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

The Government should read the full report. It makes many valuable points about public housing. In Austria, housing is seen as a public right and a human need, and that is how housing policy is approached. In the future, I would like to read about how it is addressed. It is clear that secure housing helps mental health and general health because people do not have to suffer from horrendous thoughts that they might lose their rental accommodation or their home because their rent is secure.

I received an email recently from a young woman in Drimnagh. She said:

I am emailing you to raise a really important issue for not only my family but for many others. I can only speak on behalf of my family and our current situation in relation to housing. Myself and my partner are currently residing in the Dublin 12 area with our two daughters, aged eight and five. Our daughters both attend an Educate Together primary school. We are currently renting and have been since 2007. We both work and have permanent positions. We work opposite shifts to accommodate childcare as we would not be able to afford childcare costs if we both worked at the same time. We have a joint income of €56,000 and are currently paying €1,050 in rent per month.

In the current climate that rent is very reasonable, but if they lost that accommodation, they would be looking at a rent of €1,500 or €1,600. She goes on to say, "We really would like to be able to buy our own property so that we have security". Families are really looking for security. They are not looking for a huge debt around their necks, but security. The email also states:

[We want security] for ourselves and more importantly for our children as renting is so precarious. However, to be able to get our own home we will need more than €20,000 for a deposit. We are not able to save this amount of money [because we are] paying so much in rent. However, if we had a mortgage we would be paying the same, or less, in mortgage repayments. I saw the new initiative for first time buyers, which seemed great, but it does not identify the issue of being able to save for such a huge deposit. We have heard the Taoiseach's solution - to ask parents for a deposit - but unfortunately our parents do not have that type of money.

These are the people who need public housing on public lands. We have St. Michael's Estate and O'Devaney Gardens. There are many sites we could look at on the north side of the city. I agree that a critical amount of housing needs to be built to make this operable and to ensure that it is a success. I believe this is the way we have to go. It would cut across the crisis that people are facing in rental housing at the moment. People who do not have mortgage-to-rent arrangements should come under that public housing umbrella as well. There is also the idea that people who are on low incomes could have the HAP to subsidise their rent under the cost rent model.

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