Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage had a capital budget underspend of €1 billion between 2020 and 2022;

— the primary cause of this underspend is the excessive bureaucracy and red tape imposed by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies;

— zero affordable purchase or Cost Rental homes were delivered by this Government in 2020;

— zero affordable purchase homes and just 65 Cost Rental homes were delivered in 2021;

— the target for affordable purchase and Cost Rental homes for 2022 was too low, and will not be met;

— the cost of much of the affordable rental and purchase homes delivered to date is beyond the reach of many working people;

— the Government failed to put in place the Cost Rental Tenant In-Situ Scheme before the ending of the ban on no fault evictions;

— the controversial 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme does not deliver affordable homes – it pushes up house prices and saddles working people with increased debt;

— the so-called Help to Buy scheme pushes up house prices, and 40 per cent of the fund has gone to buyers who did not need any State support to buy their own home;

— the lack of affordable homes is impacting on the economy and causing recruitment shortages in crucial areas of public and private sector employment; and

— the Government's failure to deliver genuinely affordable homes for working people is driving up rents, house prices and levels of homelessness; and

agrees that:

— the Government must dramatically increase its investment in the delivery of genuinely affordable homes for working people;

— investment should deliver at least 8,000 affordable homes to rent and buy per year;

— the funding streams and approval processes for the delivery of affordable homes must be streamlined to accelerate the delivery of these homes;

— the financing and delivery of these homes must be reformed to ensure that house prices and rents are genuinely affordable;

— greater action on the use of vacant and derelict homes and new building technologies must be taken to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing;

— the ending of the ban on no-fault evictions will lead to an increase in homelessness; and

— the controversial 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme and the so-called Help to Buy scheme should be scrapped and the funding diverted into the delivery of genuinely affordable homes for working people.

The figure that has been ringing in people's ears for the past number of weeks is €1 billion. Some €1 billion in capital expenditure for the delivery of much-needed social and affordable homes has gone unspent by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien. In 2020, the underspend was €90 million; in 2021, the underspend was just over €400 million; last year, the underspend almost reached €500 million; and this continued into the first quarter of this year with a 29% underspend in capital funding, which is another €90 million unspent. The most immediate impact of the underspend can be seen in the figures released by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage yesterday. Since Deputy O'Brien has been the Minister, he has missed his social housing target by a staggering 8,500 social homes. That is almost the same number of households currently in emergency accommodation funded by the Department. Even more startling in the Minister's failure has been the non-delivery of affordable homes. Sometimes when listening to him, one would think the affordable housing scheme only emerged last year. In fact, those of us who were in this House in 2018 will recall Deputy O'Brien proclaiming from this side of the House to have secured €300 million for the delivery of 6,000 affordable homes between 2019 and 2021. I think he called it a housing budget for which he would make no apology. Amazingly, during all that time, not a single affordable home to purchase was delivered and only 65 affordable rentals were delivered in 2021. Since the Minister took over, things have not got much better. In fact, last year, despite the promise of 4,000 affordable homes, we got 323 affordable purchase homes, the vast majority of which were not available to purchase last year with sales only closing now, and just 684 cost rentals. Increasingly, those cost rentals are not affordable. Cost rentals for €1,450 and €1,550 per month are not affordable to many of the people eligible for that scheme.

Why is this? When we listen to the Minister, he blames everybody else, because it is clearly not his fault and he is not in charge. He will, therefore, blame the war in Ukraine, Brexit, supply chain disruptions and inflation, yet when we look around, nobody else has this problem. The Department of Education overspent its budget last year and early this year, in fact, so much so that school projects had to be delayed. That Department did not have a problem with supply chains, Ukraine or inflation. The private sector not only met its initial targets for last year but exceeded them. Why is it the case then in the world of capital expenditure that the Minister's Department, in the context of the delivery of social and affordable homes, is the only one not only not spending its allocation of funding year-on-year but accumulating an ever-greater underspend? The answer is very simple. He knows the answer because he has heard it over and over again. His Department is imposing far too great a level of bureaucracy and red tape on local authorities and AHBs and, as a consequence, they cannot spend the money they have been given.

There is a human cost to the Minister's failure. It is rising rents and house prices; it is people having to consider whether they should give up jobs; it is people with good qualifications and employment prospects wondering if they will have to emigrate; and, for many others, it is real financial hardship. Worst of all are the rising levels of homelessness. Let us go back to the figure of 8,500 social homes promised by the Minister that have not been delivered. What would this have done in the context of the emerging homelessness crisis? We all know the answer. As a consequence, not only are the numbers of homeless people rising but they will continue to rise because of the Government's decision to end the ban on evictions.

I listened to the Minister speaking on RTÉ today. He indicated that we are turning a corner, the plan is working and things are getting better. This really means he has his head buried in the sand. Not only are we getting a continuation of the failed approach of the previous Fine Gael Government, but the two major policy initiatives of this Government, expanding the highly controversial so-called help-to-buy scheme and the even more controversial shared-equity loan scheme, are laughable because they have ended up pushing up house prices, pushing up debt and pushing up risks for buyers and making it more difficult for people to buy.

My colleagues will set out some of Sinn Féin's key alternatives as we go, but the Minister knows these as we have dealt with them many times. I must say, though, that the Minister's housing plan is failing. He is not even meeting his own miserly targets. We need an alternative and, on that basis, I commend this motion to the House.

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