Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis is getting worse, more complex, more hopeless and more devastating for people facing homelessness and those already there. The sharp edge of the housing crisis is now being felt where the private rental market is driving prices outside of the reach of ordinary people. I have people in my constituency clinics who are receiving tenancy termination notices, many of which are invalid initially. They have to go back and forth between Threshold, their landlords and the council, all the while knowing there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

There are not enough housing units being built. All that is offered is housing assistance payment, HAP, but there is nothing to it. HAP is a method of simply affording a home in the private rental market. While it may provide a solution and is much better than rent supplement, we need one, two, three and four-bedroom housing units delivered. We need housing and apartment units for people with disabilities and older people. We need to activate our landbanks to deliver these new units and new communities.

We must forget the private market. Those involved in it will operate for their own ends as they always have. They sat and continue to sit on their own landbanks, parcelling them off in small chunks which only serves to increase house prices and profits for themselves. They never delivered enough. When they did, it was for the few and out of reach for most.

The Minister is diminishing the ability of local authorities to provide homes by leaning increasingly on approved housing bodies. These bodies should be there to supplement local authorities, not replace them, as the primary deliverer of social and affordable housing. In Fingal, the number of local authority schemes getting off the ground has stalled since 2016. The projects being delivered now were pushed through at the start of 2014. Now the strategy is HAP and approved housing bodies only when we need council housing urgently.

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