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

It is notable how little time the Government has spent defending its record on housing. Instead, it has used most of the time to talk about any other issue or attack the Opposition. That says a lot. Someone who contacted me yesterday said, regarding the motion of confidence in the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, that:

I am 45 in January and I am living back in my childhood bedroom. I have zero chance of ever getting a home of my own. I'll be homeless when my parents pass. I work and have two children, but I cannot afford to rent anywhere. Homelessness numbers will only rise daily.

There is no doubt that when it comes to ensuring people can access housing they can afford, the Government and Minister are failing terribly. Deputies from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party who are voting confidence in the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage are backing a Government with the worst record of any in the history of the State on housing. They are voting confidence in rents, house prices and homelessness at record levels. They are voting confidence in a housing system where rents have never been so unaffordable. Rents are now much higher than mortgage payments and have increased by a staggering 85% in 2010 compared to an average increase across the European Union of just 18% in that time.

They are voting confidence in a Minister presiding over a situation where there are now 11,397 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. In the past year, homelessness has increased by 29% and child homelessness by a shocking 38%. Some 3,480 children will spend this Christmas in emergency accommodation. They are voting confidence in a Minister who is failing people in their 20s and into their 30s and beyond who are still living in their childhood bedrooms. An entire generation feels left behind and simply wants to be able to get on with their lives, move out and be independent. A generation is giving up hope of ever being able to afford somewhere to live and is asking themselves if emigration is the only option.

They are voting confidence in a crisis in our schools with teacher shortages and a crisis in healthcare with shortages of key workers caused by the housing disaster. There is a crisis across all sectors of Irish society where positions cannot be filled as people cannot find somewhere affordable to live.

They are voting confidence in a rental system full of loopholes and get-out clauses exploited by landlords. Rent regulation excludes large parts of the country, leaving renters subject to massive rent increases and a system that allows landlords to carry out mass evictions of renters, as is happening in Tathony House, Rathmines and other locations.

They are voting confidence in a collapse in levels of homeownership among adults of prime working age and in a Government that promotes build-to-rent so heavily that only a minority of new-build homes are available to people to buy on the open market.

They are voting confidence in a Minister who never misses an opportunity to use more and more public money to provide subsidies for developers and a Government that is now spending more than €1 billion a year on long-term leasing sweetheart deals and other rent subsidies that push up rents, making them ever more unaffordable. They are voting confidence in a Government that is somehow leaving millions of euro allocated to build new homes unspent, a Government whose capital underspend in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage was €702 million at the end of November and a Minister who has reallocated elsewhere €337 million that was earmarked to build new local authority homes this year. How is that possible in the middle of a housing disaster?

Government party Deputies supporting the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage are voting confidence in a decline in the number of new homes getting built, with commencement notices for new homes 14% down on last year. They are voting confidence in a Government that allows developers to sit on planning permissions, hoard land and drip-feed housing supply to ensure the prices of homes become ever more unaffordable. There are 80,000 planning permissions around Ireland that are not activated.

Deputies supporting the Minister are voting confidence in a Government that has failed to tackle the shortage of skilled construction workers and failed to encourage enough apprenticeships in key construction trades. The number of apprenticeships in bricklaying is just 31% of the 2006 number, while the number of apprenticeships in plastering is just 17% of the 2006 number.

Deputies supporting the Minister are voting confidence in a Minister interested more in spin than in delivering the homes people need. They are voting confidence in a Government that forever tells us what it is going to do about housing in the future but cannot stand over the record of what it has done. They are voting confidence in a Minister that keeps missing the targets he has set himself on delivery of affordable, cost rental and social homes. They are voting confidence in a Government that is congratulating itself that 28,000 new homes will be completed this year when even the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage admits we need at least 42,000 new homes each and every year. Deputies who back the Minister are voting confidence in a Government that has blown the chance to borrow billions at historically low interest rates to invest in building the tens of thousands of public homes we need and a Government that has failed to make the most of the suspension of the EU fiscal rules to invest in much-needed social and affordable homes.

There may well be a majority in this Dáil that will vote confidence in the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but they should make no mistake that, outside in the real world, where people are paying higher and higher rents, living in constant fear of becoming homeless and worrying if they will ever be able to afford a place of their own that they can call home, there is no confidence in this Minister or in this Government on housing. There is only despair, a lack of hope and the constant worry of how this housing disaster is impacting people's children and families and across society. That is what we must change.

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