Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Green Party very much supports our colleagues in the Social Democrats on this Bill and in doing so it is standing up for people who are in the rented sector. It is not just a case of standing up for those who are currently in real difficulty in terms of homelessness and in rising rent situations lacking real powers but also standing up for what is possible in the rented sector in terms of a different view of where we could go to create an environment where people in rented property feel secure and valued.

I listened to Deputies from different parts of the country raise concerns about examples in their constituencies but no other part of the country has the same experience as what is happening in Dublin Bay South. If Dublin is already 14% above 2007 peak rental levels, in Dublin Bay South, because of what is happening with the development of the vibrant tech economy, the increases are a multiple of that.

I listened to the Taoiseach earlier and the Minister, Deputy Murphy, yesterday say that they want a rental sector and social housing, but the line comes out that home ownership is an important aspiration in the republic of opportunity. That is really where Fine Gael's heart is. In Dublin 2, 4, 6, 8, who do you appreciate? It is L-A-N-D-O-W-N-E-R-S. That is what Fine Gael stands for, and that is why we are seeing a response to this crisis rather than a change in approach. We are going back to the solution. The Taoiseach said today that the solution, ultimately, will be to build more houses and that will solve the problem. The Minister said earlier that we can see the cranes everywhere and that we are building again but we are not building different accommodation which we should be using this crisis to do.

On the provisions the Minister announced yesterday in terms of various schemes, the last one mentioned, which is the one with the least amount of money and on which there is the least detail, was the provision of a cost rental measure. We had a golden opportunity to switch to that in the past three or four years. A major report by the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, three years ago stated that this should be the solution to our problem. There are examples of how they do it in Vienna and other cities where social housing is a huge aspiration, is successful and where there is a mix of different tenants. What do we have two years into the term of this Government? We have a single pilot project with very few details and no real scale in Dún Laoghaire. The Minister said yesterday that this is a long-term solution that we may turn to some time in the future. We should be turning to it now because I believe it has various attributes that would transform completely the experience of renting accommodation in our country.

I am distraught when I see this opportunity being lost. At a time when, thankfully, we are looking to turn to public lands, what are we doing? We are selling the land because, ultimately, Fine Gael is about the ownership aspiration in the republic of opportunity. Those Orwellian terms are starting to grate slightly because we know what they mean and what they stand for. We are selling our public land to the private landowners and forever stitching us in to that aspirational private land ownership and private property ownership, and while there is nothing wrong with it, it creates an imbalance.

We have seen the Celtic tiger bubble blow up in all our faces, and the Minister is going right back to it. Instead, he should switch to supporting the innovative ways of doing the rental sector, the likes of the cost rental model where there is funding and finance ready to go, so that it does not get stuck in the Government's balance sheet and can be financed in good times and bad. Even when the budget turns downwards, we can still turn to it. Why is it, even though it is in the programme for Government, it is only now thinking of a pilot scheme when the main response is going back to lowering building standards and providing every tax break and other breaks it can for developers?

Everything is about bringing us to where Fianna Fáil had brought us ten, 15 and 20 years ago. It is incredibly frustrating to see it happening all over again while the Government fails to take this opportunity. I have the highest regard for the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, but while he has very much presented himself as a politician interested in political reform, we have heard the same thing again today about weakening local government and refusing to provide for directly-elected mayors. We are told having directly-elected mayors is too complex and will take too long and should be put back into Never Never Land. Local government is being weakened and the fundamentals of the housing market are not being reformed. There are press releases on different initiatives every day to give developers money here, money there and every possible break just like Fianna Fáil used to do. It is not reform.

I stand up for the Bill to stand up for people in the rental sector, changing the nature of which is the reform we need. Let us take those underutilised State lands and be ambitious, including in Dublin Bay South, where an Army barracks, for example, could be the centre for cost rental and a place where several thousand could live in affordable high-quality rental accommodation which would constitute the pride of places to live. As Deputy O'Sullivan said earlier, the simple maths show that if one takes out the land costs - if we can get it rather than give it to someone else - and the profits going to developers, we can use it to support a cost-rental model. With social housing, the cost is the cost of building rather than a cost which includes a fat margin. One derisks it by taking the funding from the EIB or others who are dying to get counterparties. Earlier this year, the EIB appeared before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight where its representatives were practically begging us to give them something to lend to in this country. It is all doable but instead we have gone back to the old model where it is about the private sector and getting the property numbers up and the development business going again. It is not too late to turn it around. Not all of those 700 public sites have been given away.

We should not just do a pilot scheme but should proceed with projects at scale. Let us force the Department to be bold and restore power to local government rather than to try to hold onto the rise itself and rely on the market to be its agent to make things happen. That model is bust. That model broke us. That model is not what we need to return to. We should turn instead to a rental model along with traditional social housing and sheltered housing for the range of different communities who need it, along with the private sector. We should not go back to the old ways where 80% or 90% of the market is provided for by the private sector. In Dublin Bay South, the constituency I represent, more than any other what one will end up with is an incredibly divided city. One will end up having the rich large tech companies buying every development with apartments for €600,000 or €900,000 for their executives and other accommodation for staff while local people have nowhere to stay. We will end up with the problems San Francisco and other tech cities have had where certain people are excluded from the city. That is not the Dublin I want.

We should be good at this and we can be. The current Dáil encourages and facilitates different opportunities. Private Members' Bills are getting through, which suggests things can be done differently. It is a really healthy stage in our democracy. The Government is accepting the Bill. I say "Fine, but follow that up". The Government should come back here with six projects for cost rental before the Bill is on Committee Stage so that we know it is serious and we know the scale at which things are being done differently. If the Government does not have the land base, it should ask the people in the House where we think we could lose public lands. I could come straight back to the Government with suggestions that would provide houses in the centre of the city so that we do not have the traffic gridlock being caused by going to the old model whereby the city continues to sprawl. We just build more and more roads and get more and more cars onto them. Everything is gridlocked. It is not working and it will not work in future. The Government must change its ways which is why I support the Bill.

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