Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire Stáit nua. Ní bhfuair mé deis é sin a rá go dtí seo agus go n-éirí léi ina ról nua.

I thank Sinn Féin, as usual, for tabling this motion which has merit. While I have some concerns, it is time-limited, targeted, capped and it is for family homes. Why does the proposal have merit? We are talking about more than 400,000 families that are struggling on different types of mortgages, with prices rising daily. I agree with Deputy Shortall who put it very well earlier when she said that we cannot look at this in isolation. We are tampering with something because Government policy is embedded in a completely dysfunctional system. The Minister of State might not agree but that has been my opinion since the day I arrived into Dáil Éireann. The housing policy of this and the previous Government is utterly dysfunctional and, therefore, we are left supporting motions such as this and saying it is worth looking at when really, houses have to be built and prices have to come down. The price of my house has to drop and the price of the Minister of State's house, if she has one, simply has to drop. It is not possible to have sustainable living with house prices going up as they are.

It is not possible to call Government policy coherent when it is allowing the market to dictate. Ministers have stood up in the Chamber and said that is not accurate but it is. Let me just mention the help to buy scheme. It is worthwhile looking at the reviews of that scheme. It has been described as "not a rational scheme" and reviewers said that they would not start from here but ,unfortunately, it is now embedded and we cannot take it out. The HAP scheme represents the worst possible change in housing policy. It is still with us and the cost continues to rise, with €1 billion mentioned earlier. We also have the mortgage to rent scheme and some of those who are struggling with mortgage payments now will move on to that scheme. Issues with the mortgage to rent scheme were brought to my attention and forced me to read into it further. It was introduced in 2012 and was to be run by voluntary bodies and housing associations. They did okay but the uptake was quite low because they did not have the capability and they were not helped to build that capability. What did the Government do in 2018? It invited expressions of interest for a private company to come forward, with the misleading name Home for Life. The homes are not for life but for 25 years. Misleading language is used, with talk about local authorities as landlords when they are not the landlord; the Home for Life company is the landlord or the voluntary body. The Government twists and turns language and make the tenants believe that they are social housing tenants when they are not.

Let us look at what happened to the scheme when the aforementioned company got involved. The company is now in the Commercial Court. I am not going to get into that because I understand the separation of powers but that company is now in that court because it had an agreement with another company to do repairs and there is a dispute about that. More importantly, several local authorities, including Dublin City Council, reported issues with Home for Life repair works, prompting the Housing Agency to launch an investigation. In inspections of 224 Home for Life properties carried out by late October, 166 homes had issues and would need further work to be carried out. I am mentioning this to illustrate the point that we have gone further down the road of privatisation, with private companies coming in, instead of building up the voluntary bodies. I understand that further expressions of interest will be sought from more companies. What those companies do is buy the house of a person who is in mortgage distress, like a person I have in mind in Galway, they do the repairs, get the rent, keep the asset and they lease it back to the local authority for 25 years. That is called a home for life. One of the advantages of the scheme was that participants could buy back their home after five years. Does the Minister of State know how many repurchases there have been? There have been six. Has there been a business case analysis? No. Has there been a review to see what the scheme has cost? Is there any understanding of the agreement between the local authorities, the Housing Agency, and the Department or any analysis of what money has been paid over? Absolutely not and I am sure we will be told it is commercially sensitive. This is another little ingredient added to an already dysfunctional market that ensures fewer people will own their own home, fewer will be able to rent a public house at a controlled rent and fewer will have security of tenure for life. This is because of the dysfunctional housing policies from successive Governments.

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