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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the vitally important issue of vacant homes and the vacant home tax. Labour is glad to support this motion from the Social Democrats and I commend Deputy Cian O'Callaghan and his colleagues for putting this forward. As I said last night in the debate on the Sinn Féin motion, this motion is the latest in a series of constructive policy proposals being put forward by Opposition parties, providing suggestions, proposals, worked solutions and ways of resolving the housing disaster.

It is disappointing, albeit not surprising, to see the Government again not engaging with Opposition parties on these constructive proposals and opposing them and putting forward countermotions, as it did last night and as it is doing today. The housing catastrophe is of such a scale that it requires a cross-party response. It requires a collaborative and constructive coming together of parties to look at how we can address this catastrophe with the necessary ambition and urgency.

We in the Labour Party have put forward proposals too. On 9 February we put forward a series of eight emergency measures that we called on the Government to adopt prior to the lifting of the temporary no-fault eviction ban. The Government, again, did not engage and countered and opposed that motion. We have put forward a number of Private Members' Bills suggesting constructive ways to address the housing catastrophe, such as a homeless families Bill, a Bill to implement the Kenny report and a Bill on renters' rights. Most recently, we put to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage a Bill that would provide an evidence basis for the continuance of a ban on no-fault evictions until there is a demonstrable drop in homelessness figures. The Government has not engaged with these proposals. Instead, countless Government Ministers and spokespeople have set out reasons they cannot implement Opposition measures. That is what they have done, instead of telling us how they propose to implement constructive measures to address a housing crisis that the Minister, Deputy McGrath, and other Ministers acknowledge is the biggest crisis facing this country.

At our recent Labour Party conference I set out an ambitious programme to deliver 1 million homes over ten years, based on the Government's own projections of 50,000 new builds and 50,000 refurbishments and deep retrofits per year. These are the Government's own figures and projections of housing need. The Taoiseach has told us there is a current shortfall of 250,000 homes. The Housing Commission has told us that we need up to 62,000 new builds per year to meet demographic demand and existing need. Yet, the Government will not engage. We are simply not seeing the level of ambition and urgency that is required. Instead we see a fatalism, a lack of ambition and a lack of creativity in the Government response and the Government programme that is being put forward at a time when we have record budget surpluses.

Like other colleagues, I heard the Minister speaking this morning about the record budget surplus and the stability programme update which tells us there will be a €10 billion surplus in this year's budget. We had a surplus of over €5 billion last year. Yet there is a failure of spending, with an underspend of €1 billion on social and affordable home delivery by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. That is an extraordinary underspend in the teeth of a housing crisis. We know this is about ideology. It is not the economy or a lack of resources that are holding back the necessary State investment in housing. It is a reluctance, it seems, by the Government to interfere in the market. We see that in the unexpected and premature decision to lift the ban on evictions without having any contingency plans in place. Again, we have seen the Government's fatalism here - a stepping back and an acceptance that this is going to cause immense hardship for the 9,000 individuals served with eviction notices in the second half of last year. Threshold has told us today that many of those notices were in fact invalid and yet we see again this fatalism and a failure by the Government to adopt the necessary measures that would have provided a safety net for renters facing the loss of their homes at a critical time. We are entering the period when children sit State exams and we are hearing from so many families who are absolutely desperate with nowhere to go.

We see the same fatalism with regard to vacant homes. The Labour Party welcomes the vacant homes tax. We welcome any measure introduced by the Government to address the housing crisis and increase housing supply but it is not enough. We know even from the Minister's own proposals that a vacancy tax is simply not enough in itself. It needs to be set at a higher level to ensure not just that revenue is raised but also, crucially, to bring about a change in behaviour and culture. In his speech, the Minister put forward the lowest estimate of vacant properties in the State. The CSO has estimated a much higher figure of 166,000, which is a vacancy rate of nearly 8% - a high vacancy rate compared to other European countries. That excludes holiday homes. While the CSO figures are noted in the Government's own vacant homes plan alongside the other two sets of figures, I note the Minister has only given us the Revenue figure of 57,000, which is the lowest projection and is based on self-reporting. As others have said, GeoDirectory puts the figure at nearly 85,000. It is extraordinary that we simply do not have reliable data on this. Let us take the CSO rates or even the GeoDirectory rates. Hardware Association Ireland has used other criteria and suggests that up to 40,000 homes are clearly long-term vacant and immediately available for refurbishment. That is the sort of immediacy and urgency we need to refurbish vacant homes.

All of us know from our own constituencies that there is a high level of vacancy and dereliction. I see it in Dublin Bay South. We see it everywhere. Hardware Association Ireland tells us, and I think it is right, there is "a deeper cultural issue [here] with an acceptance of a high level of spoilation in our built environment". That has to be tackled but the Government's proposals are simply not sufficient, adequate or effective enough to tackle that culture. Its vacant homes action plan has acknowledged that and sets out a series of measures to be taken but we need greater urgency on these. We need greater urgency in tackling this high level of vacancy and we need an ambition from the Government. It can be done. The housing crisis can be addressed. It is simply not good enough for the Government to say it cannot address, for example, labour shortages or construction inflation. There are ways and means to do this. In December, the ESRI set out a range of measures that could be activated now by the Government to address labour shortages, such as an expansion of the list of skills on the critical skills visa programme, for example, to enable an aggressive recruitment campaign of workers from abroad. Social Justice Ireland backed that call this morning. We need that to be done.

The Government's own estimates say we need another 20,000 construction workers. Let the Government act on this instead of sitting back and just observing a shortfall of 250,000 homes, observing that there may be up to 166,000 vacant properties in the State or observing that we need 20,000 more construction workers. Let action be taken urgently, with ambition and creativity, in the same way the State, the Revenue Commissioners and other State agents intervened during the Covid pandemic to use the levers of State power to address such a huge and existential crisis. Let us see those levers being used now by the State and by the Government so measures, like the measures being proposed in this motion, can be adopted by the Government with urgency.

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