Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies on all sides for their contributions and for their support for the principles behind this motion. In particular, I thank Ms Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh, who assisted us with the drafting of the motion and the research relating to it.

There is something fundamentally wrong in a country that is in the middle of a housing crisis - which has got far worse in recent weeks - and in which there are 90,000 vacant homes. The Northern and Western Regional Assembly has identified 44,905 residential and commercial premises that are empty in the five Connacht counties and the three Border counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. This is one third higher than Ireland's total national annual housing requirement of 33,000 homes. There are whole streets in our towns and villages that have not had a football kicked in them for a generation. Some 40% of the vacant homes in the country are located in these eight counties. Many of them are vacant family homes, are close to schools and services and have 1,000 Mbps high-speed broadband outside the front door. The housing crisis is not just about the lack of houses; it is about the failure to have empty homes occupied by families, especially those in our towns and villages. In fact, if these homes were occupied, it would have an immediate dividend to the State, to rural Ireland and to homeless families. Frustratingly, I have been making this point for years. Thankfully, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has listened to the arguments that I put forward and the Government has taken my suggestions on board.

An entire section of the Housing for All strategy is focused on how we can bring families back into empty houses. However, the strategy was published last September and we are still waiting for its implementation. The Minister of State pointed out that the TCF strategy is going to help to develop this. However, there is no point me going to my clinic on Friday morning and talking to a family who have become homeless again and telling them that the Government has another plan, namely, the TCF plan. Plans are no good. We need to see action.

I will give a practical example. In County Roscommon, we have the perverse situation whereby we have a vacancy rate of 14%. There are 4,090 vacant homes in County Roscommon. There are just 12 homes for rent and 334 for sale. As a result, we have a housing crisis in the county. We have had families living in emergency accommodation because there is no door that they can go into. Yet, we have over 4,000 vacant homes in our county. Local auctioneers have waiting lists for people for rental accommodation or for those who want to buy houses in Roscommon. In east Galway, the situation is even worse because the demand is much higher and because our local villages there do not even have wastewater facilities.

The Minister of State is talking about using wetlands to deal with wastewater. We have wet streets because the raw sewage is flowing down some of the streets in east Galway at the moment and that is the situation that we are dealing with on the ground. We need to bring vacant and derelict properties back into the housing stock. This needs to happen immediately because it is an untapped supply of housing. It is there to be retrofitted and it is there to be refurbished. In many instances, the owners need innovative supports to take on these projects.

We have proposed in this motion that the help-to-buy scheme would make available €30,000 to help with the refurbishment of some of these empty homes. The Government is paying, on average, €31,000 to provide a serviced site here in Dublin, to develop privately owned land to ensure that it is opened up for development. This is a worthy initiative but if we are prepared to pay €31,000 to try to develop land in Dublin, why would we not pay something to open up derelict houses across rural Ireland?

The Minister mentioned the local authority repair-and-leasing scheme. That scheme is worthless in our part of the country. I say this because you have to have a social housing test under the scheme. There has to be a demand for social housing in the particular area before the local authority can use that scheme. The reality is that we have a housing crisis across the country. We have 44,000 houses in my neck of the woods and they are not going in under the repair and leasing scheme because there are not people in the village of Ahascragh looking for housing at the moment, or in the village of Caltra or in Ballintober. Yet, we have vacant houses there. We have people who are prepared to go in under that scheme. We need to have more flexibility in relation to it. If someone on the social housing list does not want to go into those villages, I can guarantee that there are many families here in Dublin who would be quite willing to relocate to rural Ireland if they were to be guaranteed a fixed rental charge for the next five years in the relevant community. This would release a house that can provide social housing for a family here in Dublin.

We need innovative thinking rather than the current rules and regulations that are in place. We also need to look at clustered housing, particularly for older people. Many older people are living in houses that are totally inappropriate for them in terms of the bedrooms and bathrooms located upstairs. They would like to be able to move into locations closer to town centres where they could have access to facilities. We need to provide high-quality, specialist, age-appropriate housing for older people close to existing communities and promote vibrant retirement within those communities in order that older people can enjoy healthier and longer active retirements. One thing critical to that is security of tenure. The Government is not going to get an older person to sell his or her family home and move into long-term rental accommodation unless that person knows he or she can actually afford it and that the rent will not be hiked up, as has happened in many of those facilities throughout the country in recent years. There is a responsibility on the Government to provide clarity for people in respect of that matter.

It is not just older people, however. We need to do this right across our housing stock. This is not a problem that is unique or new to Ireland. In fact, as the Ceann Comhairle will know, we had very same problem in the 1990s in terms of agricultural land. Back then, all of our land was leased on an 11-month basis. Today, approximately half of all leases relating to agricultural land are for durations of more than five years. Some of them are for up to 15 years. In agriculture, the taxation system has been reformed to incentivise long-term leasing of land for the public good. Now surely, if we can accommodate cattle, we must be able in a housing emergency to accommodate children under a similar scheme by actually providing security of tenure in terms of housing right across the country. I am not talking about giving an incentive to big landlords. They are doing very well with the current incentives. I am talking about accidental landlords with one or two houses who could lease out a house to a family for a five-, ten- or 15-year period. There would be an in-built incentive for the landlord because he or she is guaranteed income coming in over that period and it provides security of tenure for families.

The single biggest problem I have in my constituency with homelessness is people being made homeless because of an eviction notice being issued to them. Now, if there are 12 houses in County Roscommon when there are 4,000 vacant homes in the county, surely, there is something fundamentally wrong with our housing system. There is something fundamentally wrong when I have people in emergency accommodation in my county because there is no rental accommodation available. If we could provide security of tenure, it might act as an incentive for some of these houses to be opened up again. It might act as an incentive for some of the accidental landlords not to sell that property, enter into a long-term lease and provide security to those particular families.

We are also calling on the Government to implement a 0% long-term loan scheme for retrofitting homes and domestic microgeneration. These loans would be paid back through the savings made on people's energy bills. Rebuilding Ireland has failed to meet the annual target it set and is now running 41,000 units below its overall goal. The Government needs to think creatively on innovative ways to provide homes. It is now time to make use of our existing housing stock and resources and provide roofs for homeless families right across this country.

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