Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad of the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I understand the spirit behind the Bill and what Deputy Healy is trying to achieve. We have had a number of debates previously and this is a genuine attempt to deal with the issue. We do not agree with some of the measures in the Bill because we are not sure they will achieve what the Deputy is seeking, but I understand and accept the spirit of what he is trying to do. All of us want a rental sector that works and gives people a chance to have a home and rent a property at a reasonable cost that they can afford. That is what the Deputy is seeking and I support his sentiments, but we do not agree that implementing what is in the Bill will resolve the issue.

It is repeatedly said that declaring an emergency will solve the problem. To be honest, if any of us thought that declaring an emergency would increase housing supply tomorrow, we would declare it. Why not? However, declaring an emergency will not provide us with even one extra house tomorrow or two or three months hence. It does not change anything. We recognise the emergency here. It is a difficult situation. That is why we have committed taxpayers' resources to a structured, funded plan that has a timeline and can deliver. We started it over two years ago. It is a five-year plan and it is ambitious. We want to deliver a minimum of 10,000 social houses per year. That is the magic figure everybody is seeking. We will reach it by next year because we started our plan two years ago, not yesterday or next week. Two years ago we recognised the importance of putting taxpayers' money behind the plan and implementing it.

Members of the House demand 10,000 and 20,000 houses, but somebody must do it. That is up to the Government. The Government must set the policy and secure the money from the Department of Finance. People's hard-earned money that is handed over in taxes is being spent on housing. That is our job. We spend it through all our partners and stakeholders, such as the local authorities and the NGOs, which draw down approximately €60 million of our taxes every year to spend on homeless services, building houses and so forth. The local authorities are in charge of the housing delivery programme and are implementing it. We have ensured they have teams of people with the skills they need as well as the funding. They can now build houses. It is absolutely wrong to come to the House week after week and insist that the Government is not building social houses. It is just not true. I have no problem with having debates on housing every day and every week in the Dáil, but there must be honesty in the conversation.

There were calls tonight for people to pile onto the streets and join the march. I listened to most of the people who spoke at the last march. They were students, members of NGOs and other groups, members of unions and so forth. The common thread in the different demands they made on that march was that the Government should start a social housing building programme. That was the first demand. Second, they said that entailed 10,000 social houses per year. It is clear from the record of the House for anybody who wishes to check the debate that this is exactly what the Government is doing. We started it two years ago. There was a commitment of taxpayers' money through the various policies to deliver 10,000 social houses per year. We are doing exactly what everyone is calling for in their speeches. We put it in place two years ago. We recognised that one cannot just decide that if one wants 10,000 houses tomorrow it will happen. One must start somewhere.

We started two years ago and put in place all the changes that were required, including cutting the red tape, allocation of resources, putting all the teams together and engaging with the private sector, public sector, local authorities, approved housing bodies and anybody who cared to work on this. That is what had to be done. We engaged with all of them in a structured plan that we track every week and month through the officials in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and other Departments. As we track it every week we can say with confidence that next year we will reach the magic number of 10,000 social houses delivered per year, which everybody is calling for. We will reach it next year because we started two years ago, not a week or month ago. We put the plans in place to make it happen. That is our job. I must say there was cross-party support for that. Everybody wants to achieve that and nothing less. Some want more, which is fair enough. However, every week the Members come to the House and claim it is not happening.

Some €2.4 billion in taxpayers' money has been secured and ring-fenced for housing for 2019. It is the highest ever spend on housing. The taxpayers need to know their money is yielding a result. Members all agree to spend the money so they must admit at some stage that we are opening real houses across all the sites each week. People are moving into them. Week in, week out the Members repeatedly say that I, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Department are doing nothing. It is not true. The Minister, the Taoiseach, the Department's officials and I have no problem admitting that the number of people who need a house is extremely high. It amounts to thousands. Of course, it is an emergency. Nobody is denying that. We count them and present the figures. We are not hiding that. However, there should be a little honesty. Taxpayers deserve honesty and to realise that their money, which amounted to €2 billion last year and will be almost €2.5 billion next year, is doing something and is delivering houses.

People also tell me it is a hopeless situation. That is unfair to people who are homeless and who need to know they will eventually get a house. It is unfair because the facts do not support the people who say it. In the last 16 months, 7,000 adults and their thousands of children left homelessness and are in homes today. Next year, thanks to the taxpayer, the money allocated will deliver 10,000 social houses and 19,000 other social housing solutions through HAP and so forth. Over 5,000 adults and their children will also leave emergency accommodation and will not be homeless this time next year. That is the reality. That is our commitment because we know we can do it. We have done it for the last two years. Nobody is denying that a homeless situation is not a nice place to be and is absolutely no place to raise a family. A hotel, family hub or the like is not the place to be and nobody should be left there. It is our job to ensure people come through that system as quickly as possible and into a house. It is wrong to say it is hopeless and it is not fair to those people. They must have some hope. They are entitled to have hope because money is being spent to provide solutions for them. The NGOs and people such as Fr. McVerry are part of the solution. They are all getting taxpayers' money. It is being channelled in a proper, co-ordinated way and is delivering results.

We know the process is not happening fast enough. Every day we try to make it faster. We change the system and try to push it as much as we can to deliver more houses. It is delivering houses. It will deliver the magic number of 10,000 that everybody wants next year. The combination of 6,500 builds, long-term leasing and acquisition will bring us over the number of 10,000. Everybody continues to say that this Government is against social housing, but we have committed the country to providing up to 12,000 social houses per year. That money is committed over the long term under Project Ireland 2040 and the ten-year capital plan. We are repeatedly told that we are ideologically opposed to social housing, but we are the only Government to have committed the resources to make it happen. It is wrong for Members to come to the House week after week and say that we have a problem with social housing. It is not true and I take great offence at it. It is our job to ensure that people get a house and a home, be it social housing, affordable housing or private housing. It is not true to say that this Government is against social housing. If that was the case we would not allocate €2.4 billion of taxpayers' money for it next year. We would not do it with the support of Fianna Fáil and the Independent Alliance. We would spend the money somewhere else.

I have no problem coming to the House and listening to the Members demand more.

That is fine if Deputies were to come to the House with new ideas and solutions that might work. We would take them all on board, but this constant coming into the Chamber and saying nothing is happening is not fair on the poor unfortunate families who are struggling tonight, stuck in emergency accommodation and want to get out of it. They are entitled to know that in the next year most of them will leave emergency accommodation and we have done this in the last year. When we analyse the figures, we see that the social housing stock increased by 7,000 last year and 8,000 this year and will increase by 10,000 next year. These are the figures that give people hope. They are factual. There are more than 1,000 social housing projects that were not in place two years ago. They are in the system at different stages of delivery. It is my job and that of the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Department to work with the local authorities and the approved housing bodies to make sure houses are delivered, week in and week out. That is happening.

When we go to housing projects and meet people in their homes, some of them tell us that they had been waiting for a house for eight or nine years on a housing list. Others tell us that they were homeless for three, six or eight months. Everybody has a different story to tell and taken a different journey. They are on that journey and coming through the system. We know and admit that there are thousands of them. We put out the figures for genuinely good reasons; we do not hide them. Thankfully, the majority stuck in emergency accommodation tonight will spend less than six months in it. Do not get me wrong; it is six months too long, but two years ago they would have spent two or three years in emergency accommodation. Thankfully, most are now offered a solution quite quickly. Not everybody chooses a solution or the one they are offered does not suit them in the long term. There are different reasons and we must constantly work to find better solutions.

I will make a final point. Yes, in the short term we have to work with the private sector through the HAP scheme and so on. On a daily basis, however, we are adding new social housing. It is a five-year plan and by year three or four we will have tipped the balance by using more new social housing, rather than relying on the private sector. That is to what we are committed in the longer term. One cannot resolve a social housing supply issue in year one. For many years the country did not deliver enough social housing. The only way to fix that problem is by having short and long-term plans that over a period of time will genuinely increase the social housing stock by 50,000 by 2021 and 12,000 social houses each year thereafter in the next ten years. Then we will be able to say we are at a European level in the provision of social housing. Let us not kid people. We cannot just draw houses, demand them, call for them and hope they will arrive. One has to physically do it site by site, county by county, to make it happen with real money, real people and real ambition and plans. That is what we have done as a Government and that is what we are committed to doing.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for giving me time to speak on this issue.

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