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

In the past half an hour the Cabinet has concluded its deliberations and has announced its plan to address the issue of investment funds bulk-buying family homes. Having just read the press release it is an absolute cop-out. The Government plan will do nothing to stop investment funds from bulk-buying family homes. The proposed planning changes will not apply to existing planning permissions and will not apply to future apartment developments. The tax changes are absolutely minimal and will also not apply to apartments.

What is proposed to happen is that bulk-buying of houses, duplexes and apartments that were intended for owner occupiers, whether first-time buyers or others, will continue to be snapped up by international investment funds. The people who are not able to buy those homes will then be forced to continue to rent houses, duplexes and apartments at exorbitant rates. How anybody could think that that is an adequate response to the very legitimate outpouring of anger by people enraged by the failure of successive government housing policies is really beyond me. People are going to very quickly see tonight’s announcement for the cop-out that it is.

I will reply to some of the Government’s responses to our Private Members’ motion. At the centre of this is a very simple proposition. If people want large volumes of affordable homes to rent and to buy, if the Green Party genuinely wants to see the policy that it campaigned for in its election manifesto, that is, large volumes of good quality, energy-efficient apartments in our city centre being delivered for prices people can afford to rent or buy, then there is only one way of doing that.

That is very significant increases in direct capital investment by the Government to ensure local authorities, approved housing bodies and community housing trusts can deliver those homes.

Ministers can come into the House and say as many times as they want that they believe in home ownership, affordability and fair rents, but the figures tell a very different story. Not a single affordable home to rent or buy has been delivered by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the past five years. This year, we are only going to see 530 affordable homes, 90 of which will be to buy with the remainder to rent, although some of the prices are way beyond the reach of ordinary working people. According to officials from the Department who appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage only a matter of weeks ago, next year we will only see 700 new homes through the serviced sites fund and may breach the figure of 1,000 new homes in 2023. That is not an affordable housing programme; it is an insult to the working people who desperately need affordable housing.

A similar situation pertains with the Land Development Agency. It was to be the great white hope of increasing housing supply. It recently told the Oireachtas housing committee that none of its units will be ready until 2023 and even then there will only be a few hundred. It will be 2025 before the LDA breaches the figure of 1,000 homes and by that stage, the affordable housing crisis will be even worse.

What do we need to do? We need to listen to the ESRI. Only two weeks ago, it recommended the doubling of direct capital investment in the delivery of social and affordable homes. That would mean spending this year and next year of €2.8 billion, rather than €1.4 billion. Even the International Monetary Fund has stated it is possible and necessary for the Government to commit that kind of capital investment. If it does not do so but, rather, continues to throw tiny sums, such as €35 million this year for cost rental and just €50 million for affordable purchase, at this problem, the gap between the rhetoric of the Government and the reality of people's housing needs on the ground will grow ever wider and anger will increase. Let us be clear that once Covid is over we will see mobilisation on the streets like we have not seen for decades because people will demand a very simple thing - for the political parties in government to honour the commitments they have made for years and yet failed to meet for years.

I make no apology for proposing this alternative housing proposition. The State needs to double capital investment in public housing, deliver 20,000 social and affordable homes a year for the next five years, make sure those homes are genuinely affordable, with rents below €900 and house prices below €230,000, and stop gifting and selling public land to private developers to build and sell unaffordable houses. I fully commend the motion to the House.

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