Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Paul Murphy.

The motion states the central pillar of any Government policy must prioritise a decisive shift towards the direct provision of public and affordable housing on public land rather than the current reliance on private sector solutions”. Such is the scale of the housing crisis and the speed with which it continues to spiral out of control that we need an emergency programme of public house building to build homes for the many tens of thousands of people who long to have a secure and affordable home. This can be done. New data published this week show that local authorities and NAMA between them own enough zoned residential land to build 114,000 homes. They own three quarters of all residential zoned land in Dublin city, where the greatest crisis is, which is enough to build 71,000 homes. That is local authority and NAMA-owned land, zoned for residential purposes and ready for development. We know from figures recently provided by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government that one-bedroom homes can be built for just €144,000 while two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom units can be built for between €150,000 and €158,000, €167,000 and €177,000, respectively.

In recent months, Solidarity has brought forward costed plans for public and affordable housing in a number of local areas. In my constituency of Dublin West, we proposed Damastown as a social and affordable project and did the same in respect of Kilcarberry in South Dublin County Council and at the Old Whitechurch Road in Cork city. Solidarity has also explained the various tax raising measures that can be taken to raise the required investment expenditure to the Minister many times. That is without mentioning the Apple revenue.

The Government prefers to protect the financially unsustainable and morally indefensible tax haven status that it and a succession of its predecessors have created over decades. However, the Government is not alone in its moral bankruptcy, it is an international phenomenon. Overnight, we learned that a very modest tax proposed in Seattle to fund housing for the homeless has been crushed by a combination of Amazon, one of the world's largest companies, and its political allies in the Democratic Party. Like the Government, these people think that the interests of corporations must always come before the interests of the 99% and even of the most vulnerable in our society.

We know that we own the land and that the land is already zoned for residential purposes. We know that homes can be built at a cost that ensures rents and prices for the completed homes can be affordable for all and we know that the revenue to fund the construction works can be raised. All the component parts required to provide the public housing solutions for which young people and families are crying out are available with one exception, namely, political will. It is not a political priority.

In 2017, under the Minister's watch, the number of homes built for local authorities came to a grand total of 235 across the four Dublin local authority areas. The Minister's failure could hardly be more complete. He continues with his ideologically-driven commitment to market-based pro-landlord policies. A year ago, the Minister said of Rebuilding Ireland that it had "already achieved a great deal with more good things to come". He continued by noting "We’re going to have to keep on driving this but I think we can meet our target soon.” Can the Minister tell us which target he has in mind? If he has a target for creating misery, he has well surpassed it.

Rebuilding Ireland has been exposed as the longest love letter to landlords ever written. Billions of euro in public money have been poured into their pockets under the guise of housing policy initiatives, all of which have failed for ordinary people, exactly as we said they would. Who pays for the Minister's commitment to neoliberalism, to landlordism and to developers? It is the 10,000 people in emergency accommodation who pay, including 3,000 children. It is the 800,000 people living in rental accommodation who pay through ruinously expensive rent and it is the more than half a million young adults forced to live with their parents who pay. The crisis is deepening and young people and families are suffering. Many of them are just one rent increase away from losing their home. We need public housing now.

The building of public housing on a large scale will be the main pillar of the solution to the housing crisis. As the motion states, there are perhaps 180,000 or more empty residential units in the country but the number of vacant properties that have been returned to use as homes is pitiful. Only 416 houses returned to local authorities in 2016 and 2017. The motion also calls for a change to NAMA’s mandate to make it a vehicle for public and affordable housing, which should have been done from the outset but which now should be done today.

These much-needed measures need to be taken to bring a significant number of vacant properties into use as homes, which can supplement essential public house building.

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