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

None of this is natural or inevitable. The scale of the housing crisis and how it affects ordinary people is a consequence of policy. There are almost 11,000 people in emergency accommodation, more than 3,000 of whom are children whose lives will be forever blighted by their experience. Hundreds of thousands of people are stuck living with their parents because they cannot afford to rent. Some 250,000 people are on the social housing waiting list, or are on HAP or RAS precarious private tenancies. Students are asking students unions if they can pitch a tent on campus because they cannot afford a room. Traveller families are in horrific accommodation. Now, refugees are unable to find shelter having fled from war. None of that is natural or inevitable. It is the consequence of years of aggressive neoliberal policies on housing by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, and the Green Party. It is all based on a policy that states the right of those people to a home comes second to the right of developers and big corporate landlords to maximise their profits.

Fundamentally their right to do what they want with their private property, to maximise their profit, comes before the right of society to say no, we want people in one of the wealthiest countries in the world to have a home. It is the consequence of commodification, privatisation and financialisation of housing that unfortunately is taking place right around the world. The issue of vacant properties really gets to the heart of it because this is the most immediate solution to the crisis that people face. There are vacant properties in every community, town and city throughout the State. The most immediate solution is to use those vacant properties for people who need them. It is also the most ecologically sustainable solution because the cost in terms of carbon emissions of bringing the house that is already build up to standard is very low compared to the significant greenhouse gas emissions that come with building a new home. According to Central Statistics Office, CSO, data, based on the recent census, there are more than 166,000 vacant homes across the country. Almost 50,000 of those homes have been vacant for six years or more. Of those 23,000 were vacant even as far back as the 2011 census which is more than ten years ago. On top of that, at the end of 2021, there were 22,000 derelict buildings in the State. Even allowing for a certain amount of over-estimation of long-term vacant properties it is clear there is massive potential to bring vacant properties into use immediately as social and affordable homes for the tens of thousands of households desperate for somewhere affordable to live. The issue is for us to say you do not have a right to leave a home vacant in the context of a housing crisis; that if people do not use it then they will lose it and the State will intervene and compulsorily purchase the home in order to make it available for people to live in.

Beyond that is the issue of planning permissions. An estimated 80,000 housing planning permissions have been granted nationally but not activated. In the Dublin area the most recent housing supply co-ordination taskforce reports that for the last quarter of 2021 planning permission for about 75,000 homes was granted. Of those just under 9,000 were completed and 18,000 commenced, leaving an excess of 48,000 unused permissions. That is almost two in every three planning permissions have not been activated in the middle of a housing catastrophe. The Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance collected data on strategic housing developments. By February 2022 that toxic process had granted permission for almost 70,000 units. Fewer than 13,000 had commenced. Even allowing for those under judicial review there are still 40,000 unused permissions country-wide.

What do we know about who is hoarding this land with planning permissions? Cairn Homes with a stock valuation of close to €600 million owns landbanks that could accommodate 17,700 homes. Of these sites 82% have planning permission or are in the planning process. The vast majority of this land is in or around Dublin. Yet Cairn Homes plans to complete just 1,500 homes this year, in the middle of a housing crisis. Similarly Glenbeigh Properties owns landbanks for more than 15,000 homes but completed just over 1,000 in 2021, in the middle of a housing crisis. Their right to sit on land in order to maximise their profit by building later rather than now is taking precedence over the need for action in regard to the housing crisis. At the weekend The Business Post reported that the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, is now considering buying up “dormant housing projects” or partnering with other developers. I can imagine that will involve some handsome profit for them. Let us acquire these sites at agricultural prices now, cut out the developers and their profiteering, and start direct-building by the State and local authorities. I do not understand what the Government is waiting for. We are in the middle of a housing crisis.

We need a State construction company to deliver all of this, providing thousands of high-quality well-paid jobs and apprenticeships, working with local authorities to repair and retrofit vacant properties for occupation and to build new homes on the landbanks currently being hoarded. The market which this Government defends and allows to rule has failed completely to deliver housing for a very long time now. The State must step in and do what the market will not.

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