Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is Government policies over the past eight years which have produced the homelessness problem and got us into this terrible crisis. The Government is relying on profit-driven private developers and landlords. In terms of Government projections out to 2021, up to 60% of units will become available through HAP. We have almost no Part V units, for example, in Dublin Bay North. The delivery of social housing is the key point.

The Government does not have a serious pipeline of new social homes and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has refused to create one for the people to whom I refer. In Dublin Bay North in the period between 2015 and 2017, delivery has been pathetic. Dublin City Council built fewer than 90 new homes throughout the city in 2015 and 2016. Only 81 Part V homes were delivered for the whole city in the 2015 to 2017 period. In the Howth and Malahide ward of Fingal, there was zero construction, new build acquisitions or Part V units in 2015 and 2016. The projections for 2018 are for only 333 direct build housing units for a city with a housing list of 20,000. Almost everything on the list is scheduled for completion in quarter 2 or 3 of 2019, after the general election. Some of the large sites that we have at Santry, Newtown, Belmayne, Belcamp and so on have been in the planning process for up to 20 years. We need a new delivery structure for an emergency social housing programme, either through a State company as proposed by the Nevin Economic Research Institute or a housing executive for the Dublin region.

The Government is failing and will be held to account for that. There will be far fewer current members on the Government benches after the general election because of housing.

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