Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I enjoyed that. The Labour Party will not be supporting the Minister tonight; rather, we will be supporting the motion for ideological reasons. We believe there is need for a change in ideology in how the housing crisis is being dealt with by the Minister. It is nothing personal. In fact, I found some of the personal commentary on the Minister extremely distasteful and unworthy of Members of this House. My party will have nothing to do with it. Many who speak in this House on this issue do so without going through what they would do, their new proposals and challenges. I refer to the contribution made earlier. I would like to address it and bring forward some proposals that we have to make that are very different. I am not saying the Minister's job is easy, but I think that, fundamentally, even with a good work ethic, ideological change is necessary to put in place pathways to deal with the issues that we all know that we face as a country when it comes to housing provision.

My party has different proposals to make on a model of delivery of affordable housing over five years. It has been fully costed and would deliver 80,000 units. We would create a national housing development bank, with regional housing executives. It would be given extensive powers, money, land and expertise, as well as resources from the Housing Agency, Home Building Finance Ireland and NAMA. We have outlined our proposals in great detail. It would also create a differentiation between delivery and policy, the part with which I am very familiar. It is something that needs to happen. The figure of €16 billion that we have proposed, or €3.2 billion a year, is what is ultimately necessary to address the scale of the issues with which we are dealing. I urge the Minister to think about it.

Another issue with which I am very familiar and which also needs to be addressed - it needed to be addressed a number of years ago; I am speaking from experience - is rent inflation. Our proposal which was brought forward on the floor of the House not so long ago involved linking rent inflation with the consumer price index, CPI. I do not think the current model of managing rent inflation and rent pressure zones is feasible or will work because the entire country is under pressure. It was brought forward with the best of intentions, but it is not working. The linking of rent inflation with the CPI which should have happened a number of years ago would have had an impact by now. This issue about which we are talking will go on for a number of years. Every year that passes without this being done will make the problem worse. It is very much being opposed for ideological reasons by the Minister's party and the Government.

I will address a number of other issues. We have to change the legislation on evictions. The process by which people are evicted from their houses by a landlord or a receiver needs to change. It could be done with a small number of items of legislation which should be brought forward as a priority. There are solutions whereby tenants who find themselves in this situation could be left in premises, even where they were being sold.

there is a serious ideological issue. It was an issue was across the House even before I was born. It concerns the non-implementation of the Kenny report on land and land values. The Government that eventually bites that bullet and deals with the principles outlined in that good report dating from 1973 will do the State a serious service. The boom-bust cycle and the bubble that created the crisis a decade ago, elements of which we can now see again, were the result of the report not being implemented in the first place. I also believe powers to enable restructured local authorities to use compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, to purchase lands are necessary. This could be done wholesale or in a limited way to facilitate local authorities that have infrastructure and the capacity to build more houses but which are not in a position to quickly acquire lands. It could be done in even a limited way. Local authorities could be given limited powers to do a limited amount where it would make sense and where there were economies of scale. I could think of them myself from my time in that role and it would have a significant impact.

In the limited time I have left I want to deal with a couple of other issues. People ask about short-term leases and their impact on the crisis. We have to address the issue of short-term letting. If I was to stress one pooint for the Minister in the coming weeks, it would be this. We all talk about Airbnb, but it is not about that because people could call it something else the following week. We need to deal with the issue in the way it is being dealt with in Barcelona and differently in Berlin and other jurisdictions. We will have to deal with the issue because it is creating downward pressures and resulting in a lack of capacity in urban areas, in particular, which will only elevate the crisis. The return for owners from short-term letting are not going to change but increase. There are ways we could do it through the planning laws. There is a need for specific planning provisions to deal with short-term lettings. They are, however, not enforced. There are very quick ways by which they could be regulated. I seriously encourage the bringing forward of regulations in this city and others across the country to address this issue to create greater capacity.

There are a number of other issues that I would like to deal with, but I do not have time to talk about them. The cost of building needs to be examined. I say this coming from a different ideological background, but I encourage the Minister to look at it in a sensible manner as a short-term mechanism to ensure more private housing can be delivered across the jurisdiction. There is a crisis for builders in getting loans to build private housing across the country. It needs decisions to be taken very quickly. There has also been a considerable number of announcements of various schemes. I went through many of the schemes that were proposed a number of years ago in places such as Wicklow, Fingal, Kilkenny, Laois, south Dublin, Westmeath and Wexford. They included developments of 50, 39, 36, 28 and 26 units.

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This is from an answer to a parliamentary question I asked; I had to ask for the answer for two months. These schemes have all fallen by the wayside in terms of provision by local authorities once funding is given. There are too many schemes which, for different reasons, have not materialised. The failures of those schemes must be explained. There are too many of them. After all that effort and having gone through the planning process, they fall through, whether the schemes are connected to housing agencies or local authorities. We need an explanation.

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