Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Housing is one of the key issues facing the Government. Homelessness has reached unprecedented levels. Home building numbers are tens of thousands behind where they should be and approximately 100,000 people are on the social housing waiting list. All the while, ordinary workers cannot afford to own a home. All the Government offers is half-baked ideas, which it proceeds to announce three or four times for maximum public relations effect.

The impact of the latest announcement about affordable mortgages is just that another €200 million will be put into an already scarce market thereby driving prices higher. This is making home ownership for ordinary workers less likely and it leaves them with just two options. First, they can get on the housing list if they qualify or second, they must throw themselves on the mercy of the private rental sector. In the vast majority of cases, despite the Taoiseach's revelations last week, parents are unable to help financially. The Taoiseach throwing it out there as one of a series of solutions to the housing crisis makes me very fearful for the future and it should make the ordinary working men and women of this country think very carefully of where this Taoiseach would like to lead them.

However, it would be easy to suggest that this Government's incompetence is at the root of this crisis. I believe that theory is too simple. I believe that there is a clear line of evidence since 2011 showing that Fine Gael is working to a very specific strategy. In 2011, Fine Gael took a clear line with the banks in the mortgage arrears crisis. That line was to give a free hand to the banks to clean their balance sheets, sell the impaired mortgages to vulture funds and repossess the rest. Members should remember the notion of the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, that it was in the nature of things that the vultures should clean the carcass of the recession. Thereafter, having given a free hand to the banks, Fine Gael starved local authorities of funding and any remaining experience of providing housing within the county councils was lost. This leaves us in the position that market forces will now decide who can afford to own a home. Those who cannot can deal with their landlord. Therefore, I argue that this housing crisis offers an insight into Fine Gael's view of our country. It points clearly to the fact that Fine Gael wants to run this country for the very wealthy at the expense of ordinary people.

However, there is a different way and that is where my party differs with Fine Gael. Building houses is the only solution to this problem and Fianna Fáil's track record through the decades in building social and affordable housing gives credibility to the solutions we offer. We intend to press our confidence and supply agreement with the Government to ensure this happens. Specifically, where affordable and social housing is concerned, we want to increase the capital budget, which is still 24% below 2008 levels, develop a new housing agency and create an off-balance sheet model for approved housing bodies, AHBs, to allow social innovation funds, SIFs, credit unions etc. to invest. We want a 20% Part V share of developments for construction of social and affordable homes, to use National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and bank share proceeds to invest in social housing and to accelerate void refurbishment with self-refurbishment and claim back proceeds. We intend to establish a new affordable home purchase scheme on State lands and to establish an affordable rent scheme on State land. It is now imperative that we think outside the box, put a housing policy in place that serves the ordinary people of this county and roll back from the extreme right-wing policies with which this Taoiseach and his Government want to drag us down.

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