Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We are seeing quite significant changes in how people in Ireland live and work but the two cannot be separated when it comes to housing. Contract rather than permanent employment, for example, means lending institutions are not providing mortgages, and even when the income is sufficient, the choice of home ownership for some is simply not available. That is before we even consider more precarious forms of employment. We know there has traditionally been a very high home ownership rate in Ireland but that is changing. The Central Statistics Office report from 2016 indicates the number of owner-occupied households fell from 69.7% to 67.6%, a rate last seen in 1971. However, when aggregated by age, the results indicate renting was more common than owning before the age of 35. Beyond this, more householders owned rather than rented their home. This might change, depending on the type of employment available in future. That is another day's work. The equivalent age in previous censuses was 32 years in 2011, 28 years in 2006, 27 years in 2002 and 26 years in 1991. We can see in the years when family formation primarily occurs or where people desire to live independently, the option that is the one most relied on is renting.

This Bill is about the immediate but it is also about the future. Renting in all its forms will continue to play a bigger role than in previous decades and we must respond to this by developing a rental sector that works for both tenants and landlords. A critical element in this regard is a well-regulated sector, with a regulator that has teeth and where disputes are dealt with in a timely way. What exists now falls very far short of that. One of the main reasons we had a high rate of home ownership is because people, particularly those with children, wanted certainty in their lives that the house they lived in was their home and not just someone else's property. The question is how we achieve that for renters. How do we achieve a longer-term rental sector that assures security of tenure and where landlords are still happy to belong to it?

Like all other Deputies in an area that is described as a pressure zone, the number one issue coming through my door for at least five years has been housing. It has always been there but it has now changed. I see people every week and have done so for more than five years now who will say they never thought this would happen to them. These are functioning families, no different from their next-door neighbours, but they are facing homelessness. The first concern is to find alternative accommodation and, in most cases, the primary concern will be for the children, to keep them in school and connected with their friends and after-school activities. It is about keeping things normal and ensuring their stress is not transferred to their children, even though in most cases these people are cracking up. I have a box of tissues on my desk and it is used all the time, invariably by people who come to me about housing.

There are in excess of 90,000 applicants on housing waiting lists; I stress that these are "applicants" rather than individuals, so a conservative estimate would have approximately 250,000 people on the lists. The criteria for qualifying for social housing includes income thresholds. These are households that cannot afford to buy and which in so many cases are supported by the housing assistance payment, HAP. This is an expensive option that is unsustainable in the medium to long term.

There is no escaping the need for large scale building of social housing.

We proposed the establishment of a housing delivery agency in our manifesto in 2016. We see its role primarily as a project management agency that would control State-owned lands and would aim to achieve efficiencies in the cost of delivering houses for rent and for sale. Efficiencies would occur when the scale increases so it is about building mixed communities with a variety of house size. The agency would have a role in seeking planning permission. Given the certainty that would create, it would be an attractive option for the building sector. Perhaps a collaboration of small and medium-sized building firms could be involved.

This Bill is not aimed at replacing responsibilities. It is focused on both the short and the longer term. We must recognise that there is a fundamental change and we must move with that change.

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