Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think we have ever had a properly functioning housing market in this country, at least not since 2002. We have to get involved as a State and as a Government. We have to play an active role and do so for many years to come to meet the needs of different people in our country today. One thing that is clear at the moment, particularly as we look at the budget that has just passed for 2019, is that the Government is actively involved in the housing market. We will spend more money next year on housing than any previous Government has ever spent in a single year, some €2.4 billion. That will go into different solutions to help people in housing need. Between one in four and one in five homes built this year and next year will be a social housing home, which is quite something given where we have come from. As part of the confidence and supply agreement we have agreed the largest affordability package in a decade between ourselves and Fianna Fáil. We have launched the Land Development Agency to use public land for building houses. We are doing much more than that, around regulations, ideas and initiatives like cost-rental. We are holding conferences on homes for the elderly and how we can wire that into our planning for the future. These are things that we as a Government and a State, through the Department, local authorities, housing bodies and other stakeholders, are doing to ensure that we are directly involved in housing solutions for our people, because we have to be.

The purpose of all of the measures we have brought in during the last couple of years under rebuilding Ireland, and will continue to bring in during the following years under project Ireland 2040, is to ensure that we move away from the violent market-led swings up and down that we have seen in the housing sector far too many times in this country's history.

Those swings can affect rental prices, the price of a home, the number of people employed in housing, the amount of money we get in taxation from housing-related products and services and even the number of homes being built. Ninety thousand homes - twice too many - were being built. The number fell to fewer than 5,000 a couple of years after that. Tens of thousands of builders and workers lost their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people fell into mortgage distress and other types of distress as a result.

What we are trying to get to is a steady and sustainable output. We talk about sustainable housing delivery. It is not jumping to 60,000 homes next year to fall back to 20,000 homes the following year. It is a consistent output of supply, somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 homes a quarter. We are close to hitting 6,000 homes a quarter. We will get somewhere in the region of 20,000 new homes this year and 25,000 new homes next year. That is sustainable delivery.

The important point about that delivery is that it will ensure that no matter what happens in terms of future economic shocks, there is a committed level of taxpayer-sourced funding for housing delivery in the wider economy but also that intervention in terms of social and affordable housing schemes. We have that in the ring-fenced programme, Rebuilding Ireland. We have it in some of the new measures to leverage more private finance and different types of finance, not from the Irish sector exclusively but from different areas, to help protect house building in the economy.

We must include social housing at the core of what we do every year when it comes to housing construction and we must ensure that homes, as they are built, are affordable. The use of that word "affordable" is not to imply, just because one does not come under an affordability scheme, that the other houses being sold are unaffordable. What we are really talking about with affordability are homes subsidised, either to buy or to rent. What we are trying to do is prevent and protect against shocks that hurt people and result in them needing emergency accommodation. It is an unacceptable situation, as we have all stated previously, to have people going into hotels tonight as part of an emergency response until we have these homes built. We want to make sure that we never have to rely on hotels for families as a type of emergency accommodation.

The Deputy who brought forward this Bill was incredibly condescending in assuming to know what I might think about it or the arguments that I might make. He does not have the responsibilities the Government has and his party does not have the responsibilities that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have in establishing confidence and supply, and to dismiss the idea of having to consider unintended consequences is incredibly naive. Of course, we have to think of the unintended consequences. The reason we came forward with Rebuilding Ireland as a package across the housing sector was that we had to think about the knock-on effects of different policy proposals that we brought forward. If one brings proposals forward in a piecemeal fashion without thinking about the possible negative consequences, one could do more harm than good. We have to be conscious of unintended consequences. What led us into the crash was many different Ministers and others trying to do the right thing in most instances, making individual decisions and those decisions not being joined up. It led to the chaos we had when our housing sector collapsed and it took the economy with it. My responsibility, as a Minister, is to make sure that I think of all possible consequences from every policy that is brought forward.

I will not be bullied by the Deputy in the way that he presents his arguments or in the way that he, his leader and his party try to treat Members in this Chamber when we try to have reasonable debate. We need to move beyond these personal attacks. People are fed up with such attacks. They want to focus on policy. Let me focus on the Bill that we have at hand because I am not interested in personal attacks.

This Bill assumes that there are no other streams for social housing delivery today. It seems to ignore the multiple streams that we now have for social housing delivery to protect us from future shocks. We have Part V, which we have reformed. We have housing bodies now playing a much more active role in the delivery of social housing and partnering with local authorities, which have taken back responsibility and are ramping up the delivery of social housing. We, obviously, also acquire homes as well - there are properties to acquire - where we can help people more quickly, and often more cheaply, than if we were building directly. We enter into long-term lease agreements as well because it is another way of the State being able to bring security and safety to people in their homes, adding to the stock of social housing.

We often talk about numbers and percentages. The Deputy, in his speech, outlined some. On this idea of 20% or 25% social housing homes, one in four to one in five homes built this year, and again next year, will be social housing homes. Of new builds, 20% to 25% will be social housing homes. Project Ireland 2040 talks about 110,000 new social housing homes in the stock of social housing by 2027 which is not far off the figure the Deputy himself gave. The stock of social housing will increase by 8,000 this year, and 10,000 next year. These are real social housing homes. They have walls, roofs, doors and windows, gardens, and keys. People live in them. They have security in their homes because it is social housing.

We also have to recognise in the solutions that we are bringing about with Rebuilding Ireland and Project Ireland 2040 in terms of the stock of social housing that not everyone will want to live in a social housing home. Many people will be happy to be supported, through State supports such as the housing assistance payment, in the rental market because of the flexibility it provides depending on where they are in life. We have to recognise that physically built homes is not the only solution for people. That is programmed into Rebuilding Ireland, which, in coming forward with the number of 50,000 homes, was approved by the Oireachtas committee. We now have hard-wired into our plans for the next ten years this constant output of social housing homes being delivered directly by the State with its partners.

This Bill also ignores the changes that have been made to Part V after we learned the lessons from the crash. No payment can now be made in lieu of Part V homes and the homes have to be delivered. It is not possible to transfer a site or a part of the site. We can conclude the agreement before builders are able to go on site because it is all about focus on delivery of the finished units for social housing.

The Bill also ignores the fact that we have a Land Development Agency, which is a different way of going about getting something back for the planning gain that arises when a planning permission is given or property is zoned. Part V will continue to be a way of doing that but with the Land Development Agency, we can now strategically acquire land before it is zoned, master plan it, put the infrastructure in place, get the planning in place and get the zoning in place. We will get the uplift that is normally got by a developer because the State is the developer and we then use that for dividends, such as affordable housing or more affordable homes. That is the purpose of The Land Development agency, LDA.

It also ignores the fact that the affordability provisions were stood down previously in 2011 because affordability was not an issue after the crash. In 2011, house prices were still falling and they continued to fall through 2012. We were left with 3,000 ghost estates, some of which we are still dealing with. House prices are on average still 20% below the peak even though there are, of course, rapid house price rises in certain parts of the country, but they are beginning to slow. Affordability, as a result, is a different challenge depending on where one is in the country and other factors.

We have now recommenced those affordability provisions because there is a significant affordability challenge in the country today. That is why it is important that the State maintains its involvement. The State has really become involved in the past number of years with Rebuilding Ireland. That involvement is being maintained because what is certain is that as we build more homes, if we want to make sure that those homes are more affordable, not only through subsidised housing but also through affordability being delivered, for example, through extra supply, we have to make sure that we become involved to make affordability happen. We have done that through the Rebuilding Ireland home loan. We have had more than €200 million - the first tranche - in housing agency approvals and those should flow down through the credit committees and local authorities. The rent-to-buy scheme has been successful in helping young couples get the deposit together to buy a home.

We have brought in the rent caps. New legislation is coming which will better enforce those rent caps and give greater powers to do that. We have the €300 million, which we announced in the budget, over the next coming years to allow the Government to share the burden of the mortgage with the individual or couple who are looking to buy a home. We have cost rental that we are trying to do with scale at St. Michael's and other places using new forms of finance, such as the European Investment Bank, which needs to become a major part of our rental market. In that way, of course, the State will stay involved in delivering affordability for a number of years to come.

We have to make sure also that as we drive affordability in our housing supply, we are driving different types of homes. It is easy to build the three-bedroom semi-detached house. We are good at that in this country. We are not as good at building apartments. That is why we have new apartment guidelines, new height guidelines, and provision for a greater number of studios. One does not need to get planning permission to build above the shop now as long as there are fewer than ten units. There are new guidelines for build to rent, which is seeing greater investment. There are new guidelines for co-living. All these things, including the consultation process that has begun in regard to elderly people's homes and elderly living, will help us bring about greater security of housing supply because the houses will met the needs of people as their lives change and as the economy changes because of the technological revolution that we are going through.

If I could welcome one provision in the Bill, I would welcome the fact that it seeks to in some way mirror the provisions that we brought forward with the Land Development Agency in terms of making sure that when we bring forward public land for house building we are trying to get a social mix. It has been unclear until now whether Sinn Féin was in favour of a social mix when it came to housing delivery. We believe that we should use housing policy to support and unite communities, not to divide them, and that is why we came forward with our proposals for social and subsidised housing on public land with the Land Development Agency. I hope that is support for those policies in the Land Development Agency plans.

The big risk with this Bill is that it will increase the cost of building homes.

The Deputy is wrong to dismiss that because, of course, the cost of providing those homes at a lower price will have to be transferred on to the build price of the other units on that site. That could make those homes more expensive as the builder seeks to achieve a margin on those homes that are built. When social housing is proposed in certain local authority areas, local residents in existing homes will object, which they should not do, and be supported by politicians, which should not happen. One of the fears voiced is that it will lower the price of the existing homes in that area. I think they are wrong on that score. I do not think, however, it is wrong to suggest that if the builder is going to lose money if a greater proportion of homes are built on the land, this cost would not be transferred to the homes that are to be built. In trying to achieve affordability with these measures and without thinking about the other consequences that would come from this blunt instrument, it will make homes less affordable for young people and young couples. That would be the net effect of this Bill. It will achieve the opposite of what it seeks to achieve just like other proposals like the Focus Ireland amendment on preventing evictions. They sound very good when one hears them but when one drills down, one realises that they could give rise to far more notices of termination, overwhelm the system and force more people into emergency accommodation than are prevented from entering it.

We talk about a steady output of housing and all the different measures that are in place to deliver social housing, all the commitments that have been given, all the funding that is there and the programmes that are there to ensure we have subsidised and affordable housing coming on stream. We must get to a steady output of housing and fix our broken housing sector. When it is fixed, we can look at other proposals. We can look at different things we might do when we finally manage to secure the number of homes we need to be built every year in this country. We are not too far off that point. A number of measures and policies have been introduced. People say they have had enough of different schemes, policies and announcements. We have introduced regulations in respect of Airbnb and we brought in our rent Bill. We need to spend more time focusing on delivering, hitting those targets and doing things to bring about the delivery within existing policies and programmes. We must ensure that if we bring forward significant money for affordability, it is drawn down and spent by local authorities and used to deliver the land for affordable homes.

One contradictory element of the Bill is that it seems to now rely on private builders to deliver social housing. I thought we had learned that lesson and moved away from the provision of social housing exclusively through private developers. What we have tried to in all the policy measures we have brought forward is bring the responsibility back to the State. That is happening. There is room for Part V. It is part of achieving social mix and making sure we get a dividend back for the gain the developer gets from obtaining planning permission and so forth. However, we need this multi-stream development of social housing to protect it into the future should a difficulty with the private sector or other parts of the economy arise that might put that social housing provision at risk.

A good Government needs to intervene directly in the market and stay involved. That is what we are doing. Rebuilding Ireland, Project Ireland 2040 and all the other plans we put in place maintain our commitment in this regard. I welcome support from any Deputy in this House for the Government's policy when it comes to the mixed development of housing on land, be it private or public, but now is not the time to place extra costs on builders when they already have cost challenges. This Bill would make homes less, rather than more, affordable for the vast majority of people and, again, would outsource social housing to the private sector when everything we have been doing in the past three years involves taking back that responsibility.

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