Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I welcome and support the motion. As with pretty much every other public service in this country, there is a disgraceful lack of timely access to adequate home adaptation grants for older people and those with disabilities. As has been stated repeatedly, there are thousands of people in dire need of immediate home adaptations who have been waiting months, and even years, to have their applications processed. This is a misery for people. I deal with individuals who absolutely need these adaptations. They are unable to get them and are unable to live comfortably in their own homes as a result.. When they have their applications processed, finding a contractor is often impossible. What grants are available for them are too little and too late.

We can see already the same story repeating itself in terms of the Government's retrofitting scheme. It is the same sort of approach and it results in the same sort of problems - onerous inefficient lengthy means-tested grant applications and then a total reliance on outsourcing to an already overloaded understaffed private sector. This means that in the sphere of retrofitting, meeting any targets for emissions reductions will be next to impossible.

What lies beneath this? Why does this happen in what is the fifth richest country in the world on the basis of GDP per capita? What are the root causes and what are the solutions? One obvious cause is the chronic underfunding of local authorities to carry out this work. When Government funding for a service is inadequate, it leads to a rationing of that service by State agencies in response. In other countries, that might happen only during wartime when there are genuine shortages and they must engage in rationing. In the neoliberal capitalist Ireland of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with a Government supported by many of the Independents who signed this motion, wartime rationing is effectively a permanent fact of life. Rationing in response to an artificial shortage is what is happening with housing adaptation grants, just as it is happening with healthcare, public housing, third level education and all the other essential services that we should have universal access to as a human right.

The Government now has two favourite methods of rationing. The first is the never-ending waiting list whereby thousands of people are forced to wait for months and years for vital public services in the hope that they either die first or give up and go private. These are two long-established and proven ways for the HSE to reduce waiting lists. The second is means testing to thin out the queue of people deemed eligible for a public service. It is a bit like going down a queue and saying to every second or third person that he or she is out of the queue. Providing inadequate grants does the same in a slightly different way by also rationing access according to income. There is not much point in applying for a grant one knows will not cover one's adaptation costs even if one eventually gets it.

The other side of the problem is outsourcing what should be public services to the private sector. In the case of housing adaptation grants, this means that the private sector sets the price based on what level of profit it wants to make. It happens at every single stage of the chain, from construction components down to contractors, so that a hefty and ever-increasing chunk of State grants meant to provide people with what they need to be able to live comfortably in their homes is swallowed up by profits.

Of course, the other way construction bosses make profits is by underpaying their workers and subjecting them to precarious unreliable working conditions. A few weeks ago, we were subjected to construction industry bosses claiming in The Irish Timesthat the skills shortage was due to "an awful lot of young people that don’t like getting out of the bed for seven o’clock in the morning". There was nothing about the terrible working conditions in the sector and nothing about the bogus self-employment, the rates of barely over €7 a hour for many apprentices, and a lack of sick pay and holiday pay. There was no mention by the notoriously bad employer, J.J. Rhatigan, interviewed for the article, that the company was previously found to be paying workers less than €5 an hour to work on Government-funded contracts. If the Government was really serious about providing access to housing adaptations and housing generally for all who need it, then it would come down on the construction industry like the proverbial ton of bricks and enforce existing labour laws to end bogus self-employment. Instead, it is more concerned about funnelling money to the developers. More importantly, it would legislate for the right to trade union recognition and collective bargaining in order that workers could fight for better pay and conditions and to resolve labour shortages. The Government would also adequately fund local authorities to carry out these works with direct labour, set up a State construction company, finance a significant expansion in the number of apprenticeships and ensure that apprentices are paid well above the pittance they are currently being offered.

I will quote from a recently reply I received from South Dublin County Council. I will not go into the details and I will not name the person involved. This is someone who is a council tenant looking for adaptation that they absolutely need on foot of their disability. On the final line it is stated that, unfortunately, what is proposed is not feasible, that it would be cost prohibitive and that, therefore, the request cannot be facilitated. Normally, it gets kicked down the road in the hope that it goes away, but this time it is bluntly stated that the council will not do what is necessary for this person because it does not have the money for it. This is evidence of the underfunding of local authorities.

Of course, the Government and the right-wing Independents who back it will do none of the things to which I refer because they are committed to a capitalist model of public service rationing and are deeply embedded in the pocket of the construction industry. Older people and those with disabilities deserve better.

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