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

Last year Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil promised this House a housing budget. The Minister for Finance said affordable housing was one of his priorities, while Deputy Micheál Martin claimed he had secured additional investment in affordable housing and fast-tracked delivery of social housing. A year on how has that budget worked out? The level of homelessness has risen for children, pensioners and adults. Rents in urban centres have gone up to astronomically unaffordable levels, while house prices remain out of reach for workers on modest incomes. Fine Gael ditched the fast-track social housing plan only a few weeks ago as reckless. Zero affordable housing has been delivered under any central government scheme this year, whether to rent or buy. The number of house completions remains well below the Rebuilding Ireland target and while the number of planning permissions is up, developers are taking advantage of the fast-track planning process and delaying the commencement of building.

By every single measure, the housing crisis is much worse today than it was last year. There is not much stability for people trapped in insecure or unaffordable accommodation, contrary to what we have heard this evening. So much for Leo and Micheál's housing budget. Things have got so bad in the past 12 months that one would think housing would have been one of the priorities, if not the only priority, of the budget presented to the Oireachtas this week. After all, it is the number one matter of public concern. That is not just my opinion. Every opinion poll in the past 12 months has confirmed it. Last October a Red C opinion poll conducted for The Sunday Business Postindicated that 73% of voters for all parties felt budget 2019 did not do enough to address the housing crisis. In January this year an Ireland Thinks poll conducted for the Daily Mailindicated that 43% of people ranked housing as their single biggest concern, twice as high as any other issue. Last year Eurobarometer conducted a survey for the European Commission which indicated that 54% of people ranked housing as their number one issue, significantly higher than all others, yet despite the depth of the crisis and the public clamour for action, budget 2020 offers nothing new to address this problem. For struggling renters, aspiring first-time buyers and those in need of social and affordable housing there are no new initiatives. Perhaps that explains the low key nature of the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government's press conference this morning on the budget. Unusually for his Department and unlike his colleagues, it was not even streamed live on MerrionStreet.ie. No additional detail was provided beyond the information we were given yesterday; it was a deeply uncomfortable Minister avoiding tough questions from journalists and none of us was any the wiser at the end of it.

According to the budget announced yesterday, the number of real social housing units will remain well below the 10,000 unit target to be owned by local authorities and approved housing bodies as recommended by the all-party Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness in 2016. Just 8,500 real social housing units will be added to the stock of local authorities and approved housing bodies next year. This is in stark contrast to the 19,000 rental accommodation supplement, RAS, and housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies the Government will try to fund next year. They are expensive, short-term insecure tenancies in the private rental sector that are bad for social housing tenants and the taxpayer. One of the remarkable features of the budget for next year is that it will be the first time we will see more money going to subsidise private rental tenancies through the HAP, RAS and rent supplement schemes than we are giving to local authorities to directly build or buy social homes. A total of €800 million will go to the local authorities, but more than that figure will be spent in subsidising insecure private sector tenancies. These subsidies will dramatically increase the demand for rental properties. That will push up the price and the big losers will be people on modest incomes, mainly young people, who are not eligible for social housing support and will be squeezed even harder whether they are in or trying to access private rental accommodation.

There was no increase in the funding for affordable housing over what was announced last year. The Minister confirmed at his press conference this morning that not a single affordable unit to rent or buy would become available next year and that only a small portion of the cost rental pilot units would be available in 2021. The Government will claim that the help-to-buy scheme will help first-time buyers. Thankfully, however, the Parliamentary Budget Office has produced a report that states that to date 40% of the people who availed of the scheme did not need it. They had a 10% deposit, including those who were buying homes for between €400,000 and €500,000. Much of the money has not gone to people who are desperate to get onto the property ladder.

The extra €20 million allocated for homeless services is a stark admission of failure. The Government has resigned itself to the fact that homelessness will continue to rise next year. This is a status quobudget. Given that the status quois an ever deteriorating housing crisis, that means that in 2020 the situation will continue to get worse, but it could have been different. The Government could have made better choices, for example, by doubling capital investment in public housing. It could have used the money to deliver 17,000 real social and affordable homes. It could have introduced a rent freeze for struggling renters and a refundable tax credit to put a month's rent back into their pockets. It could have more ambitious targets for housing, first, to tackle homelessness or Traveller-specific accommodation, but it chose not to do anything because it has no vision or ambition and no desire to give workers and their families a break. Instead, Fine Gael, slavishly followed by its friends in Fianna Fáil, will continue to implement a failed housing policy. The Government could have decided to make the provision of appropriate, secure and affordable accommodation its priority in budget 2020. That it chose not to do so is a damning indictment of this Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Government and budget 2020, which is why it should be opposed.

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