Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy English, for being here to listen to the debate. I am sorry the Minister had to leave. Nevertheless, I am glad the Minister of State is here to respond to the debate. I think this is our third or fourth opportunity to address this matter and I am grateful to Deputy Healy for giving us another opportunity to put more points about this housing emergency to the Government. While supporting and seconding the Fianna Fáil amendment, I see where Deputy Healy is coming from and support the spirit in which he has tabled the motion.

I had outlined previously that the process is flawed. Before the Minister of State or his colleagues went into the Department, they were strangled. It takes between three and six years from idea to turning the key on a local authority house whereas, in the private sector, it is 18 months to two years. The Government needs to tear up what is referred to as the streamlined process, given the duplication that goes on between planners, architects and engineers in a council, in the Department and in the building unit in Ballina, which is ridiculous in the extreme. There will be many more people homeless unless the Government does this and gets on with it.

With regard to building, we cannot continue to deal with window dressing in the House while pontificating about what could, should or might be done. We need to get out and do it. That means the State undertaking a wholesale building programme similar to the 1950s, not depending on the private sector alone to do it or on some hare-brained, complex scheme to deliver it. We need to get out there and begin to do it ourselves, but not with the current process that takes between three and six years, as the evidence will show.

The public sector cannot do it on its own. We need not just the big-name guys who managed to refinance throughout the world and who were the big names in NAMA in the past. We need the small guy who used to build five houses in Collooney, ten houses in Ballyshannon, 30 houses in Sligo town and so on throughout every county in the country. They cannot do that because the same banks we are trying to have punished today for the disgrace and scandal that is the tracker crisis are only lending in primary areas and they will not lend in what they describe as tertiary areas. While they will not tell us that on the record, in effect, that is happening everywhere outside Dublin, although to a small extent they will lend in places like Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.

Equally, many of the builders with the expertise of the past, those small, hard working guys who gave good employment - the five-unit, ten-unit and 20-unit builders - are subservient not to NAMA, which has washed its hands of them as if the problem no longer exists, but to some vulture fund. This means they cannot get up and running. They cannot get finance from the banks, as I said, because the banks will only lend in areas that are non-tertiary, which is a major problem. What is required, and it has been mooted by the Government, Fianna Fáil and various speakers in the House, is some sort of housing finance bank along the lines of ACC or ICC, which served a tremendous role in the past in getting industry and agricultural enterprise up and running through difficult times. It worked then and it is needed again now.

The level of taxation on houses is an issue. None of us like to see taxes cut against builders who we like to think are all extremely wealthy. However, that is not the case for the small man, who we need to kick this thing on. Here in Dublin, for example, between one third and a half of the price of an average three-bed, semi-detached house is going to the State between VAT, levies and other types of taxation. We need to look at that. We need to be radical and consider pushing that VAT down to get the bloody thing moving again, to try to get houses built. It is not to feather builders' nests with profits, and while that is an issue that may have to be revisited once we get things moving again, for now, it must be done.

I touched on the availability of finance. In addition, we need measures such as a potential stay on development plans throughout the country. When it comes to housing projects, it may be better to send those directly to An Bord Pleanála, although that should not be done with its current resources. If we are going to do that and have it streamline a process and get the turnaround time improved, An Bord Pleanála needs more staff. Applications could then be looked at very quickly and turned around.

The reality is this housing crisis is having a chilling effect on foreign direct investment coming to Ireland, for example, in the cases of the European Investment Bank and the European Medicines Agency, which we were pitching for. Even if the 5,000 or 6,000 people decided they did want to come to Ireland, where would they live? We have a housing crisis, a homeless crisis and thousands of people in hotels.

There is also the issue of boarded-up units. In the last debate I had the opportunity to put on record that 933 units in Dublin alone have been boarded up for more than ten years. How many have been boarded up for less than that? Relatively speaking, that is replicated in every county in the country. The theory of wanting a fully integrated society with a good mix of social housing along with private housing is honourable and we should aspire to it. However, for years we have been refusing to buy up units at cheaper prices in what were former local authority schemes throughout the country. That is madness. We are paying €300,000, €400,000, €500,000 and €600,000 for local authority housing in private units while overlooking places such as Sligo town, where five houses could be bought for €100,000 in a former local authority scheme. We are not being as radical as we need to be to match the radical reality of an emergency in housing.

These are just some tangible suggestions. It would be very radical, for example, to push down VAT or put a stay on development plans in order to bring forward appropriate measures. However, these are the kinds of things we need to be prepared to look at, rather than coming in here every month, whenever Members are prepared to use their Private Members' time to deal with these issues. We must take tangible action.

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