John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As usual, I find it hard to disagree with Deputy Fitzmaurice. He is a rock of sense. The words I do not hear coming from the Opposition Deputies in their contributions are, curiously, terms like “crisis”, “emergency” and “urgency”. I liken this to a situation where some of the Deputies in the Opposition have arrived at a burst water main. We get all this theory about what ought to be done, the materials which should be used, the professionals which ought to be sought to carry out the repairs and the theory behind the best way to repair a water mains, and yet the water is bursting out of the pipe. To continue the metaphor, what Fianna Fáil is trying to do in Government is to fix the pipe with the materials we have available now, while trying to legislate for best practice as the future begins to emerge.

The Minister will share my next perspective. Many PPPs over the years have been train wrecks and the State needs to have learned from them. Some examples have been recent, not concerning housing developments but school building projects. However, scores and hundreds of new school buildings have also been constructed throughout the country to a high standard and left in the hands of the State in very good shape to be managed in future. Regarding my experience in my area of South Dublin, which I share with Deputy Ó Broin, the biggest brake on the construction of social housing during my time as a county councillor was the Department with responsibility for housing. It was before the current Minister’s time. Deputy Kelly was the Minister with responsibility for housing when one project was announced in my area. Deputy Coveney moved the project forward when he held the housing portfolio. However, the project had still not started before Eoghan Murphy, the former Deputy and Minister, took over responsibility for housing. Three different Ministers oversaw housing as plans for this project went back and forth several times. It had started as a Part 8 development and was approved by councillors, but then the Department held it up. The builders built that development quite efficiently and people are living in those houses now.

Therefore, the State has been stung by PPPs over the years and we must be mindful of that fact. However, what the public are not being told by those proposing a public model is how long it would take to mobilise that perfect public building model. The Minister and the Deputies know there is a shortage of land. Local authorities have not been investing in public land. By the time they will be able to do so and then get that land zoned appropriately and undertake and complete the required public consultation phases, we will have been waiting years. Thankfully, a Government is in place now, heavily influenced by my party, which is beginning to make an impact. Those Deputies not from the capital probably have their minds boggled by the rents being paid in Dublin. I am also staggered by it. Rents of up to €2,500 are being paid in my constituency and even up to €3,000 for some houses which are not extravagant.

Equally, I am staggered by the amounts of money young constituents have saved in the last few years. I know a couple who moved home two years ago to save, whom I have mentioned to the Minister previously. They were fortunate. I have advocated over the last two years for young adults who have had to return home because they cannot afford rent or want to save. However, it has been pointed out to me by people close to me that I have ignored the fact that at least younger people from Dublin can return to their family homes and save, while people from any other county in Ireland who are working in Dublin do not have the opportunity to do so. This young couple returned home to one of their sets of parents and in two years they saved €55,000. Until this legislation came on the scene, I could not offer them any hope of purchasing a home in their own constituency. Increasing the affordable piece of Part V or reintroducing it gives them real hope.

I accept that the State equity scheme is not perfect but there is a demand for it. It will be oversubscribed. I do not know how we will deal with that because it will be an issue. The couple I am talking about are not wealthy. They have ordinary, great, run-of-the-mill blue-collar jobs and they have saved hard. They do not work in financial services. They are not medical consultants or financial consultants. As Charlie Haughey once said, there is no such thing as an ordinary person. These people are extraordinary in their own way and they put their minds to it. Until this legislation came along, they had no housing options.

Deputy Fitzmaurice is right that this involves a mix but we need to keep an eye on it and police it. The one thing the left never seems to have any regard for - with the greatest respect to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle - is the risk entrepreneurs take. I have a brother in the United States. He went over like in the typical American dream story. He would be typical of many businesspeople here. He barely had the seat in his trousers. He went through various different iterations of employment and eventually got to do what he had dreamed of doing, which was property development. One thing he told me has left a deep impression. He has been doing this for 20 years now and he has employed some of the same dedicated, hard-working people on and off for that 20-year period. He said to me that they look at him and expect him to keep them employed for another 20 years. That is huge pressure. Entrepreneurs take huge risks. We talk about the profit but what if their plan does not work? We never talk about that. We need enterprise and the ability to take calculated risks, though not reckless ones. A decade ago, people were reckless and banks were even more reckless. Entrepreneurs start off with the spirit of enterprise. They want to do something, they have the skills to make it happen, and they are prepared to take calculated risks to make it happen. They know that they could fail and that if they fail, they are the only ones who will face the consequences. They will have to lay off the people who believed in them but the responsible entrepreneur wants to keep them going. It is a colossal responsibility for one man or woman to keep people gainfully and productively employed for their entire lives.

I have never witnessed a local authority build public housing in my time and I became a councillor in 1999. All the local authority projects in my county were built in partnership with contracting companies. They were built to the highest standard and have created lovely, secure homes for families and children. I would love the ideal whereby we build public housing on public land. However, I do not favour a State construction company. I also did not favour Irish Water. I have come around to it due to the fact that it has taken over from 42 local authorities but I have issues with the way it delivers and its efficiency in dealing with it face to face. People on the other side of this House keep looking for the perfect. We are trying to deal with the immediate and that requires solutions that work and deliver. They need to be policed and the Minister knows that. We need to take the experiences from previous PPPs on board to ensure those things do not happen again and we must ensure our local authorities and State agencies are equipped with people as bright as those in private sector.

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