Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are many important issues that could be raised today but I am starting the year as I mean to continue, on the issue of housing, which to my mind will be a legacy failure of this Government unless there is a change of policy. On 29 March last year, the Taoiseach stated the housing and homelessness crisis was a national emergency yet the main causes of this emergency are the housing policies of his Government. The results are devastating. The public housing list has a consistent waiting list of more than 100,000, year on year. Thousands of householders are struggling with mortgage debt. More homeless people are sleeping and dying on our streets and many families in the private rented sector have been evicted as landlords and vulture funds seek to extract higher rents. Ten thousand people are officially homeless, over 3,000 of whom are children, and thousands are unofficially homeless and living in overcrowded homes.

Every week my constituency office is in contact with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, representing tenants whose landlords are attempting to illegally evict. I was contacted by a woman last week who will be 60 this year and who lives with her partner. She gets up early every morning and heads to work in the Alzheimer's centre on a 39-hour week. She was renting for 14 years but she and her partner have been homeless since October and are temporarily staying with a relative because the landlord sold the house they were renting. They searched for alternative rented accommodation but could not afford the rents. In her dilemma, she then reduced her working hours from 39 to 28 to bring the household income below the €36,000 threshold and she has applied to Dublin City Council to go on the housing waiting list, although she will be at the end of a long queue. Can the Taoiseach imagine being in that situation? What can he offer this woman for the future under Rebuilding Ireland?

In my constituency two recent planning applications have been submitted to An Bord Pleanála under the strategic housing development strategy to build apartments, although these apartments will be exclusively for rent and for student accommodation and will not be for sale. The question is who will be able to afford the rents and, in addition, there is no security of tenure. Most likely, the supply of more than 300 apartments to rent will feed into more HAP tenancies and line the pockets of developers.

The Government is set to spend over €3 billion on rent subsidies over the next five years. There is an alternative, which is the cost rental model or, as it is more popularly called, the secure, fair rent homes model. This is a public housing strategy that is accessible to everyone who needs a home and to people of all income levels. The rent would be affordable because it would be subsidised and based on the cost of provision, rather than on the market price for accommodation. Fair rent homes are based on a proven European housing programme - the cost rental model. This successful model exists in a number of countries. In Austria alone, approximately 20% of people avail of cost rental housing.

A new housing organisation would need to be established. This organisation could service and manage the finance and oversee the implementation of a fair rent homes programme. It could work with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the city and county councils to build and develop the fair rent homes model on a national scale. There could be a target to build 70,000 homes in the next five years on this basis. Why is the Taoiseach not investigating this strategy and why is the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government not coming forward to drive a strategy of this nature?

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