Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt this policy document, Housing for All, will be the Minister's political legacy, whether it is delivered. His reputation and success will rest on it, as I am sure he recognises.

That is how important this document is and, as the Minister said, how important it is for this Government. I have a different view. I have no doubt the Minister is going to build houses. Fianna Fáil builds houses. It has the relationships with the people to build houses. Our concerns are how affordable they will be, the reliance on the private sector and what the Minister will do for renters. These are issues we and our spokesperson on housing, Senator Moynihan, have raised numerous times with the Minister since his appointment, under the legislation he already brought forward in advance of Housing for All in respect of the Land Development Agency and the affordable housing scheme.

I will outline the areas where we have issues. We believe a fundamental flaw in Housing for All is that there is no definition of affordability. It will not come as a surprise to the Minister that we have this issue, as we have articulated it for well over a year now. It has not been included in the Affordable Housing Act and there is no indication from the Minister that it is something the Government is willing to confront. The advice of experts appearing before the housing committee is that affordability be specifically defined as a third of a person's income. Senator Moynihan put forward amendments in this respect for previous legislation but they were not accepted. Housing for All provides for a variety of different affordable purchase schemes, together with cost rental, but does not provide an underpinning legal definition of what constitutes a so-called affordable home for the success of these schemes.

The success of these schemes is not whether the roof is built over somebody's head, but how affordable it will be for the people who will be under it. There are people who will scrimp and save and get into the home, but who will then struggle month on month and if another economic crash hits, and it does not have to be as severe as the last one, they will lose everything. That is where the success of an affordable housing scheme will be truly measured. That is a key concern, and it is not a political point-scoring concern. This is a fundamental concern for the Labour Party. The market cannot be allowed to dictate what it means for something to be affordable. It is in the interests of the market not to care for people. The market does not care for people; it cares for the bottom line. The market is not going to find a natural affordable rate. It is always going to pursue profit, and that is never going to change.

There is a reliance on the private sector to deliver. The reality is that there are developers who are sitting on land. The Minister knows from the constituency both of us share that in the past ten years developers have been sitting on large tracts of land waiting for the value to increase. If they decide to develop on the land, they develop it piece by piece. The first phase will be released at a particular price. The second phase will be released €25,000 dearer. In the next year, the third phase will be released with another €25,000 or €30,000 on top of that. That is what the private sector does. There is nothing in this document that is going to mitigate that practice. They have the State by the proverbials on this, given the amount of land banks they own in key areas such as Fingal that will be needed to solve the housing crisis. Fingal is the youngest county in the State, with young people, older people seeking to downsize and people who have separated needing to buy homes. They are looking at these land banks and waiting for the developers to deliver. The developers are not going to do it until it is profitable for them to do so. There is nothing in this document that assuages our concerns in that regard.

There are 400,000 people renting in this country. That is a huge number of people who really need support. There remains a massive imbalance of power between renters and landlords. The Minister spoke favourably last week about our tenant rights Bill in the name of Deputy Bacik, but he appeared to focus on issues relating to the quality of rental accommodation and not the security of tenure, which is ultimately the bedrock on which renters' rights are based. That is something the Minister has to address, and we do not have confidence it is addressed in the Housing for All document.

The Minister mentioned that housing is the first priority for this Government, and it should be. However, where housing and big infrastructure projects intersect, will the infrastructure projects fall aside? I refer to MetroLink and the example of the Fosterstown lands in Swords. Thousands of units will be developed in Fosterstown. When I was a councillor, I, the Fianna Fáil councillors and other councillors engaged with our constituents and told them this plan had to go through because MetroLink was going to be delivered on the back of it. Those units are going to be built, but MetroLink is going to be delayed. Optimistically, it is going to be delayed but most people now believe it will never happen. The Minister is aware of the traffic congestion. What happens then? We need transport. There are many parts of this city and of other cities and parts of the country that have no transport infrastructure. To build and deliver houses on already zoned lands without the promised ambitious, much-needed, climate-friendly transport infrastructure is a betrayal. We are still suffering from the lack of that development when Fianna Fáil was last in power and built a rake of houses.

As I said, I believe houses will be built. The Government has the relationships to build those houses, and many people may end up with a roof over their heads. However, it may not be affordable and may be a struggle for many. I believe it will be. We are back to where we were previously, whereby a few people will get very wealthy and will profit from housing development in this country while the very many who fund that profit and those riches will be struggling each week, month and year to ensure the roof remains above their heads and that they are not sunk again by another economic or housing crisis. I hope that does not happen, but our concern is that it will.

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