Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We are here today in different circumstances. I believe I have entered the Dáil in a time of great change and where unity is required. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge how truly honoured and proud I am to be the first Green Party Deputy to represent the community of Dublin South-West. I sincerely thank the voters for my mandate and the opportunity to effect change. I also applaud and commend all party leaders and their health spokespersons for the decisive actions and the leadership they have shown. In this crisis, we are witnessing, albeit quietly, a unity of purpose. We are in a period of extreme change, one which is bringing huge challenges for this country's people and services. Today, we will pass legislation that will protect renters who live in more than one quarter of our national housing stock and protect anyone who during this crisis might be at the risk of eviction. The Green Party fully endorses and welcomes the moratorium on evictions and welcomes the interim stimulus packages for those in the workforce who have recently lost their jobs. However, we contend that rent supplement reviews must be suspended in line with the other moratoriums being considered here today. We also call for tenants to be afforded supplementary funding to meet their payments where they have been made redundant.

It has taken a health crisis to implement a rent freeze. The Green Party is encouraged by this decision, supported by all parties, illustrating that no Government policy or positions are immutable. It should not be forgotten that the rental market is out of control. The National Economic and Social Council, NESC, reported in 2014 on this type of housing crisis. It pointed to the open market not being able to provide the stable environment for the provision of homes that people desperately need. Strategic housing developments, SHDs, are not innocent as they have failed to fulfil their remit to fast-track housing for our communities. Instead, they line the pockets of institutional investors using the system to construct build-to-rent units which prohibit people from buying in their own neighbourhoods. The State should not be complicit in these housing models, which only serve to create transient workforces instead of sustainable communities.

The State is currently making vital housing assistance payments, HAP. However, these payments are now meeting the cost of a mortgage. The State is fuelling the market by competing with the private sector by paying out approximately €700 million last year in rent subsidies. This has to stop. This money should be invested in public housing which the State would own in the long term. Some 35,000 houses could be built with this money over ten years.

Change is the solution. The State has to weigh in to provide cost rental, affordable purchase and social housing units en masse. The market is only interested in profit. The State, however, has a duty to provide and to protect its citizens with an affordable, stable housing environment. The institutional investment housing schemes are purposely keeping units vacant to ensure high rents. A vacant unit levy is required to open the units to the rental market.

The Green Party is also acutely aware of the crisis in our rural towns where the hearts of urban centres are lifeless due to bad zoning and commercial planning decisions. We need a town centre-first policy where we bring back people into our towns and villages and revive these cultural habitats with sustainable communities.

My father used to say that one left one's pride at the gate when entering his house. This is what we should be doing in this House. Party pride has no place in the Oireachtas. When a health crisis of this magnitude is meeting us face on, such pride should be left at the gates of this House. On the first sitting of the Thirty-third Dáil, I was humbled by the discourse of Deputies who spoke of their individual mandates that went beyond party affiliation. We all have personal moral responsibility. As many said that day, we must seek the balance of that responsibility between duty to our constituents and our party policy platforms.

The past is the past. Today the present is a harsh reality. Parties should today now consider the fundamental needs of the people they represent, the need for security in their homes, for bread on their tables and for the safety of their loved ones. People need to work together to shape a future that will be welcoming and not fearful, a future which includes and a future that does not sacrifice local needs for the financial gain of hidden and unknown others. Partisan politics will wait until we get over the other side. Only then can we begin to consider a return to politics as normal.

See this speech in context