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

I thank People Before Profit for bringing forward this Bill and for the work it has done on it. The Social Democrats will certainly be supporting it. It is notable that, when the Minister was speaking, he gave a long list of what has been done, while admitting that it is not sufficient, and a long list of criticisms of the Opposition but that a list of exactly what he and his Government are going to do now to address this emergency was missing. We did not hear a list of solutions the Government is going to implement now from him. You would think we would have. There is no question but that we need to extend this temporary ban on evictions. To do so will only bring us in line with most other European countries, where there are permanent bans on no-fault evictions, for another number of months. Therefore, it is potentially one of the least radical measures that could be put forward.

We have the highest number of people living in emergency homeless accommodation in the history of the State, not to mention the situation of people who are not counted in those official figures such as those sleeping on floors and couches and in tents and doorways and the tens of thousands of hidden homeless. Homelessness has a devastating impact on every aspect of their lives. You simply cannot progress in any other aspect of your life if you are homeless and lack that security and base. Given that situation that we are in, it is quite difficult to understand why the Government is not telling us now that it is definitely going to extend this ban. Given that we have some of the highest rents in Europe and some of the lowest levels of security for renters, why is the Government not telling us that it is going to deal with this once and for all and provide proper security of tenure for renters? If people are paying their rent and not breaching their leases such as by engaging in antisocial behaviour, where they are living should be their home and, if their landlord is going to sell, they should be able to sell with those tenants in place, which is the situation in most European countries. Extending the tenant in situscheme, making its application much more consistent and ensuring that most local authorities use it properly would address some of the concerns of landlords in that regard while also protecting renters.

There is no shortage of solutions that need to be implemented now although we are not hearing any from the Government. I will outline a few small solutions that would be relatively easy to implement. The first is that the Government should spend the money it allocates for housing on building much-needed new homes and increasing the supply of affordable, cost-rental and social homes. Some €340 million of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage's budget was not spent and was carried over into this year. That is in addition to approximately €240 million that was returned to the Exchequer that should have been spent on housing last year. Together with the loans that are drawn down for building new housing, those figures are enough to finance in the region of 9,000 social, affordable and cost-rental homes. If the Government had spent that money last year and built those homes, it would have made a massive difference to people's access to housing.

The second solution is to take vacancy seriously. I talked about local authority vacancy last night. There is the issue of the slow delivery of Part V homes, which are completed but left vacant for months when families could be moved in, but vacancy more generally should also be taken seriously. We should not proceed with a simple 0.3% vacant homes tax. Rather we should bring in a tax at a serious level, which would bring a great many of those tens of thousands of vacant homes back into use.

Third, the Government should end the slow and bureaucratic four-stage approval process for social housing. This really ties the hands of local authorities. It can take months and even years to get through that process. Some local authorities and approved bodies rely only on acquisitions from the private sector because it can be so slow to get approval to build themselves. With regard to the fourth solution, we need to move to an active planning process such as those that successfully operate in countries like the Netherlands and which operated successfully here in the past in places like Marino rather than simply waiting for the market to deliver housing, which is bit like waiting for Godot.

In the time I have left, I will briefly address another matter. Last evening, during a discussion on this same topic, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage ridiculed people in the Opposition for raising questions about the way in which housing numbers are counted. I will quote from an article by Mel Reynolds, a housing policy analyst, and Dr. Lorcan Sirr, senior lecturer in housing at Technological University Dublin, published in today's The Irish Times. It reads:

Ireland is a small country so counting houses should be a straightforward process, but again there are question marks where there should not be any. The [Building Control Management System] is the most valuable tool the State has that offers reliable, credible and legally required information on what is being built, and it should be used as the main measure.

It would be very useful, and I do not believe it is too much to ask, for the Government to give us a detailed rational explanation as to why it does not accept the data recorded on the Building Control Management System, the provision of which is a legal requirement, as a measure of the number of new homes delivered in 2022 rather than ridiculing these questions and hiding behind bluster.

He should explain to us why the Department does not accept the legal way of counting new homes. Why is it absolutely tied to new ESB connections with which there are many issues? Why does it not accept the legally required way of counting new homes through the Building Control Management System? If there are problems with that, the Minister of State should tell us what they are and tell us how the Department will correct them. That is a national system for which the Government has responsibility.

Again, the Minister attacked people in the Opposition for voting against the LDA legislation. We in the Social Democrats voted against it because the Government voted against our amendments to give the Land Development Agency proper compulsory purchase order powers so that it could buy up land, including agricultural land, which is needed for housing, rezone it and put in the infrastructure to deliver housing as is needed and as has been done very successfully in other countries.

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