Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We in the Labour Party are glad to support this motion, which is the latest in a series of Opposition motions putting forward constructive proposals to address the housing crisis, a crisis that our President rightly described as a housing disaster. On 9 February we in the Labour Party tabled a motion with a series of constructive measures. We have supplied Government with proposed Private Members' legislation. As with this proposal, all of our proposals have disappointingly been met with a very dismissive response from Government. It is disappointing because the scale of the crisis is such that we need concerted cross-party action on this. We need to see ambition and urgency from Government in addressing this catastrophic situation. We have a record 11,742 people in homelessness.

9 o’clock

Deputy Ó Broin rightly started his speech with reference to a different figure, which is that figure of €1 billion. This is an extraordinary sum which has been underspent by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage at this time of national catastrophe. This is money which was earmarked for the delivery of social and affordable housing.

There is another figure which is worth mentioning, as we saw today in the stability programme update 2023. We know that the country ran a budget surplus of over €5 billion in the past year and we see in today’s figures a projected surplus of €10 billion this year. It is ideology, rather than the economy, which is holding back the necessary massive investment by the State in housing infrastructure. There is an over-reliance by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the private sector to deliver. There is a reluctance to provide the necessary levels of State intervention that are required and to pivot the State resources, as was done during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is also a reluctance to commit the State to investing in necessary infrastructure and to interfering in the housing market, even though interference will be required.

I use that language because that is what underlies the Government’s unforgivable decision to lift the temporary ban on no-fault evictions without any evidence base and without having any contingency plan in place. The Minister said earlier tonight, and indeed Government Members have said consistently, that they believe that by extending the ban they would have made matters worse, but they have no evidence for that. The Government knew that by lifting the ban it would be driving more people into homelessness. We have stark figures from the Residential Tenancies Board on that. Over 9,000 notices to quit were issued in the second half of 2022, causing very serious hardship and distress to many families in my own constituency and in all of our constituencies. For example, I was approached by a family of three who are above the social housing limits, where both parents are in work. They have a young adult child in third level education and have nowhere to go. They have been forced into overholding because they are losing their home of ten years with an eviction notice. That is the reality of what is happening to so many families and to so many people.

In this context, it is particularly galling to see missed targets. I refer to the figures from the Government on missed targets in housing. Just yesterday, we saw the Government’s own figures. It has openly said that it has missed the targets. In Housing for All, the Government’s plan was to deliver 9,000 new-build social homes but we have seen only 7,433 delivered in the past year. Again, the plan was to deliver 4,100 affordable and cost-rental houses and we have seen just 1,757 delivered. These are very serious shortfalls on targets that are, in themselves, too low. The Government’s own Housing Commission has pointed this out. This is all at a time of significant increasing demographic demand. We know that our population has grown by more than 500,000 in the past ten years. The Housing Commission is now telling us that up to 62,000 new homes per year will be needed up until 2050, which is nearly double the Housing for All target in the Government’s own document. The Taoiseach has pointed out that there is currently a shortfall of 250,000 homes. These are targets which will require serious urgency and ambition from the Government to meet but they are necessary targets because what we are hearing, and not just from families who are forced into homelessness but also from employers’ groups, IBEC and the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, is that the investment in housing by the State which we are calling for is necessary because without it, we will see a serious impact on our economy, jobs and service delivery. We are hearing from healthcare workers and teachers that they cannot afford to live near their places of employment and that is causing real problems for the delivery of education and healthcare.

It is in this context that we in the Labour Party, along with others in the Opposition, put forward constructive proposals for addressing the housing crisis. When we do so, we are met with a sort of smugness and a certain fatalism from the Government, almost as if it dismisses the prospect that anything can be done. Some weeks ago, at our Labour Party conference, I put forward an ambitious programme for the delivery of 1 million homes in ten years based on the Government’s own projections and figures, and the Housing Commission’s projections of need. Instead of engaging with us and pointing out how this can be achieved, the Government’s Ministers and Members have spent their time saying why this cannot be done and not how it can be done. The role of the Government is to deliver the homes people need. The key issue is delivery, which is something we all agree on. We supported the establishment of the LDA five years ago because we believe in constructive opposition. We believe in supporting measures which we believe will have an impact. We have been very disappointed at the slow pace of delivery by the LDA in the last five years, and I think the Minister shares this disappointment. That has to be acknowledged. We will support measures that will deliver. We do not support measures like the help-to-buy scheme which are counterproductive. Department of Finance officials have routinely been pointing out the deadweight effect of such schemes in subsidising economic activity which is already taking place, and in lining the pockets of developers. These are not schemes which are working but we will support ones which work and measures which aim to deliver housing. We will certainly continue to put forward constructive proposals.

Let us look at how we can deliver 50,000 new-build homes per year over the next ten years. Again, we have engaged with the experts, have looked at the Government’s own projections and at its figures, and have looked at the ESRI’s recent report on how one can deliver homes at scale with necessary urgency and ambition. For example, this can be done through placing more construction trades on the critical skills employment permit list so that we can see an aggressive recruitment campaign for construction workers from abroad. We are consistently hearing a fatalism from the Government that we do not have the workers. Let us address that and take up the proposals the ESRI has made on how we can address this. Then we hear about difficulties with construction methods. Let us engage with new methods and technologies which enable off-site construction much more rapidly. Again the ESRI and IBEC tell us that we can use off-site construction to deliver homes 50% more quickly than traditional methods. We can mass-produce such homes to see delivery of high-volume and high-quality housing in a much shorter space of time. Let us see also some more creative engagement on the issue of live planning permissions. This is a real and very significant issue in my own constituency and across Dublin City Council where we know there are up to 30,000 live planning permissions for residential developments. Let us see the Government moving swiftly with a "use it or lose it" policy to stop developers from sitting on these planning permissions for the five years which they can currently do, without having to move on them. We need to incentivise, encourage and sanction where we are not seeing speedy delivery on live planning permissions.

The main point we make in putting forward an ambitious programme for housing, not just for the delivery of new builds but also for the delivery of deep retrofit and refurbishment, is that we all should know we need that level of ambition and urgency. We, in the Labour Party, are the only party in the Opposition which has ever served in government. We have a track record of service in government and are proud of it. We are making realistic and sensible proposals for change in housing policy and for a more radical and urgent approach to housing which we are calling on the Government to engage with. We saw a previous Labour Party housing Minister, Jim Tully, delivering 100,000 public homes during a recession. The Minister’s Government constantly refers back to the 1970s. That was a Labour Party housing Minister who delivered that level of housing. We saw more recently in a boom period more than 60,000 new-build homes being delivered. We know it can be done and it is not a ludicrous thing to suggest that we need to build 50,000 new homes a year. This is based on the Government’s own figures, on our knowledge of the demographic demand, and on realistic proposals as to how we can do this. We can only do this, however, if the State steps up and if we see it engaging and enabling the level of investment that is required to ensure we can recruit the level of construction workers we need, mobilise resources in new technologies with off-site construction and modular housing, and ensure we will have creative proposals from the Opposition which it will engage seriously with. That is what we should be seeing from the Government and it is unfortunate that we are not seeing that level of engagement.

I call on the Minister to withdraw the countermotion which I believe is just reiterating the litany of measures which the Government says it has taken. All we have seen are failed targets and failure to deliver.

See this speech in context