Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome and support this motion and I commend the Green Party and the Social Democrats on highlighting what I have long believed is a necessary model in addressing the worsening housing crisis. The housing crisis has consistently been getting worse according to all the evidence produced. Rents have been rising for over five years, supply in the rental market is abysmal and tenants are being broken on the back of unaffordable rents. Earlier, I checked the national property website. It shows that there are only 1,200 properties available to rent in Dublin, our capital city, which as over 1 million inhabitants. In my county, Wicklow, there are only 61 properties available for a population of over 142,000.

Since 2014, the cost-rental model has been endorsed by the NESC. The Government, however, has ignored this advice from the body of experts appointed to guide it in these matters. For four long years this advice has been ignored while the housing and rental sectors have spiralled out of control. This is a remarkable failure, by any standard.

The cost-rental model allows rental housing units to be provided on the basis of cost, not on the market forces that we all know are not functioning in this area of acute social need, an area where far too many of our people - our fellow citizens - are being denied access to the basic human right of a home. The Government has a duty to intervene for the common good. The cost-rental model has a number of advantages other than the immediate one of allowing rental homes to be provided strategically to our people at prices they can afford. The model provides the State with a key asset that can be accumulated to ensure that not only can we tackle the rental crisis where it is at its worst, but that we have a rental housing stock that can prevent future crises from occurring. The assets these units would provide on a permanent basis for the State would also allow financial leverage to secure additional funding for housing.

The cost-rental model for rental housing provided by State agencies, such as the Housing Agency, is, therefore, a win-win policy to tackle the lack of homes for our fellow citizens. Therefore, the timid, hands-off approach to this model beggars belief. The Minister and his party are not able to see the bigger picture that a responsible Government must see. The market is not going to provide a solution without State action. The State has a duty here and Fine Gael's ideological objection to permanent State action in the area of housing is no longer credible. The introduction of a strong, strategically placed and nationally managed cost-rental model of housing is an ideal job for the national housing agency proposed by our party. This agency could be used as an additional source of housing as part of a full portfolio of measures, from rental to affordable and social, and then to a healthy private market in order to create a holistic, modern, sustainable housing system for the people of 21st century Ireland.

We can still do this. We can work on a cross-party basis to get this model moving and established. We should establish it in Dublin initially but, in my view, this model should be in every major urban centre in Ireland. I welcome that the Minister eventually took action in regard to the short-term letting platforms such as Airbnb. I was the first politician to raise this anomaly in the Dublin market at national level nearly two years ago but only now are there statements on Government action. I urge the Minister to accept our Bill rather than delaying further by the production of his own. We need to co-operate more when we are in agreement - that is responsible leadership at national political level. We are in agreement on Airbnb and we are in agreement on the cost-rental model of housing. We can act quickly and with purpose for the sake of our people, who so badly need an affordable home, so let us do it.

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