Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There was a moment where I felt I must have knocked my head and woken up in a parallel universe because what I have just heard over the past half an hour does not reflect the reality for tens of thousands of people on the streets. As they say, self praise is no praise, with the greatest of respect to the Minister and his party colleagues.

The Government has now been in office for almost two and half years and is almost at the midway point of its term of office. It is true that it was delayed in putting its housing plan together, partly because it was asleep at the wheel and Fianna Fáil supported Fine Gael in a confidence and supply agreement when in opposition. We are only year into the plan but by almost every indicator, housing need for people in rural and urban Ireland, and across the generations, is worse now than when the plan was announced a year ago or when the Government took office almost two and a half years ago. The Minister said the plan is delivering but the big question is delivering for whom. The Government will hear from many of us in opposition the long list of people for whom the plan is not delivering.

For example, the Minister has missed his social housing targets two years in a row and we have already had what is essentially an admission from the Government that it is going to miss its targets this year. I have always said that I accept that part of the reason for the shortfall was Covid - there is no dispute about that - but it is not the only or, this year, the major reason. I know that because I talk to city and county housing managers and they tell me, not just this year but also last year and the year before, there were a variety of reasons, including the continued overly bureaucratic systems imposed by the Minister's Department and others, that are slowing down larger complex projects.

The real problem is not just that those targets are missed but that the Minister then simply discards those units altogether. Instead of accepting that he needs to take those missed units and roll them into increased targets for subsequent years, they are lost. To date, 8,000 promised social homes have not been, and will not be, delivered over the last two and half years, and that is an optimistic assessment of the output this year. In fact, the Minister, on Thursday night, very quietly and on an obscure part of the Department's website, put up the social housing output figures for this year. Some 1,700 new build social homes have been delivered by halfway through the year, just 20% of the 9,000 promised. The Minister no longer talks about 9,000 social homes; rather, the figure is possibly 8,000 or less. If it is anything less than 8,000, it will not be the largest social housing output in the history of the State because the late 1980s had a higher number than that. Comparing units in that way ignores the fact that the population is far higher and levels of housing need today are greater than ever before.

Homelessness is the measure by which any housing Minister will be assessed. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was on this side of the House with me when Eoghan Murphy was Minister, and we expressed questions in his confidence when the homeless numbers were approaching 10,000. They are now approaching 11,000. Friday's figure was 10,800. Within a month or two, unless something dramatic changes, and I hope it does, we will exceed the figure of 11,000. A figure of 11,000 is not even the full figure because the Minister knows in Tusla funded domestic violence refuges, direct provision centres where people are trapped with leave to remain or hostels funded by the State, there are another 3,000 or 4,000 people in emergency accommodation. In many local authority areas, emergency accommodation is full on many nights. Approximately 60 families from Dublin are in emergency accommodation in Meath and Kildare. There are 60 individuals from Dublin in emergency accommodation in Kildare. That displaces the homeless population from those counties further and further afield.

On top of that, house prices are at historic highs and rising. I heard one of the Minister's ministerial colleagues claim yesterday that house prices were falling. I again thought I was in a parallel universe because no data anywhere show house prices are falling. The rate of increase might be slowing, in particular in Dublin, but in the midlands and western seaboard counties, on the basis of the most recent house price reports, prices are escalating continuously. Rents are at historic highs and rising. There is no indication, in meaningful terms, of a slowing in those increases.

Be it social or affordable housing output, homelessness, house prices or rents, all of the key indicators of whether a Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is doing a good job halfway through his or her term, this Minister, plan and Government are failing. The question has to be asked as to why that is the case. The reason is that the plan is based on the same failed housing policies as its predecessors. It continues to be over reliant on the private sector and to under-invest in public housing. Crucially, it is based on flawed assessments of actual public and private sector housing.

One of the big scandals that will emerge in the coming months is when people see the detail of the extent to which the Minister and his Department suppressed the real data on emerging and pent-up housing need. The idea that, on average, 33,000 new homes over the next decade is what is required is not accepted by anybody other than the Minister and his Department. Independent academic experts, industry and even his housing commission know the real figure is probably somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 public and private homes a year. We are nowhere close to the Government's plan.

The most misleading fact the Minister continues to use is the mysterious figure of €4 billion. The budget book does not lie; it tells us the actual level of direct capital investment by Government in public housing every year. It is about €1.8 billion. It should be about €1.5 billion, but last year and this year, the Government underspent by about a €250 million, which overinflates the following year's figures by virtue of a carryover. The Minister is not spending or allocating €4 billion. He is correct that there is borrowing by approved housing bodies, although we do not know what that level is at yet. There is an annualised average figure from the Land Development Agency of €750 million, but it will not reach that for a couple of years.

When we get to the bottom of the actual spend each year, it will be significantly lower than the Minister's figure.

On top of that, as I keep reminding the Minister, his social housing targets are lower than those in the earlier Fine Gael national development plan and that is before we talk about the 8,000 lost units. His affordable housing targets are an embarrassment. In fact, he has cut the cost-rental equity loan target for approved housing bodies next year from 900 units, the figure they were meant to deliver this year but will not deliver, to 750 units. His affordable purchase targets for the local authorities remain embarrassingly low.

The Minister is correct on a couple of figures. He does not mislead us on all of the data he puts into the public domain. Completions are up, but they are up from such a low level in 2018 and 2019 that they are nowhere close to tackling the crisis levels. Commencements are also up, which I welcome, but they are nowhere close to what is required. Planning permissions mean nothing if they are not commenced and that is something on which the Minister has yet to take action.

While I welcome the Minister's promise for legislation on planning reform, I hope he gives our committee adequate time for full pre-legislative scrutiny to ensure we do not make the mistakes of previous planning Acts and we get this right.

I will not rehearse the arguments I made about the budget but I will address the most telling of them. At a time when housing need is greater than ever before, the total extra capital investment in housing by this Government in the budget is €37 million and nothing more. It is there for everybody to see in the budget book. At a time when we need billions, we are only getting peanuts.

On top of that, the fact that there was no new initiative to prevent homelessness or accelerate exits from homelessness is shocking. I welcome the Minister's very belated reopening of the tenant in situscheme but 300 homes are nowhere near enough. It should have been opened at the start of the year. Local authorities, as the Minister will hear from my colleagues, are still far too slow in taking up his instruction. He should go further than he has to date and issue a circular to instruct local authorities to buy these properties to stop families and single people from becoming homeless.

If I had more time, I would go through all of the aspects of the Sinn Féin alternative budget, but I will correct three things for the Minister. The first is with regard to figures from the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Housing, Local Government and Heritage from this year. If the Minister is telling me his Department is giving me inaccurate figures, that is a separate issue, but I do not believe that is the case. The second is that our renters tax credit is based on registered tenancies and putting a full month's rent back into those tenants' pockets. The third is that it is also accompanied by a ban on rent increases which means tenants will get the benefit of the measure, unlike the Minister's credit, which is too small and provides no protection.

If the strongest point of attack the Minister has against us is quoting parliamentary questions that Deputies ask at the request of their constituents, he really has nothing to go on. If he is trying to deflect from the chronic levels of homelessness and social and affordable housing need and the extent to which he directly continues to inflate house prices by bad schemes such as the help-to-buy and shared equity schemes, that says more about him than anybody else.

We have an alternative and a plan, that is, a change of Government and Minister and a housing plan that delivers the 20,000 public homes this State needs, not the bluff and bluster of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien.

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