Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We mentioned in the motion 20,000 social, affordable and cost rental homes, not 20,000 social homes, but perhaps the Minister did not actually read it. It is not clear if the Minister thinks it is not possible to do that. I do not understand how the Minister feels it is possible to do 24,000 homes this year yet we could not have 20,000 of those as social, affordable and cost rental homes. If we have the capacity to build 24,000 homes, including many that will be owned by investment funds, how come we do not have the capacity to do that? Some of them will be high-end and high-rent. If we have the skills and the labour in Ireland to build 24,000 homes, how come we do not have the skills and the labour to ensure that 20,000 of those will be social, affordable and cost rental homes? It makes no sense whatsoever.

The issue with a lot of housing policy in Ireland is that there are far too many measures that are stimulating demand, pushing up prices and pushing up rents, and not nearly enough on the affordability side, and on the affordable supply side in particular. Long-term leases are doing that, HAP is doing that, the shared equity scheme is doing that and acquisitions are doing that because they buy out of a limited pool rather than putting enough resources into affordable supply. That is the issue.

I really wonder if the Minister is serious when he cites uptake in some of these schemes as proof that they are working. That should not be a sign of success. The fact we are in a crisis and a disaster situation, and that people are understandably going to whatever supports or schemes are in place, does not mean those schemes are a success or the best use of scarce resources. If that is how the Minister and the Government are measuring the success of their housing policy, we have another problem in housing because that is not the way it should be measured. The way the Government should be analysing this is by asking what is the effect of the different schemes we are doing and whether this is pushing up house prices, pushing up rents or increasing the supply of affordable homes. Those are the questions they should be asking, not whether people in a desperate situation, who are either renting or looking to buy, are availing of whatever schemes are made available. Of course, they will do that.

One of the things that we did not hear from the Minister in his comments, and that I was hoping we would hear because we need to hear it from the Minister and the Government, is what action they are going to take urgently and now to stop the absolute disaster of us reaching record levels of homelessness in the coming days. We need to hear what the Government is going to do about that now, today, urgently. It should be top of the list for all of us to be asking that question and we have not heard that. There needs to be immediate emergency action on that right now.

The Taoiseach, the Minister and other Ministers constantly make this claim that there is €4 billion in State capital expenditure on housing. It simply is not true and there is no such figure in State capital expenditure on housing. In fact, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage heckled and interrupted my party colleague, Deputy Catherine Murphy, when she referenced this earlier today.

There is no €4 billion State capital expenditure on housing. That is a highly misleading claim. This year, less than €2.3 billion is being set aside by the Government for capital expenditure on housing, which is just over half the €4 billion to which it keeps referring as being the claimed expenditure. Simply including possible Land Development Agency, LDA, expenditure and loans to the Housing Finance Agency, HFA, issue to bring the total expenditure up to €4 billion is misleading. It is not the level of direct capital expenditure that was called for by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. This is an issue that goes across the board and does not just apply to housing. There is a danger the Government will begin to believe its own spin in this regard. The more it does so, the further we will be from solutions.

There are three tests that apply when assessing how we are doing on housing. First is the supply and availability of housing that is affordable, second is home ownership rates and third is the level of homelessness. On the first test, there were zero affordable purchase homes delivered last year, despite all the promises that were made. Just 65 cost rental homes were tenanted. We can contrast that with the thousands of apartments in the ownership of investment funds that were built to attract high-end rents. We can contrast it with the reports this week that Greystar, which already charges rents of between €2,140 and €5,220 per month in Dublin, is seeking double-digit rent increases. That is the reality of what has happened with much of the new housing supply that has come on stream. Rents have almost doubled over the past decade and we have had the third highest rent increases in the EU since 2010. Rents in Dublin are among the highest of any capital city in the EU.

Home ownerships rates, as we know from information provided by the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, have collapsed among people of working age. We have had a report from the ESRI indicating that the number of 25- to 34-year-olds who own their own home has halved in the past 15 years. That is absolutely shocking. As people become older, poverty levels will increase substantially as they will not have the security of owning their own home. The Government talks about its support for home ownership and that is all fine. In fact, what is happening now is that home ownership levels are continuing to decline. Last year, the number of new-build homes that were available for individuals to buy plummeted to fewer than 6,000 individual homes.

There is a lack of urgency in the Government's response to the crisis. In 2017, Fine Gael in government promised to implement a tax on vacant homes to help to bring them back into use. It still has not been introduced. That should be done now; in fact, it is one of the measures we should be taking in the Dáil this week. We should forget about the rushed changes on planning that mean An Bord Pleanála cannot be held to account in the same way it currently can be. Why not bring in a vacant homes tax this week, especially given the rental crisis, the homelessness crisis and the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures showing there were 35,000 rental homes, making up 20% of the total rental stock, lying empty on census night? If that tax were brought in as an emergency measure, it would go some way to helping the situation.

I do not think the Government grasps how serious the situation is. It knows there is an issue but it is not grasping the knock-on effects it is having across society. We now have parents withdrawing from the workforce because they cannot get childcare as their childcare providers are reducing capacity as a consequence of their staff being unable to find anywhere affordable to live. We are seeing the same effect in schools. There has been a massive impact on the hospitality industry, with businesses simply not opening or operating on reduced days and hours because they cannot get staff. There are huge knock-on impacts but we are not seeing an urgency from the Government to act to address them.

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