Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin. There is no place like home. It is the ambition of many people across the country but more and more are struggling as the housing crisis is deepening. There needs to be action on housing - action for the benefit of people who want to build their own homes, action for people who are renting, action for people who want social housing, action for people want to buy or who have bought and are clinging on to their home, and, of course, action for the homeless.

As we know, houses are not going to be built overnight and very few are being built at present. The Minister needs to quickly get existing vacant properties into use, such as the living-over-the-shop vacant units in rural areas, villages and towns centres, in order to reinvigorate our town centres. Of course, the recent budget tax relief is helpful and, hopefully, there will be more take-up than for the Government's last renovate and rent scheme, where only a handful of people were approved.

The Government needs to support people who want to build their own homes in their own community. Commitments have already been made for infrastructure such as sewerage schemes in villages like Coachford, Ballingeary, Ballyvourney and many others across the country. Without these schemes, locals cannot build their own homes. The Government needs to service these schemes to release locals and let them get on with building their own homes and freeing up rental units. There are already existing finished houses in many villages, such as Coachford, that cannot be occupied until the sewerage is built to serve the area.

Rent pressure zones need to be reviewed and enforced. When they were introduced, we pointed out that electoral areas were too big and too blunt a way of doing this. It means that at Classes Lakes in Ovens, an estate of over 400 homes, half of the homes are in the Ballincollig rent pressure zone while the other 200 homes are outside. Common sense needs to prevail. There should be flexibility and the entire estate should be within the rent pressure zone. The Government also needs to ensure that the rent pressure zones are being enforced. The standard of rental properties must also be addressed and Fianna Fáil is bringing forward a vacant housing Bill to address the matter.

Very few social houses are being built at present, fewer than 800 of the target of 5,000 this year. There needs to be an increase both in the funding and in terms of rebalancing the housing budget, pushing more money towards capital and letting the councils get on with building more houses. The government also needs to put in place a mechanism to allow voluntary housing agencies and credit unions build homes and get people off the housing list.

As housing prices increase, the pressure from banks and vulture funds is being heaped onto people who are in arrears, pushing them towards homelessness. There are already too many people in that situation, with over 3,000 children homeless. Abandoning targets to house people in hotels and continuously failing to put a dent in rising homeless numbers cannot be continuously ignored.

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