analysed and scrutinised with a view to being in a position to have a commonality through the Constitution whereby one reference does not surpass another. There are potentially different descriptions associated with housing about which there needs to be a commonality. I note also that the Deputy refers in the motion to the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation enacted in 2009, 2013 and 2015 and the potential such emergency legislation has to give effect to emergency housing provision. That that potential is there. However, this is not necessarily backed up in the motion with specific ways and means by which it might be addressed. To this end, I accept that it is something we must keep under review, perhaps with a view to going down that road at a future date in the event that the various actions that have been promised are not adhered to.

In our amendment to the motion we note, as we have done on many occasions during various discussions in the House on this area and on various Bills that were introduced, that this crisis has not been dealt with in the manner in which many had hoped it would be dealt with. We have passed several motions, as I said, and various legislation pertaining to the housing crisis over recent years. The Government has had four housing Ministers, four policies and numerous launches of plans since 2014, yet the State has built fewer than 3,500 homes since 2011. That is less than the number constructed every year on average between the years 1994 and 2010. Fewer than 600 social homes have been constructed this year, while the Rebuilding Ireland target is 5,000. Only 24% of the 10,000 units in the construction pipeline are on site, so it will be 2021 before most are built, compared with the already unambitious target of 26,000 units. While the improvement in the capital allocation is welcome, the capital house building budget of €730 million in 2017 and €1.14 billion in 2018 is still 24% below 2008 levels. Due to years of undersupply and pent-up demand, we now need 40,000 to 50,000 new homes per year to make a dent in the demand and a noticeable impact on affordability.

Clearly, housing is witnessing a market failure. New interventions, as we have said, are required to stimulate supply. We believe the Government's reluctance to accept the challenge and its refusal to make any such interventions in the housing market are making a crisis worse. The programme for Government commitment to initiate an affordable housing scheme and the failure of the Government to date to reintroduce affordable housing initiatives for low and middle-income households needs to be restated again in the context of this debate in order for the record to show that no progress has been made in this area to date at least.

We go on in our amendment to call on the Government to acknowledge publicly the pressing need for delivery over spin in addressing the housing crisis. We call on the Government to commit to meeting Rebuilding Ireland's targets on moving homeless families out of hotel and bed and breakfast accommodation by the end of this year, to revise the emergency homelessness strategy and, in particular, to redesign the housing assistance payment, HAP, and homeless HAP schemes in order that households are not discouraged from taking up a tenancy and are not removed from the main social housing waiting list, which, unfortunately, is the case at present and worries many who are faced with that prospect and that dilemma. We also call on the Government to continue to increase and rebalance the housing budget towards capital expenditure on foot of the discrepancies I mentioned in respect of the increase that is there but which is still behind many of the targets that we would hope to meet. We call on the Government to devise a strategy to enable and encourage far greater scale and size in house building programmes, including social house building projects, and recognise, as I said, the significant market failures, including in planning, finance and infrastructure, and the cost of construction, which the market requires State intervention to overcome. We call on the Government to commit to the reintroduction of affordable housing schemes, including affordable owner-occupier and rental schemes for middle-income households. We call on it to explore the possible financial incentives aimed at encouraging development housing at more affordable price points. We call on Government to introduce financial incentives to build high-density developments where they are currently not commercially viable to build - in Dublin city and many local authorities in other areas - because of this. Commitments have been talked about but they have not been followed up with action, and I hope to see progress in this regard.

We call on the Government to commit to greater enforcement in implementation of the rent pressure zones and other rent regulations, including more staffing and resources for the Residential Tenancies Board. Again, there is provision within the budget announcement for further funding. Will the Government confirm that this will be in place in the short term and that we will see increased staffing and resources in order that the cases are dealt with more appropriately and more expediently? We call on the Government to tackle land hoarding by large investors, which is clearly holding back supply, make changes to capital gains tax and introduce a new site tax to encourage the use of empty sites. Again, we need legislation to give effect to what we are told is forthcoming. We call on the Government to devise new strategies to manage vacant properties, including an active occupancy register. We had the support of the House in respect of proposals and a Bill we brought forward in this area. We ask that this be brought to Committee Stage for proper legislative scrutiny to allow all parties and the Government to devise a mechanism by which that can be forthcoming and to address the short-term measures regarding the provision of units. We must not only revitalise and re-energise many towns and villages throughout the country in their efforts to address this, but also help to promote towns and villages and bring vibrancy back to them. I will defer to my colleagues.

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