Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I will focus on one of the major issues affecting people right now which is the lack of houses. It is incomprehensible that given the length and depth of the housing crisis in Ireland the building of homes in this country is currently deemed non-essential. Hundreds of people have died in homelessness on the streets of our towns and cities over the last number of years. Many more will lose their lives over the next number of years if this Government does not get serious with the building of family homes. The building of homes has been disrupted massively by Covid-19 and construction is practically non-existent in 2021. Every week that sites are closed, some 800 homes are not built. I ask the Minister to think about that. This is 10,000 houses that have not been built this year. This is 10,000 homes. At the same time Focus Ireland states that there are 8,313 people who are homeless in the State. That we cannot join the dots between the massive need that exists in the State and the provision of homes is incredible.

The cessation of construction will decimate the supply of properties in an already under-supplied housing market. Failure to reopen the construction sector will lead to an increase in rents, an increase in house prices and an increase in homelessness. It will also lead to increased deaths in the future and all the misery that entails. There is already an under-supply of all forms of housing. Continuing the Government's blanket lockdown in this area is, in my view, nonsensical. I have spoken to workers in the sector. There is an abject fear that jobs and livelihoods will continue to be lost and that it will be very difficult to rejuvenate or kick-start the sector again in the future.

The Government needs to be forensic. We need to make sure to protect workers and protect every single person who works on a building site, but we have a situation where the State is allowing for social housing to be built, which I welcome. How is the building of a private house any more dangerous than the building of a social house? The truth of the matter is that all of those houses go into the same pot of housing supply. They all affect the rents, the house prices and the ability for people to get homes.

Contrast this State's attitude towards the blanket banning of construction and that of Germany. Ireland has had nearly 190 days of lockdown, which is more than any other EU country. Ireland is an outlier in this. No other Government in the European Union has tackled Covid with a complete reliance on blanket lockdowns. They have used other tools and have allowed for forensic restrictions to exist so that issues of real importance, such as home building, can happen. A brickie, a plasterer or a chippy can work outside on a house, or maybe in a well-ventilated house that has not yet got its windows. They can work together in small, well-organised bubbles to make sure they get the job done in a safe manner. We need to make sure that we get back to this very shortly.

Of course we must be conscious of the threat of Covid, but it is an incredible situation that in my Meath constituency people who are single are waiting 12, 13, 14 and 15 years on the housing list for a home. How can it be right for any human being to apply for a home at 45 years old and possibly get a home when he or she is 62 or 63? It does not make sense at all. It shows that we need to get real about building homes in Ireland. We 100% need to protect people on construction sites. There is no doubt that those who have underlying health issues, or who have vulnerable people at home, should be allowed to stay at home. Ignoring the warning signs in the housing sector will have enormous consequences for those hundreds of thousands of people who are in severe housing distress today. The Government needs to get forensic with how it handles this.

I will turn now to how the Government has been dealing with the vulture funds over the past number of years. The vulture funds have had massive access into the Department of Finance. They have paid very little tax in Ireland. They have been allowed to distort the housing market. We have large international companies buying up lots of stock in the rental market, thereby having massive control over the rates and rents. We need to make sure this power is taken from them. We need to equalise the system so that families who need to pay rent to get a home can pay a rent that is not excessive so they are not in danger of being thrown out on their ear.

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