Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start with some disagreements with the Minister. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, started by stating that the broken housing system is now being fixed. The problem, of course, is the facts tell a very different story. The affordable housing crisis is, in fact, getting worse. House prices are rising, rents across the country are rising, home repossessions are increasing and notices to quit and homeless presentations are continuing to increase. None of those are signs that the broken housing system is being fixed. None of that is surprising.

Rebuilding Ireland contains no affordable housing scheme, no targets for the delivery of affordable rental or purchase homes, and no dedicated funding stream to deliver those much needed homes. Indeed, many of the measures the Minister discussed that the Government has introduced on the back of Rebuilding Ireland have either had no impact on affordability or in some instances are making matters worse. Let us have a look at that list of schemes.

Help to buy was introduced and there is some evidence to suggest that it is pushing up house prices and that the majority of those who are benefitting from that scheme did not need taxpayers' assistance to purchase their homes in the first place. New apartment guidelines have generated strong opinion that they will push up apartment and house prices because they will increase the value of the land and, therefore, the ultimate price of the units on it. While strategic housing developments will increase the delivery of private homes, there is no evidence to suggest that in and of itself, it will generate or assist affordability.

Then we have the land initiatives - this flagship project of Rebuilding Ireland. It is incredibly slow. Local authorities lose control over the nature of the mixed tenure that is in the developments, suiting the market rather than the needs of local communities, and there is no guarantee in any of the land initiative projects currently under negotiation by either Dublin city or south Dublin that affordability of any measure will be delivered.

Then there is the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund, LIHAF, this wonderful project the intention of which the Minister seems to be repeatedly revising. We are now told that was never an affordability scheme and it was always merely about unblocking private sector development stuck for lack infrastructure funding when, in fact, Rebuilding Ireland, if one reads it, stated it was both. When one sees what has been agreed in so-called affordability discounts on the back of €200,000 of taxpayers' money under the Department's detailed breakdown - released in very small letters which were difficult for many of us to read without a magnifying glass - it is not encouraging. If one takes, for example, the private sector LIHAF developments, the average price of the discounted units at 2017 prices is €250,000, which does not take account of inflation by the time those houses are on the market and for sale. In almost every local authority area where there is a LIHAF-funded scheme, one can buy houses cheaper than would be delivered benefitting from LIHAF. In Dublin city and county, it is even worse. The average price of the discounted houses at 2017 prices is €318,000 but, of course, that will go up another 10% or 20% between now and when the houses are sold. What is worse is when one looks at what is being delivered in terms of affordability in LIHAF on mixed use or public land. There is either no agreement on affordability, particularly on the bigger sites in the likes of Cherrywood, The Grange or the strategic development zone, SDZ, in my own constituency, or the house prices are far above what is affordable for ordinary people. The facts from the Government's own figures show that it will not work.

Home Building Finance Ireland, I stated at the time of the budget, is a good initiative. The problem is it has not happened yet and we do not know when it will happen. The Government has this tendency of making an announcement and then repeating it as if what was announced has happened. We need to see the legislation. We need to see how it will operate. Crucially, we need to see how those loans will be linked to the delivery of genuinely affordable homes.

On the revised council mortgage, I praised the fact that it had a lower fixed interest rate but that mortgage is of no use if people cannot access affordable homes to buy with it. In many of the areas of the greatest need for affordable housing, that loan, good and all as it is in design, will be of little benefit.

On the rent pressure zones, I listened carefully to the Minister today. It was as he stated on promised legislation last week. In fact, the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, fourth quarter index he quoted shows that the rent pressure zones are not working. The figures show the annual increase across the State is 6%. In 22 of the Twenty-six Counties, on the basis of the RTB's fourth quarter figures, the rental increase was above the 4% cap. There is no evidence that the cap is working for rents, and particularly new rents. Of course, the issue of student accommodation is particularly acute.

If the Minister would simply clarify whether student licences are covered under the Residential Tenancies Act, it would be very welcome. If they are not, he should include amendments to his Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill to clarify that issue.

One of the few decent initiatives in terms of the potential to deliver genuinely affordable homes was the €25 million for Ó Cualann-type developments. I welcomed it at the time. The problem is nothing has happened with it. The Minister keeps telling us the scheme is coming. The frustrating thing is the Minister does not need to design a new affordable housing scheme. We know the income limits. We know the eligibility criteria. A circular just needs to be issued to local authorities and then that money can start to be drawn down. While I know the proposal, as it was being discussed some months ago, was for 75% of the cost of the land and the site development to be offset for the local authority, with that fund, 100% would be much better.

The really remarkable thing is when we take all of these schemes together, what we see is the private sector-led interventions will receive over €1 billion of taxpayers' money. The one bit of real investment in affordable housing is only a measly €25 million. It shows very clearly, in this as is in so many areas of Government policy, that the over-reliance on the private sector to deliver social and affordable homes is where the Government's policy focus is at and that is why it is not working.

I do not say this lightly but after two years of Fine Gael housing Ministers, it is clear they are neither interested in nor capable of delivering genuinely affordable, rental and purchase homes on the scale that is needed to tackle the crisis. Is it any wonder the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has resorted to manipulating the homelessness figures in a desperate attempt to save face?

See this speech in context