Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

To delete all words after “calls on the Government to:” and substitute with:

“— merge the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the Housing Agency, Housing Finance Agency and the Land Development Agency and all their land, resources and assets to establish a State-owned housing construction company, which will work with local authorities and other State and semi-State agencies to produce social and affordable housing on publicly-owned land;

— allocate €5 billion from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to the Irish housing construction company;

— allocate annual payments of €500 million to the Irish housing construction company rather than to the so-called ‘rainy day fund’;

— establish a State-led public housing fund in the Central Bank of Ireland, to allow credit unions to invest some or all of their approximately €14 billion in savings, so that this money can be used by the Irish housing construction company to develop social housing and affordable public housing;

— create through these means a fund of no less than €16 billion which can be invested to develop at least 80,000 units of social housing and affordable public housing on publicly-owned land over the next five years;

— immediately cease the sale or transfer of any and all publicly-owned land whether owned by local authorities, State or semi-State agencies;

— establish a retrofitting scheme, to ensure that all local authority housing is brought up to a high-energy rating in terms of good insulation and energy efficiency;

— raise the requirement to sell housing units at cost to the local authority under Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 from 10 per cent to 20 and 30 per cent in strategic development zones, and allow local authorities to choose which land or units to purchase at cost and ensuring in the case of purchase, the public homes are of the same standard and quality as the homes in the rest of the development and further empowering local authorities to impose severe penalties and sanctions on any private developer who shows evidence of land hoarding;

— support the development of housing co-operatives;

— immediately abolish the income eligibility thresholds for social housing so that people of all incomes can apply for social housing in order to ensure real social mix and to end the stigma around social housing;

— dramatically increase the supply of social and affordable (including cost rental) housing by increasing capital spending on housing to €2.3 billion;

— prioritise the delivery of public housing on public land, and aggressively target the return of vacant houses to active use;

— ensure local authorities are fully-funded and staffed to carry out this ambitious public house building programme, as local authorities are best placed to democratically deliver social and affordable housing need;

— reduce the flow of adults and children into homelessness with emergency legislation to make it illegal for landlords, banks and investment funds to evict tenants and homeowners in mortgage distress into homelessness;

— provide real security of tenure and introduce an emergency rent freeze and measures to reduce the cost of rent;

— introduce a target for ending long-term homelessness and the need to sleep rough; and

— hold a referendum to enshrine the Right to Housing in the Constitution of Ireland.”

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