Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I listened very carefully to the Minister and it is clear he is not living in the same place as the rest of us. His Department's homelessness report published two weeks ago shows homelessness has reached its highest level since those reports began and, in fact, his own report is a significant underestimation of the real level. A subsequent report by the Residential Tenancies Board, a Government-established body, showed that rents had increased by 7% across the State and by 8% in the city of Dublin, which is twice the level permitted under the terms of the clearly failing rent-pressure zones. A few days later the quarter 1 daft.ie 2019 house price report showed that house prices have increased by a further 6% despite the increase - albeit modest - in the supply of new homes for purchase. However, wages are not increasing by 6%, but house prices are.

The UN's special rapporteur on affordable housing then released a report and wrote a letter to the Government highlighting the potentially negative impact of short-term vulture fund investment in our rental market and the negative impact for prices and tenants' rights. That was followed by a Savills report confirming that same picture but also estimating that rents will continue to rise by up to 17% over the next three years on the basis of its market calculations. In the middle of all of that bad news, both The Irish Times and the Irish Independent - no radical publications - wrote the most stinging reviews and criticisms of the Government's failing housing policy. In fact, the Irish Independentwithin one week alone wrote two separate editorials demanding a right to housing and saying Rebuilding Ireland was failing and needed to be replaced. Yet the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, waltzes into this Chamber and, with all of the confidence of his privileged upbringing, tells us that his plan is working. At what level is this Minister detached from reality?

Let us consider Rebuilding Ireland. Social housing output continues to be glacial. Last year, we got approximately 6,000 extra real social houses, owned by approved housing bodies or local authorities. There are 70,000 households on local authority waiting lists, 45,000 families in two-year housing assistant payment, HAP, tenancies, 20,000 families are in four-year rental accommodation, RAS, tenancies and last year, an extra 14,000 families came on to the local authority housing waiting lists. Therefore, not only is the Government not clearing the historic need that exists, it is not even coming close to dealing with the new need that is arising.

As other Deputies mentioned, not a single affordable home was delivered by any Government scheme in 2016, 2017 or 2018. Yet we know, thanks to the good research of the ESRI, that up to 75% of lower income workers living in the private rental sector, who are not eligible for any State supports, are spending up to 40% of their disposable income on rents. We have a crisis of rental affordability, additional to the crisis of social housing, like we have never had before. How many affordable homes will be delivered this year? None. How many will be delivered next year? On the basis of what we are hearing, perhaps a few but the rent will be €1,300 a month when affordable rents would be somewhere close to €700 to €900. The length of time families are in emergency accommodation beats almost all other European member states. We are dealing with families who spent their third Christmas last December in emergency accommodation and still have no prospect of adequate housing to meet their needs.

The Minister has told us funding is not an issue. Of all of the bizarre things he said here today, that is possibly the most bizarre. We are chronically underfunding our local authorities to deliver the volume of social and affordable homes that are needed. It is true they have lost capacity not only under this but under previous Governments. If we are to seriously build their capacity to deliver the homes that people need, we have to give them money for capital investment and for current improvement and we have to give them the staff. Until they have a significantly larger level of investment than is being proposed under Rebuilding Ireland, things will not change. My view is the same as every other time we had have a debate on this issue. Rebuilding Ireland is failing. Under every single indicator that anybody would reasonably look, it is clear it is failing. We need the Government to accept the plan does not work and that we need a new plan. We would not need to spend a long time developing a new plan. Many of us in opposition, despite some agreements we will have here today, have a clear consensus in terms of the alternatives that are required and it would not take very long to quickly introduce such a plan.

To specifically deal with the Labour Party's Private Members' motion, I fully support the intentions behind it. I also support many of the sentiments expressed in it, particularly the need to significantly increase the supply of social and affordable housing. I have a fundamental disagreement with the delivery mechanism, which is why Sinn Féin will not be supporting this motion. I want to outline why that is the case. We have long been of the view that the best agencies to deliver good quality public housing to meet and social and affordable housing needs are local authorities. They are democratically accountable to their elected members. They are located closest to the communities where housing needs have to be met and until the mid-1980s, because they were properly funded and resourced, they delivered significant volumes of both social homes and supports for affordable homes for working families and we did not have the level of crisis we face today.

I and my party do not support the creation of a new State-wide agency to finance or develop public housing . We want the local authorities to be equipped and empowered to do precisely that. I also do not accept that NAMA should have any role after its current mandate is up. I would like the surplus from NAMA to be reinvested in a variety of public infrastructure projects and housing would be one of those but that should be through the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and directly into the local authorities. I am also strongly against the Land Development Agency, LDA, having any developmental role. I actively support, and I am on public record as having done so, the LDA as having a function in the strategic management of public landbanks. That is necessary for a body with funds and powers to move land around from one State agency to another, but where land is to be developed for residential or residential and mixed use, it is the local authorities that should be in the driving seat. The LDA could partner with them as the provider of that land. The Housing Finance Agency is already in place to provide finance. It would be able to provide much more finance to local authorities if the Government would approve loan facilities, which is the major block in that respect. We do not need another financing vehicle. The Housing Agency, and people in this Chamber might have a different view, is a good agency. It does a good job but its function is to support local authorities in delivering their statutory responsibilities and to provide policy support to central government and I do not believe that should change.

What I would like to see, and this Chamber voted on a motion that almost 40 Deputies from the broad left signed and introduced on 3 October, is an immediate doubling of capital investment to deliver public housing on public land to meet social and affordable housing needs. If we did that, and it could be done by way of an emergency budget if the Government thinks money is not a problem, we could start to ramp up projects that have been a long time on the shelf waiting for investment. That should be done through local authorities and where smaller rural local authorities need additional assistance, the shared services model for procurement, quantity surveyors, architects and designers could be introduced as well.

We also need emergency measures to reduce the flow of families into homelessness. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael made it very clear they would not support the Focus Ireland amendment. I disagree but that is okay. However, they have yet to propose a credible alternative to reduce the number of families presenting as homeless every single day across this State. They have an obligation to do that if they are not willing to support propositions from the Opposition.

We also need emergency measures to constrain and reduce rents. The idea that the rent pressure zones are working is laughable. Tomorrow the Select Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government will deal with a series of amendments to the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill from both the Minister and from Opposition Deputies. While many of them are positive, more than a year ago the Minister did not support some of the amendments he is bringing forward and he has been forced into doing this because of Private Members’ Bills coming through on Second Stage. I support those measures but they will not be enough to tackle and to reduce rents.

Crucially, I seek a referendum to enshrine in the Constitution the right to housing. More than 80% of voters in the Citizens' Assembly supported such a call. The Irish Independent, again not an organisation I often quote in defence of my arguments, has publicly called for a right to housing. We need that referendum as a matter of urgency.

Those were the demands of the Raise the Roof campaign in the mobilisation outside this building on 3 October last year. They are the demands of those of us in this Camber who support that campaign. On 18 May in this city, Raise the Roof and all the political parties, community organisations and activist groups, civil society organisations and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are calling for a massive mobilisation of public support for those core housing policy demands. It is clear having listened to the Minister today that he is deaf, "tone deaf" to use the words of the Irish Independent, to the harsh realities that have been caused by the failure of Fine Gael's housing policy. Until we see tens if not hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, I am fearful that will not change and the housing crisis will continue.

I cannot support this motion but I will continue to work with colleagues who proposed it and with other colleagues until we have the kind of housing policy that meets the social and affordable housing needs of the tens of thousands of families who are being ignored, abandoned and whose lives are been made more difficult every day by Fine Gael.

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