Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the Bill and thank Sinn Féin, particularly Deputy Ó Broin, for bringing it forward. It sets out to close a loophole but that does not fully capture what has happened, with certain builders being able to avoid the 20% obligation right up to 2026 if they have bought land in the past five years and have planning permission that covers them up to 2026. As a previous speaker noted, this could mean these developers being excluded from the 20% obligation up to 2030.

I will return to the overall area of housing. I was first elected in February 2016, as were many other Deputies. Since that time, I have seen four housing Ministers, beginning with Deputy Kelly, then the Minister, Deputy Coveney, the former Deputy, Eoghan Murphy, and now the current Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. During that time I have seen two major policy documents, the first of which was Rebuilding Ireland, which had the shape of the developers and showed we had learned absolutely nothing from the financial crash, climate problems and, more recently, Covid. We simply cannot continue on the way we are going. Here we are tonight with another little piece of the jigsaw. I have seen various pieces of the jigsaw. Later this evening, I will ask a question about a review of the help-to-buy scheme. Interestingly, I, as an Independent Deputy, am asking if it is intended to phase out the scheme given the problems with it, whereas a Fianna Fáil Deputy is asking a question about keeping it going. There is a very interesting review from the Department of Finance on the scheme.

The problem is that we are dealing with homes as a commodity, something to be traded on the market. Opposition Deputies have repeatedly come forward with good ideas. We have appealed to successive Governments to declare an emergency and to be fully involved in the provision of homes for our people. That is the most basic requirement for a democracy and we have utterly failed to meet it. We have continuously misused language in the guise of social housing and cost-rental schemes. These are little pieces without an overall recognition.

Notwithstanding its very good analysis, the review by the Department of Finance utterly fails to attribute blame or consequences to the various policies that have allowed free rein to the market and created the housing crisis. The crisis did not happen by itself. A Labour Party Deputy earlier found fault with one of the speakers for not placing in context the change made by the Labour Party in 2015 when the Part V requirement was reduced from 20% to 10%. He said there were no shortage of affordable homes in 2015 and no shortage of social housing. That is complete revisionism. I was a councillor in Galway from 1999 to 2016 and the crisis started long before 2015. We stopped constructing social and public housing in 2009. No more houses were constructed afterwards. Significantly, in 2015 when the Labour Party, with Fine Gael, changed the 20% requirement to 10%, it was connected with the new housing assistance payment, HAP. People were removed from the housing waiting list if they were in receipt of HAP and told they were adequately housed. That scheme is now costing the taxpayer €1 billion per year. That is bad enough but what is worse is that the HAP is artificially keeping prices high.

There are some good things in the new policy but overall we are still reliant on the market. If there is any doubt, I will quote from the Minister’s foreword to Housing for All. He mentions the squeezed middle at least four times in two and a half pages but fails to define who makes up the squeezed middle. Let us hear who they are. They are "people who work hard and play by the rules but seem to have nothing to show for it at the end of the day." That is who this plan is for.

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