Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is clear we are in a major housing and homelessness crisis and I do not have to tell the Minister this. Not only are we not delivering social housing on the necessary scale, but we do not even have an affordable housing scheme. For many of us the reasons for this are obvious, but for the Minister and the Government it is an ideological resistance to State involvement in the delivery of housing. The selling off of housing portfolios to vulture funds must be stopped, and Government action is needed to purchase these or to solve this issue in a more imaginative way. We own some of these institutions, such as the banks. We need a State company dedicated to house building, which would not be influenced by the private sector or vested interests.

Buildings that have been left idle need to be acquired through compulsory purchase orders, and this should include vacant shops, which are strewn across the country in every town and village. Many of these could be converted into housing or even into affordable housing if necessary. Rebuilding Ireland is not delivering because the rate and speed of delivery is too slow. It requires a major review of what is and what is not working. Lands belonging to the local authorities have been identified, such as in my constituency of Dublin North-West, around Finglas, Ballymun and Santry, which can be built on at an affordable rate. There is the capability to build several thousand units in Dublin North-West alone, so we can imagine that across the country there is the capability to build a lot more.

I am sure the State lands the Minister identified earlier can be also utilised for social and affordable building projects. Ó Cualann housing has been building and delivering affordable housing and doing a reasonably good job, but the scale is nowhere near what is required and it needs to be ratcheted up. With what other housing bodies, such as Ó Cualann, has the Minister engaged? There is a commitment to build more affordable housing and to build large-scale social housing on a number of sites identified in my area. There is nothing wrong with building social and affordable housing schemes. One of the problems in the past was we did not put in the right facilities, such as crèches, community centres, schools and shopping malls. That was the issue. We got everyone into the mindset that we had to have private housing and if we did not have private housing we would end up with ghettos. I came from Finglas. Many people I know came from working class areas. They are not ghettos, they are great places to live. Unfortunately, the only problem we had was we did not have many facilities, which has been largely addressed over the past number of years.

We need to build approximately 10,000 units a year to address this crisis and we are nowhere near building this. The almost 10,000 people homeless and the more than 3,500 children in emergency accommodation is double the number from when the Government first came into being in 2011. At that time, we called it an emergency and we were looking for it to be declared an emergency. Anyone who believes the average rent in Dublin at €1,800 per month is okay is not living in the real world. We have to do something about this. The average industrial wage is something like €600. How in God's name did we get to this train of thought?

This has to be addressed. Since I was elected to the Dáil in 2011, and having taken up the housing portfolio with Sinn Féin, this crisis has spiralled. The solutions are the same today as they were when I was elected. We warned that the lack of a social housing building programme was a major problem. That must be addressed. An emergency should be declared, and the State should get involved in building housing.

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