Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to second the Labour Party motion. The housing crisis is the single biggest social and, now, economic challenge facing this society. I am on record as having made that very point in recent years in this House, that housing is not alone a social challenge but also a vast economic challenge. I predicted what IBEC has said in recent weeks, that our housing challenge is now a challenge to foreign direct investment. If Ministers or the Government are not necessarily concerned about the length of the housing list, at least if they are concerned about the direction of the economy then that should force greater action in addressing our housing lists and the housing calamity we face, which is what it is. The Minister of State is only too familiar with this issue because it occupies a huge amount of his time too as a constituency Deputy. It is the biggest issue we all face in our constituency offices day in and day out and when we meet constituents on the street. Day in and day out we deal with the harrowing cases of families who simply have no place to call home, children living in homeless hubs and people worried sick about eviction notices, often dodgy ones, hitting the mat after being threatened by a landlord. They are fearful because they simply will not have anywhere to go. When they look on daft.iethey find that there are two or three properties available in the community in which they live. The trauma of a child losing the only place they have known as home from the day they were born is very real. That stays with a child and a family throughout their lives.

The provision of housing is a highly charged political issue and it is correct that it is so because it goes to the heart of how our society is organised. Our different approaches illustrate the difference between the competing philosophies across this Chamber. The Labour Party never seeks to exploit this as a political issue for mere expediency. The issue, we believe, is far too serious for narrow point-scoring, and that would do the people who need homes a huge disservice. Indeed, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, on Leaders' Questions today recognised as much in response to remarks my party colleague, the Labour Party leader, Deputy Bacik, made that the Labour Party always seeks to be constructive in respect of housing policy and housing delivery. If a policy is working, we will say so, but the Government's policy simply is not. Housing for All is not working. The very first line of the Government's amendment, which we would prefer it did not table, reads "Housing for All ... is working". It is as if the Government believes that if it repeats that enough times, it will enter the public consciousness and will somehow become fact. In anyone's language it is not working. It is not working because this Government is a record-breaker, and not in a good way. It is a record-breaker on homelessness, a record breaker on rents and a record breaker on house prices. In the few months since the Government was dragged kicking and screaming into introducing a short-term eviction ban, it simply has not used that time to make things demonstrably better. There has been more wasted time and more missed opportunities as the Government carries on regardless with a policy whereby housing targets are manifestly too low and too few social and affordable homes, and indeed private homes through the market, will be built while the crisis becomes a disaster for far too many people - and it is a disaster.

The silver bullet is not working and there is no shame in the Government admitting that and changing course. In doing so and accepting that, the Government could show some humility. That kind of humility, in the context of the challenge we face, would be welcomed. Even the Taoiseach, in his role as commentator on the housing calamity, accepts that the Government's targets are too low. Why is the senior Minister in the Department dragging his feet on reviewing and updating those targets, saying in response to our motion that the review will take place only once the final official census figures are available? The Minister of State knows as well as I do that the final figures are rarely discernibly different from the preliminary data, which have been available since the middle of last year, so there is nothing stopping the Government from carrying out that review now.

Our motion recognises the logic of the expert Housing Commission's analysis. We call for what we believe to be a modest but appropriate 50,000 new builds each year. That would include a doubling of delivery of social and affordable homes. That is 20,000 homes more than what the Government is prepared to admit is required.

The single most important thing the State can do to address supply and affordability and to damp down the unsustainable madness in the private rental market is to get back into the business of building high-quality public housing at scale. I looked today at the data for my local authority. One social home has been allocated in the town of Drogheda, Ireland's biggest town, with a population of 46,000, in the month of January - one social home. That is absolutely disgraceful. The list in County Louth is at 5,000 now. The social housing builds data for last year still have not been published, but we know from estimates by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform that the target is likely to have been missed by 2,500 homes. What does that mean? It means, more than likely, 2,500 renters will still be on the housing assistance payment, still with no security and left with the fear of the eviction notice. Again, that is a plan that is not working. We call again in this motion for real action on vacancy and dereliction.

Tackling vacant homes and derelict properties, the Minister of State will admit and acknowledge, is the first place we should start when it comes to housing supply. It is the very definition of low-hanging fruit. It restores communities and re-establishes local pride. Properties can be easily reconnected to services and the environmental and climate argument, as well as economic and business case, for doing so is very compelling. However, what the Government published last week was a vacant homes plan that is really hard to take seriously. Why? The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien, published a plan to bring vacant homes back into use with no targets. There are no targets for 2023 and no targets for local authorities year on year. How can we have any confidence in a plan that is devoid of targets? If the Minister was confident of his plan and his policy approach, he would put front and centre the targets required of local authorities each year and what he is prepared to do. He would be prepared to measure it. When one looks at that alongside the tokenism in the Finance Bill presented after the budget, with the announcement of a vacant homes tax which is derisory and will not bring a single home to market and a vacant sites tax which is far from punitive, then one really wonders about this Government's commitment on vacancy and dereliction. I would advise the Minister of State, officials in the Department and the Minister to take a closer look at the remarkable work done by officials of Louth County Council in recent years in terms of compulsorily purchasing vacant and derelict properties and bringing them back into use.

In the couple of minutes I have left I want to refer to the tenant in situ scheme and the matter of the eviction ban. We are all familiar with the tenant in situ scheme. We have used it and have proposed that landlords in our constituencies would use it and that the local authorities would use it to prevent people from falling into homelessness and they have done that. My understanding is that there was a limit of 200 homes for acquisition placed on the local authorities last year but that changed towards the end of the year. It is a good scheme. It has real potential but it is not being used enough. The information I have is that there is inconsistency in the application of the scheme across local authorities. It is very much dependent on the determination of a director of housing or other staff to use it and there is far too much red tape in an emergency. I am dealing with landlords at the moment who want to use this scheme but are still waiting for answers from local authorities. These are good landlords, and there is such a thing as good landlords, decent people who want to help the people living in the properties that they own. They want to move on. They may want to sell the house and are talking to local authorities but it is very difficult to move things on. I agree with the sentiments in the motion that we need monthly reporting. Again, it is about monitoring progress and monitoring developments and having the metrics so we can measure the success or otherwise of schemes. That is what makes good public policy.

In conclusion, I want to make reference to the eviction ban itself. Put simply, it needs to be extended. Why? The reason is that the same conditions that existed when the Minister was dragged, kicking and screaming, into introducing an eviction ban in the first place still exist. We have core inflation of 8%. The Minister for Finance confirmed that to me yesterday in the Dáil. He is concerned about it, as are all of us here. One way in which the Government can assist renters in very difficult situations is to ensure that the eviction ban is extended. Government should then use that time, over the next few months, to get things right because it did not use the last few months to get things right. That is why the Labour Party tabled this motion in the Dáil this evening.

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