Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Government will have been in power for nine years come February. In that time, the housing crisis has become incrementally worse. If the Government was a business or any sort of commercial enterprise, it would be run out of town. However, we are not talking about a business but about people who have to endure a homelessness crisis that has been compounded by various phenomena and successive Governments. It is not a natural phenomenon for 10,000 people to be homeless. It is the most unnatural phenomenon one can comprehend. More than 10,000 people do not have a house.

They are in emergency accommodation. It is quite incredible. A mantra has echoed around this Chamber that we cannot make the same mistakes of the past. I find that hard to get my head around. The mistakes of the past involved us building public housing on a massive scale, which has largely been very successful. It gave working people a house to call their own and has been transformative. I find it hard to comprehend how this could be considered a mistake.

The Taoiseach goes on about how it is not about ideology, but it is. Why would the Government want to sell public land to private developers when we have the greatest housing crisis in the history? Think about it. It does not make sense. If we have a crisis, one would think that we would build rental, affordable and public housing on public land rather than sell it to private developers. It is hard to understand.

The Government has also created the conditions compounding this crisis, particularly around vulture funds and property speculators. Other issues around people accessing council housing involve income thresholds. Income thresholds are far too low. Many people want to access public housing but cannot. They are discriminated against because they work. The thresholds should be far higher. I would go as far as to say that people earning €80,000 or €100,000 should be able to access public housing if they wish. There should be no barrier to that.

I do not know if the Minister knows of a man named George Clarke, who is a presenter and architect. He is running a really good campaign in Great Britain around council housing. He was brought up in a council house in the 1970s. A total of one million people are on the waiting list for council housing there. The right to buy scheme has seen millions of council houses sold off without being replaced. He said "we desperately need a new generation of well-designed, genuinely affordable council houses for those in most need". He says that "in 1919, the Government’s 'Addison Act' gave local councils the power to build thousands of new homes across Britain after the First World War" so this is something that goes back 100 years in Great Britain, which has a significant history of building public housing. At the same time, we have a tradition in this country where it is normal for 10,000 people to be homeless. This policy is a complete failure. It is to be hoped the general election in the new year will see the end of this Administration.

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