Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis continues unabated with people on average incomes essentially being locked out of the prospect of buying a home of their own and a great many people literally being bled dry by soaring housing rents. The number of people who are homeless continues to rise and, most shameful of all, there are now almost 4,000 children among this number. The cost of housing is now the single biggest driver of the high cost of living for people yet the Government continues to drag its heels in responding adequately. Throughout this crisis Fine Gael continues to pretend that the market can solve the problem. It has taken the least effective and most expensive approach to increasing housing supply. Over-reliance on the private sector has gone hand in hand with the stated objective of raising house prices. That was first made clear by the then Minister, Deputy Noonan, and continued by successive Ministers. What has mattered most to Fine Gael is the balance sheets of our disgraced banks and bailing out speculators and developers. This has taken complete precedence over what should be people's right to affordable housing. How else can the Government explain the failure to build on the substantial public landbanks that we have? How else can it explain the inordinate delay in finalising an affordable housing scheme? That scheme has been promised for years and it has yet to take effect.

A number of the larger approved housing bodies have come together to respond to this crisis and are putting it up to the Government to support them. They have capacity to provide a major social and affordable cost rental building programme commensurate with the scale of need that exists. To do so, however, they have three asks of Government. First, tier 3 approved housing bodies need to be reclassified as off-Government balance sheet in order that they can avail of funding, which is available and being offered to them on a constant basis, and which should be utilised. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has promised this but there was no timeline set out for when this will happen. It seems we are yet into another long period of promises from the Minister without any action. Failure to act on this will have a negative impact on the potential major output of social and affordable homes from this sector. Second, new and sustainable, affordable, rental and cost-rental schemes beyond the current small pilot schemes are urgently needed. Why is Fine Gael delaying the introduction of these schemes? Action is urgently needed to accelerate the availability of social and affordable homes. Third, changes to the capital advance leasing facility have caused cashflow problems for these housing bodies and these constrain output. They need to be reversed as soon as possible.

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