Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State made the comment that nobody has a monopoly on wisdom. That is true, which is why we wanted the provisions in our motion to be accepted and worked on by the Government, in conjunction with us, instead of a countermotion being presented. The latter, quite frankly, has angered many Deputies in opposition. Before I go on, I thank everyone for contributing to the debate on our motion, both those who agree with it and those who do not, which is fair enough.

I will pick up on one point made by Deputy Joan Collins regarding HAP. The Deputy agrees with and supports our motion, but she could not help but throw a couple of digs at the Labour Party. I imagine that there is diminishing currency in that regard, although there may be currency nonetheless. She mentioned how we brought in HAP. We never brought HAP in to be a permanent housing solution. It must be remembered that HAP was brought in to replace rent supplement, which was the biggest poverty trap this country has ever known. If people were using rent supplement as the primary means of paying their rent, they could not work and it kept them in poverty for years. HAP was brought in to bring it over to the local authorities. We were actually starting to build local authority houses as well towards the end of 2015 and 2016, with a large number of Part 8 developments and Part V requirements. That stopped after 2016.

One thing happened this week which, on the face of it, may not seem important in terms of the housing crisis.However, symbolically, it is really important to the people who are still sleeping in the boxrooms in which they grew up or on their parents and friends' couches. I refer to the return of Bertie Ahern to Fianna Fáil. This event has been heralded and trumpeted by Fianna Fáil. I know Fianna Fáil is not the Minister of State's party or, indeed, the party of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. It is the party of the senior Minister, however, who is not here tonight for this important debate. I do not know where he is. Maybe he is making the sandwiches or doing the teas and coffees at the cumann in Drumcondra to welcome Bertie back. I do not know but he is not here where he should be on this debate. I was contacted by a woman earlier who stated that she is disgusted that Bertie Ahern is, in her eyes, back in politics. She believes he is the reason that she will never be able to afford a house. That woman has joined the dots in respect of what has got us to where we are now. I refer here to a three-term Government that took a system that was moving in the right direction and facilitating the building and delivery of public housing in the 1990s, hollowed out our local authorities in terms of the delivery of public housing, gave everything over to developers by means of weak Part V provisions in the Planning and Development Act 2001, engaged in deregulation and, in the context of the reduction in standards, accelerated the work done by Fianna Fáil in the late 1980s. The latter has given rise to consequences relating to pyrite, mica, poor building and fire safety standards and all the crimes that were committed under that Government in the era of the Celtic tiger. Fianna Fáil believes that the return of Bertie Ahern as a great peacemaker into the party is going to remind people of that or give them a warm glow when they remember the 1990s and early noughties. The opposite is happening. People are absolutely furious. Mr. Ahern's return reminds them of why we are where we are. It reminds them why workers are unable to afford to live, be they renting or buying, and why core front-line workers in our health and transportation services, such as bus drivers, are unable to afford to live, not just in our major cities but anywhere in our country. That is why we need the eviction ban needs not only to be extended but also strengthened. Even though it has been brought in, we are still seeing homeless figures go up. The current figure is 11,500. Bertie Ahern is returning to Fianna Fáil at a time of record figures for homelessness. It is incredible. Fianna Fáil cannot resist that. The eviction ban must remain in place.

The tenant in situ scheme we are discussing, which has to be accelerated and used, is not actually a good scheme; it is a necessary scheme. It is an admission of the failure of housing policy. There should be a supply of social and affordable public housing in order that people can transition from rental accommodation into that. Some people in rental accommodation do not want to be council tenants. They want to purchase their own homes through an affordable scheme. The tenant in situ scheme is the biggest admission of housing catastrophe in this country that there has ever been.

Unfortunately, that is the situation we are in. The only way we can successfully keep people out of homelessness is by purchasing the houses. While we are talking about purchasing and the absolute squandering of public money, there was article in the Sunday Timesby Ms Sharon McGowan last week. The article came about on foot of a freedom of information request that was submitted by the Workers' Party to Dublin City Council. It states that €221 million has been spent by Dublin City Council to buy back properties that were built by the State. We are paying twice for these properties. We paid to build them, we sold them off and now we are buying them back.

That goes down as new stock. That is not new stock; it is recycled stock. This is stock we had years ago and sold away. We must stop that. Any thoughts of tenant purchase has to stop. This recycling of existing stock and the squandering of money over the course of many decades is an absolute and complete madness. It is a huge amount of money.

We are talking now about housing for migrants in Ireland. It is much-needed housing that we are unable to deliver as a State. Even given the state of our resources and our riches, we are unable to deliver this at the moment. If you talk to the migrants who are here and have been here for years and talk about the housing they are living in, it is overcrowded. If you talk to the people who are cleaning our buildings and who are contract cleaners or talk to the people who are delivering our food or who work in our coffee shops and service industries and ask them, as I have, the circumstances of where they live, they are living in overcrowded places and paying rent for poor standards of accommodation. We have seen it. We have had the exposés on various TV programmes. This is how we are failing not only the migrants who are arriving now but also the future workers of this country who we need to provide the many skills and professions they bring here. We need to make sure we can deliver the housing so these people are able to start working and contributing in the many skills shortages we have.

With regard to the people who are living here now, including migrants, who are living in poor conditions, we do not have enough housing inspections. I have been on to my local authority about a particular property that has more than 30 migrants living in it with absolutely disgraceful conditions. That is just one case I am dealing with this week. Anybody who is working on the front line dealing with housing cases will know we have no housing inspections. The housing inspections must be done through the local authority, and the local authorities are still under-resourced to inspect their own properties. We therefore have the private properties in deplorable conditions getting away with absolute murder.

We talk of a plan for tradespeople in this country to have enough workers to be able to build the houses we need. To stop this boom and bust cycle, we need to continue to build houses, no matter who is in government and no matter what the economic situation in the State. We need to build, continue building, and build some more, and continue to drive down the cost for citizens in paying rent or being able to afford housing. We need to continue to do that. We feel a million miles away from that.

This motion does not capture the Labour Party's housing policy. This motion is an emergency housing motion for the emergency we are in right now. We constructed the motion in such a way that we believed or hoped that something would be taken on board and that the Government would at least give some kind of sense that it wants to work with Opposition parties. We have seen here that the majority of the Opposition supports this, while we may disagree on the finer points of details. The thrust of what we offer in this motion is what we believe can be delivered soon, which will give a roof over people's heads and give the State time to build houses. The Government will not and we will go for a vote on this next week, which I believe is incredible. The people who are contacting Deputies Bacik and Nash, me, and all my colleagues in the House about housing are going to remain in insecure and highly expensive housing. Many of these people have notices to quit hanging over their heads and they are counting down the days for the eviction ban to expire. I have made a Hail Mary pass at our local authority that perhaps a tenant in siturescue can help to keep them in their homes. As Deputy Nash has said, we are finding an inconsistency of approach in an emergency scheme that is needed to be run at full throttle to keep people in their homes. I will leave it at that.

See this speech in context