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

There will be a protest by the Raise the Roof campaign at 1 p.m. this Saturday starting on Parnell Square. The campaign includes People Before Profit, many of the other Opposition parties, almost all of the trade unions and almost all of the housing non-government organisations, NGOs. We hope we will all come together along with tens of thousands of people to appeal to this Government to abandon its failed policies for dealing with the housing and homelessness emergency. The housing crisis is inflicting shameful hardship on the tens of thousands of people affected and stealing the future from a whole generation of young and working people. They can never hope to pay the extortionate rents being charged in the private market or afford the extortionate house prices being charged in that same market.

Average house prices in Dublin are now more than ten times the salary of an average worker. House prices in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown are now 15 to 16 times higher than the average salary of a worker. Rents have gone up by 42%. We are at the point now where one in five people is paying more than 40% of income in rent and one in ten is paying more than 60% of income in rent. The real scandal is with the housing assistance payment scheme, HAP. The scheme has totally failed as a supposed substitute for council housing. An incredible 50% of those on the HAP scheme are paying top-ups in excess of the money they receive because of extortionate rents. In my area, 70% of people on HAP are paying top-ups to landlords and they are being told to use their children's allowance payments to make up the difference. The number of children in homeless accommodation has gone up by 247% since this Government came into office. It is shameful.

The Raise the Roof campaign is asking the Government to at least double the budget for the direct construction of council housing and affordable housing on public land. We have not had a single affordable house and the number of directly built council houses last year was just over 800. Including purchases, regenerations and similar actions, the total comes to 4,000 houses. More than 100,000 families, probably 250,000 people, are on the housing lists, with some waiting for ten or 15 years. In addition, there are those who have been knocked off the housing lists because their income is considered too high, despite being too low to rent or buy in this extortionate market. The Government is offering them nothing. What other choice do these people have but to come onto the streets in their tens of thousands to demand a change of policy or to get rid of this Government? We could then bring in a Government that will actually deliver the basic right to have a secure and affordable roof over the heads of our citizens.

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