Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Is mór an trua nach bhfuil aon Aire anseo chun éisteacht linn, i mo thuairim. Tá sé dochreidte nach bhfuil aon duine anseo ag éisteacht linn agus le mo chomrádaí, an Teachta Eoin Ó Broin, a chuir an PMB os ár gcomhair anseo.

The arguments Fianna Fáil and the Greens made against co-living while in opposition were valid then and are valid now. I have no argument with their assessment that co-living is both grotesque and inhumane and is, in the main, profit-driven. There has been a housing crisis in Ireland for many years, irrespective of which Government was in place. The housing crisis is a reflection of the poor housing policies that have been in place for decades and of each Government's over-reliance on the private sector to solve the housing problem.

It seems now that the new remedy for solving crisis, the response to years of failures in our broken housing system, is co-living. The reality behind this new thinking is, however, that it is an unfortunate reflection of the true state of housing in Ireland, in that there is a total lack of supply of affordable and quality housing. This is not necessarily going to change with co-living developments. Such developments have adversely affected land prices by grossly inflating them because of the perceived potential for high returns for such developments. In a study on co-living, one English academic described it as purely a new way for developers to squeeze profit from an already broken housing market. This seems to perfectly describe the current situation in Ireland. I believe that co-living will also have a negative impact on society, both on social cohesion and on the development of communities. Co-living is being touted as a solution to the housing crisis but it is just a cynical attempt to cash in on it. We do not need overpriced co-living developments to solve the housing or rental crises. The solution is to build more social and affordable housing. Government Members should support this Bill and not make lame excuses about breaking the rules and how there are constitutional reasons which prevent them from supporting this. Government Deputies in the past indicated that they would support this and have described it in the manner I have.

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