Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, I and every Member of this House will go home to a house tonight, a warm house because of the weather, and we hope we will get a good night's sleep. Tonight, in this city, other cities and even in parts of rural Ireland, people will go into hotel rooms, with one family crowded in and with no proper facilities for cooking or sleeping. They will be crushed into an area where other families use toilet facilities and everything else. What is going on in this country is a crying shame. Homelessness has reached unprecedented levels. Surging rents are historically high. Home building numbers are, as the Minister of State has heard repeatedly, tens of thousands below what they should be.

We are told about the new Ireland, this great Ireland where there are more jobs and opportunities for people. While I acknowledge that there are more opportunities for many people, the sad fact is that there are so many people outside the loop.

What Deputy Cahill said is true. In fairness to the Minister of State, Deputy D’Arcy, I do not direct my comment at him personally, but there is a certain attitude to people who are homeless. Some ask why they are homeless, why they cannot pull themselves together and why can they not do this and that. I am sure the Minister of State knows well from his clinic, as do the rest of us, the many different circumstances, hardship and sorrowful stories we hear week in and week out.

I will give one example of a terrible anomaly in the current system. It is not just an urban scenario, as it affects rural areas as well. All Members know people who are working hard, five days a week, who get up early in the morning, get children out to school and who come home at night and get everything ready for the next morning. They might be earning €26,000 or €27,000 per annum. It is too much to allow them to qualify for a social house and too little to service a loan. There is a growing number of those people out there and they are frustrated, upset and annoyed. Because prices have gone up people are selling properties they previously rented out and the people I refer to are being shoved from Billy to Jack. They are good tenants. They do a good job and they pay their rent but they are being shoved around the place and they have nowhere to go. A woman came to my office in recent weeks who just broke down and wept after she was told she did not qualify for a house anywhere. She has two children, one going on to college and one in secondary school. I am ashamed as a parliamentarian to meet such situations in this great Ireland where there are so many opportunities, according to the Taoiseach in particular. When he was in New York putting in such an effort to get a seat for Ireland on the United Nations Security Council did he tell people in the UN about our housing crisis? What would they think of it? I do not think they would be too impressed.

All of us in this House have a responsibility to solve this crisis. If we do not, we are a failure. The Minister of State knows all of the launches we have had. I will go through them again. There was Construction 2020, the Social Housing Strategy 2020, Rebuilding Ireland 2016, the 2012 capital plan, the 2015 capital plan and the 2018 plan. That is six separate plans, and then one must take into account the numerous relaunches involved.

House building numbers are tens of thousands behind what was originally targeted by the Government. Government figures overstated completions by nearly 60% with only 14,500 units actually built last year. Typically, over the past 45 years new builds have been between 20,000 and 30,000 per annum, rising to more than 40,000 as far back as 1998. That was in keeping with economic expansion, population growth and societal change with smaller household sizes. It is great to hear job announcements and foreign direct investment but as the Minister of State knows another problem is arising, namely, accommodation for workers and the cost of rent. The knock-on effect will be serious for the economy. The issue must be tackled and resolved.

As a party, Fianna Fáil has placed housing front and centre as a key priority for this Dáil. We have tried to work constructively on the two budgets to date and we introduced ten Bills on housing to help address the crisis. We must resolve this issue. The national development plan set out a commitment of €1.16 billion capital spending per annum up to 2027. However, that is still just 84% of the €1.385 billion we as a party spent on social housing capital investment in 2008. We are way behind on our spending yet the population is increasing constantly. In addition, the Government has overseen abysmal apprenticeship numbers. In 2017, only 60 apprentices registered for brick and stonelaying and 34 for plastering, which is far short of what is required to meet even the Government's limited target of 25,000 housing units.

The Rebuilding Ireland home loan is effectively just a rebrand of existing local authority mortgage schemes. It is a new name and a new launch but there is nothing different. In the absence of increasing supply it will not enable more people to buy their own home. Only one in three applications is successful, and that is in the midst of the worst crisis we have ever had in housing. The affordable purchase scheme is vague. It lacks timelines and sufficient scale. The subsidy per site currently works out at €16,000, which is far less than the €31,000 to €50,000 in the 1999 scheme. It does not recommence the affordable housing scheme Fine Gael abolished in 2012 and it will not tackle affordability. The Minister of State knows that himself. Only 400 units are targeted this year and funding is still far behind the €150 million allocated in 2008. The Government had committed to the affordable rent scheme. It announced a pilot project for affordable rent since 2015 but is only now getting around to it. Again, there is a lot of spin but there is no substance. We have gone from 2015 to 2017 and we are now in 2018.

I could go on and on but I do not intend to do that. Like most Members this evening I am expressing my dissatisfaction. It is very important that we start building houses. We must go back to bricks and mortar. Local authorities must introduce a scheme specifying that they would build X number of houses each year. We are all aware of the current backlog and it will take some time to clear it even if we had a better rate of building than is the case currently. While we support the Bill, we have reservations on many issues. I intend to bring more detail to the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government in the weeks ahead, even though it is the summer. They might get a chance to read it at some stage.

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