Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille seo. Tá sé riachtanach ach cuireann sé faitíos orm freisin mar, go minic, bunaítear rialaitheoirí agus bíonn rudaí réasúnta ag an dtús agus ansin tosaíonn na riachtanais páipéir ag méadú agus ní dhéantar aon idirdhealú idir bheag agus mhór.

I welcome the Bill, but I have a concern about regulators. Unlike many Members, I do not think that everything that is independent is necessarily good. When something is independent, whom is it independent of? What we mean to say is that it is independent of this House. I have no problem with that for individual cases. However, I have problems when the House stands back and the regulator of an entire sector starts acting in a way that is not in the public interest. We have seen this with the water regulator where Irish Water is now charging €20,000 for 100 m of pipe to one house, which is unreasonable. Of course, nobody will pull the regulator up because we will be told that the regulator is independent.

Independence in dealing with individual cases is no problem. On big policy issues regulators should not run the State; we are elected to do that, and we should never cede that power. Ultimately in terms of the overall policy and how it is working and reporting, it is important that it is answerable to the Minister. If it is answerable to the Minister, it is answerable to us because otherwise we cannot get at what is happening.

There are some large multinational AHBs and some small local housing bodies in a small parish fulfilling a local need. I live in such a parish where we have a cluster of eight houses under the auspices of a local AHB and there is never any big issue. It is a voluntary committee in the truest sense of volunteerism. None of the people running the little scheme gets any payment. One of the great mistakes regulators make is that they regulate those small entities with the same level of bureaucracy and red tape that they regulate a multimillion euro business. I hope that point is taken on board and nailed down.

It was a major consideration and concern of mine when we were introducing the charities regulator that a small charity would not be regulated like a big charity. I do not know if that has fully worked but it is a concern I have generally with regulation. We seem to have lost a sense of proportionality. Any damage a one-off AHB with eight, ten or 15 houses might do if it ran amok is quite different from a multimillion euro professional organisation with professional management. The capacity of smaller bodies to comply with unnecessary paper regulation might not be great, but their ability to deal with the needs of people is first class.

There is very interesting recent phenomenon in this country from which many legal people and accountants are making a fortune. I can never understand it. The European Union and EUROSTAT make regulations and then all the people in the EU try to find out how to get around these regulations. A massive industry has built up around making the regulation and then getting around the regulation. In this case, it is time we got around the EUROSTAT regulation and got it off-balance sheet. However, is there something wrong with the world that all the countries in Europe have to unwind a European regulation. Why was it put in place in the first place if we all spend money paying experts to unwind it again by getting it off-balance sheet? Obviously if we get it off-balance sheet, it allows us to build more houses. With that caveat and that nonsense of the modern world I will move on.

We have a housing crisis the likes of which I have never seen in my life in politics. Every week I have the finest of decent people coming to my office to discuss housing, particularly in the city. The term "homelessness" is unfortunate. Most people associate homelessness with somebody sleeping on the streets. It seems that the wealthier a society is, the more people seem to sleep on the streets. That is something we need to examine because it seems that in wealthy societies, we also have great poverty living cheek-by-jowl. One of the problems of the modern so-called great economy is that the gap between rich and poor is widening, and it is everybody for themselves.

There are also what I call the hidden homeless. The people who are technically homeless may be in bed and breakfasts. They may be staying with a family in an overcrowded situation. They are in all sorts of unstable and uncertain circumstances, which do not provide the most important thing, particularly where families are involved - a family home. Why do I say they are invisible? It is not what most people imagine when we talk about homelessness. It is totally tragic. These are people who do not need significant social supports; all they need is permanent accommodation.

I might be old-fashioned because I still believe that the stability of a society if we are looking to the future is measured by family stability and what creates family stability is permanent tenancy or ownership. The model where the vast majority of families and people own their houses is far superior to any renting or letting system. We will see the fallout of the move away from that concept in the future.

One of my concerns about AHBs is that they are not allowed to sell the houses to the tenants. I know economists will argue about this, but it is fine for economists to argue because they own their own houses. The reality is that most people aspire to own their houses. When they get to own their houses, they tend to look after them very well. Any of us who ever went into the housing estates where houses have been purchased, we will always have a good idea which houses were purchased. I believe it is a social value in society that is well worth the price to allow for ownership of houses. I do not agree with the modern trend that suggests that is old hat because it is done differently somewhere else.

I have tabled one parliamentary question at regular intervals. I do not know if the Minister of State ever has an opportunity to read the replies given to me. I keep asking when the review of the 2016 tenant incremental purchase scheme will be published and when the Department will revise the scheme. It was designed to fail and the small numbers attracted to the scheme indicate it has failed. Someone may be living in a local authority house with a net valuation of €80,000 after a reduction. Even if they can put the €80,000 on the table in cash, under the rules of scheme they cannot buy the house.

The argument I would make to whoever dreamt of that one is that these people have been paying rent every week and would be able to maintain their house, keep it painted and mend a leaky roof. I have seen cases where the people could have paid to buy the house but were not allowed to do it. The reasons given often stretch credulity. I do not believe that people should be borrowing money beyond their capacity. Therefore if the Government said, irrespective of the source of the funding as long as the person is satisfied it will last into the future, they could borrow up to a certain amount, depending on the price of the house, otherwise they would have to prove they had the resources to pay the balance, that would be very rational. That is the same for anybody who borrows money to buy a house. If they have 100% of the cash they just buy it, no question, no problem. If they have only 30% of the net price they have to prove how they will pay the 70% but in all cases, if they borrowed the money at 3% the repayment would be less than the rent they were paying yet still they cannot buy. There is a great value in ownership. It is time a decision was made on that and that this Dáil was informed of the decision. I hope there will be a radical reform of that scheme to make it work because it has not worked.

Housing is an utter nightmare. I cannot believe the bureaucracy involved in dealing with local authorities or approved housing bodies. To extend a house worth over €100,000 or €125,000 a person has to go back to the Department to get permission. Why would the Department officials think that engineers and administrators, who went to the same colleges as they did, are so incompetent while they are so competent? If a person wants to do anything with an approved housing body they must go back I think four times, as must local authorities doing big schemes. That was the way for years when a county council wanted to do something about water and sewerage it had to keep going back to the Department for permission. Can the Minister of State remember those days? No doubt he was on the local authority and tearing his hair out, asking why the officials were not given the money at the beginning of the year and let get on with the job because they would be audited at the end of the year and have to account to the Government for the gross spend. Instead, the local authority has to go back to the Department at every step. Suddenly Irish Water was set up, is given all the money on 1 January and is told to spend it and does not have to go back at all. Why does the Government now trust officials, many of whom came from the local authorities, in Irish Water but did not trust them when they were working for the local authority? If the local authority staff are so untrustworthy they should be abolished and somebody trustworthy put in their place. I do not believe they are untrustworthy. I think it is just a part of the control freak syndrome that Governments have always been party to in respect of local authorities but never with the semi-State bodies they have set up.

To use the old saying, some people see things and say why and others see things that never were and say why not. I am saying to the Minister of State why not say we will give you the money at the beginning of the year. It is up to the councillors to make sure that it is well looked after and it is up to the officials to make sure the spend is in accordance with the guidelines and answerable to the auditor, just as for any other body. If the Government did that and let them get on, it would immediately speed up the building of houses in this country because much of the time it is not a lack of money that is holding us up, it is incessant bureaucracy.

We have an unprecedented housing crisis. In Galway city it is getting worse by the day because people are moving in and there is more home formation in all the guises, from singles to families, but this particularly weighs heavily on families. Private and public houses are being built in the city. There are no affordable houses. It is short of private houses. A person cannot get anything through the housing assistance payment, HAP, and even those who want to buy a house are paying escalating prices. The local authority is building very few houses. It is way behind the increase that has occurred in the past ten years. The national figures paint a very sad picture. Between 2004 and 2010, 33,705 local authority houses were built but between 2011 and 2017, 7,421 were built. The Minister of State might say that approved housing body houses are being built, but 10,542 were built between 2004 and 2010 and 4,809 between 2011 and 2017. I find it impossible to understand why it is so hard in this country to respond to crises and to do anything anymore. We need to consider the logjams because in many cases money is not the problem. The Government has often assured us that the money is available. If it is we have to consider what processes we have in place, including referral to the Department and planning processes that are failing to deliver.

Perfection is a very fine thing in life but it is also the enemy of getting anything done in the real, human world. I guarantee the Minister of State that the people I meet every week, one after another, those who ring me all the time - it would break your heart - families where there is someone with a disability who need a house rapidly with downstairs facilities, would settle for the job being done rather than eternal perfection such that nothing would ever go wrong. If the Minister of State was living in a hostel or a bed and breakfast he would be saying get on and give me a house or an apartment or a place that I could permanently could call home.

See this speech in context