Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It seems indisputable that the biggest social and economic crisis facing this country is the housing crisis and the lack of social housing and affordable housing. I was at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government this morning where departmental officials gave us the latest figures. They show that there are 86,000 families on the housing list. It is, however, much larger. We were also told that there were 36,000 people on housing assistance payments, HAP, schemes and 22,000 on rental accommodation, RAS, schemes. In reality, that means we have 144,000 households on the housing list.

Given the rental spiral happening and the extraordinary difficulty in many parts of the country of getting private landlords and the private sector to deliver HAPs tenancies - in many cases they are pulling out of those tenancies - is there any recognition that HAPs is just an accident waiting to happen? The reliance that the Government is putting on it in Rebuilding Ireland is an accident waiting to happen. As a supplement to that, even if it was delivered, does the Taoiseach have any estimate of how much it would cost? I refer to the target of outsourcing to the private sector about 83,000 of the planned 133,000 social housing units. I do not believe that they can be delivered under HAPS and RAS. However, even if they were, is there any estimate of how much that would cost on an ongoing basis? Dr. Rory Hearne and Dr. Mary Murphy have estimated that it would cost us €23 billion over 30 years. That would be a massive drain on the public purse and that money would be far better spent investing in council housing rather than it leeching out in billions to the private sector.

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