Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the motion and I thank the Green Party for bringing it before Dáil. It gives us an opportunity to debate the question of the direction in which housing policy is going. I agree with what previous speakers said. Fine Gael has been in power since 2011 and all we have heard is regurgitated rebuilding programmes for housing when we are facing the worst housing crisis we have ever had. For every step the Government proposes, there is a tsunami of homelessness following behind. People are losing their rented accommodation and their homes. What has been suggested will not even catch up with the horrendous situation we are facing in housing.

I am part of a campaign for public housing. Unite, other unions and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, as well as Deputies and councillors, are supporting it also. It puts forward a game-changing idea. The policy of Governments over the past decade has been to allow private developers to build houses for people. That policy is not working. It did not help in the past - people put themselves into huge debt - and it is not going to work in the future. The campaign for public housing is calling for a new system of universally accessible public housing. Under such a system, the State would use its full legal and financial powers to dramatically increase the pool of public housing through a major build and buy programme. The sell-off of public housing to tenants must also be ended to ensure the continuous increase of public housing as a percentage of the overall housing stock.

We had public housing in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Train drivers, Guinness workers, bus drivers and factory workers were the people who accessed public housing in that period. This was in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was a huge drugs crisis in our cities. Public housing was abandoned throughout Europe, and there was a change in how social housing was viewed. I know people who left local authority housing estates because of the difficulties they were having in raising their families in those areas. That was Government policy at the time. There is a stigma attached to social and public housing sometimes. Robust, strong public housing on public land, increased by 25% or 30%, would cut across the high rents that are now being charged by landlords because people would have access to secure and decent rented accommodation.

I was going to read through a few points about the social housing programme in Vienna. I suggest that the Government sits down and reads it.

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