Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I live in a housing estate of 700. The idea that that is a programme is a joke. What is at the root of this? Public lands should be 100% public housing to rent or to buy. If the construction industry was taken under State control and we set up a State building agency, we could build affordable housing. Deputy Barry wrote a pamphlet on housing and capitalism. For example, the CSI survey in 2015 indicates the following increases, namely, in the price of land, 17%; developer profit, 11%; bank profit, 6%, and tax, 16%. Some 50% of the cost involved could be cut out immediately if the State was building on its own lands. A €330,000 house could be €165,000. That is the reality if we knocked out the profit interests. We could build thousands of houses each year for the next five years on public lands and end this crisis for once and for all. We could also acquire vacant properties and renovate them if needed, take over buy-to-let properties from reluctant landlords and take them out of the their misery. The State could take those over. We could build student accommodation, Traveller- specific accommodation and elderly independent living-type accommodation.

We need a housing movement, as has been said, to force the Government on a path that it does not want to go, which is down the public housing route. As we did in the case of water charges and the repeal of the eighth amendment, we need students' unions, trade unions and organisations of working class people and middle income people who are now being affected by this to become involved in, for example, a national stoppage protest to force the Government to build public homes on public land because that is the only solution to this housing emergency. Clearly, the Government is not interested in taking any measures right now. It would seem Fianna Fáil is not interested either in this issue..

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