Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis is at the top of the Government's agenda. We now have to apply the same cross-governmental approach we applied to Covid to housing because it is the real crisis of our time, particularly for young people. The Government is committed to doing everything we can to meet this crisis. It is a multifaceted problem. There is not one simple cure-all solution that will get us out of this. We will require a range of different initiatives. It will be in the delivery of social housing, the delivery of accommodation that people buy and the delivery of rental accommodation, particularly new solutions such as cost rental, that will meet the various needs of various people. More than anything else, we need to do this so our younger people have a chance to set up home in a viable way. An apartment home is absolutely just as important as a house, if not more important because we want, as the Deputy said, to bring back compact development close to the centre of cities and towns so people can live in a sustainable way that creates a good sense of community. Those apartments and flats are just as important as any other community.

How do we do this? In some instances, it will be through the €3.3 billion budget for direct spend by the public sector in social housing. This will give us a lever and control to be able to go flat out on this and build as many homes as we can as quickly as possible. We must also recognise, in truth, that one of the real constraints and problems is the availability of the construction sector to build houses and, at the same time, build the transport system and water, health and education infrastructure, carry out retrofitting and meet the other needs we have. We have huge demand and we will spend a lot of money on capital investment. Having workers with training and skills is one of the key issues.

We will also need agencies such as the Land Development Agency, and I understand the Land Development Agency Bill 2021 is on Committee Stage. This will mean the State will build not just social housing in the traditional model but new housing that is affordable for purchase and affordable cost rental housing. That will be key to the role of the Land Development Agency. The role of other Departments will be to provide State lands to allow the Land Development Agency to provide the cost rental solutions that give security of tenure at affordable rents and will build up the apartment as a home concept.

There is also a role for the private sector. The ESRI's housing needs demand study does not have set targets but makes an indicative case, similar to what the Central Bank has set out, that we need 33,000 houses a year, with one third social housing, one third rental and one third for purchase. The Government may have slightly different figures. We need solutions in these areas also.

The financing in this regard was put in place to help the building sector provide some of those houses for purchase and or rent. Another part of the problem we have, as well as the shortage of building workers, is that we do not have a financing system that is fit for purpose. We are down to two main banks and the legacy of the housing crash is that our basic funding mechanisms for development and construction are not working. The market is not working. We need that type of intervention, among many other initiatives, to get the balanced range of solutions we need. If we present it as though there is one easy fit if only there was political will to do it, that would not be honest and neither would it be accurate in terms of what the problem is. The problem is multifaceted and needs a range of solutions, including the ability of various agencies to make sure that we have the development finance to ensure that a range of different properties are built.

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