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

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

- home ownership rates have been falling in Ireland since their peak in 1991;

- while the 1991 Census showed owner-occupiers making up 79.3 per cent of households, this had fallen to 67.6 per cent in 2016;

- this fall in rates of home ownership has been accompanied by an increase in the proportion of the population residing in the private rental sector, which more than doubled between 1991 and 2016, rising from 8 per cent to 18.2 per cent;

- rent prices are now at record levels, having increased by more than 85 per cent in the past 12 years, compared to the European Union average of 18 per cent;

- the median income for first-time buyers of new homes is now more than €90,000, and more than €103,000 in Dublin;

- the share of 25-34-year-olds who own their own home more than halved between 2004 and 2019, falling from 60 per cent to just 27 per cent;

- in 2006, the average age of a first-time buyer in Ireland was 29, and last year the average age of young people when they moved out of their parents' homes was 28;

- there are now at least 350,000 adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s living at home in their childhood bedrooms; and

- according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, only 65 per cent of those currently aged 35-44 are likely to become homeowners by retirement, compared to 90 per cent of those currently aged 65 plus;

acknowledges that:

- the collapse in home ownership rates will cause great social harm to an entire generation who are locked out of home ownership; and

- rapidly falling rates of home ownership are creating a retirement timebomb, which will explode when increasing numbers of people reach pension-age and, no longer being able to afford to rent in the private market, will require expensive State supports to avoid homelessness in retirement;

further notes that:

- expansion in recent years of the Build to Rent (BTR) model has led to a collapse in many areas in the number of new homes available to purchase;

- in 2022, more housing was built for rent (9,166) than for sale (8,590);

- only 323 affordable purchase homes were delivered in 2022;

- the Irish Strategic Investment Fund has been investing public money in BTR developments;

- Home Building Finance Ireland, which was set up to provide loans for small developers, invested €300 million in private rental developments for cuckoo funds; and

- in incentivising and financing the BTR sector, to the detriment of affordable housing, the Government has deliberately chosen to lock a generation out of home ownership; and

calls on Government to:

- stop incentivising a model of housing provision that makes home ownership increasingly unlikely;

- ensure public money is not invested in the delivery of private rental-only developments that are unaffordable to rent and unavailable to buy;

- stop providing subsidies for developers, which have lined developers' pockets and kept house prices sky-high; and

- dramatically increase the delivery of genuinely affordable purchase homes, in line with the Ó Cualann model.

I am sharing time with Deputies Cairns and Catherine Murphy. In introducing this motion, it is first important to state a record number of 12,259 people are now living in homeless emergency accommodation. That includes 171 pensioners and 3,594 children. When Fine Gael took office, there were fewer than 4,000 people in homeless emergency accommodation, and that was far too many people. Since Fine Gael has been office over the past decade, that number has more than tripled. More alarming again is that the Taoiseach made comments on the issue yesterday, in which he seemed to expect that the number will grow further. We have seen from the data on the notice to quit that were released by the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, yesterday that almost 5,000 notices to quit have been issued in the first quarter of this year. Based on that, we will see almost 20,000 notices to quit taking place this year.

Unless urgent action is taken by the Government on this, we will see homelessness continuing to grow. We need the eviction ban on no-fault evictions to be brought back in order to bring us into line with most European countries where, if you pay your rent, you will not be subject to eviction and you will not be at risk of homelessness. That is the norm in most European countries. Those figures, of course, do not include people who are sleeping rough or who are sleeping in tents, in cars and on sofas. It is happening at a time when the Government is having a row about how to spend billions of euro in budget surplus.

At the same time, these issues are related, rates of home ownership are falling. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, census data that were released yesterday showed that levels of home ownership had fallen to 66%. This is their lowest level in more than 50 years. At the same time, only 52% of homes that were built since 2016 are owner-occupied, with a mortgage or a loan. While it is the case that renting certainly suits some people for different specific reasons, most people do not want to be in the private rental sector and the research consistently shows that.

Research done by Threshold shows that only 14% of renters are renting by choice. Most people would like to have the security of a long-term home. That is what they want to have. That can be achieved through home ownership, good social housing or affordable rents. It does not specifically have to be through home ownership but, given that the Government is heavily promoting insecure private rental development at the expense of more secure forms of housing tenure, this is very serious.

High rents have forced people in their 20s, 30s and 40s to continue to live in their childhood bedrooms. People sometimes spend a decade or longer living in their parents' homes into their 20s, 30s and 40s while they are trying to save up deposits for houses. It was in the case in the past that people were able to pay a rent and save for a deposit at the same time. However, rents are now so high, especially under the build-to-rent model and the rental-only model that the Government has promoted so heavily, that it is simply not a possibility for people.

Levels of home ownership and the growth in homelessness are related. One of the factors that is driving homelessness is a growth in insecure forms of housing. We have seen as home ownership has declined that homeless rates have increased. This is because, for most people who end up homeless, their last secure form of housing was in the private rented residential sector. Therefore, as we see fewer and fewer secure forms of stable, affordable housing, we see more and more people who are in precarious forms of housing, including rented accommodation. That is one of the factors that is driving homelessness.

Contrast where we are now with where we were 30 years ago. In 1991, Ireland had one of the highest rates of home ownership in the European Union. Almost 80% of households owned their own home, either outright or with a loan or a mortgage. Some 10% of households at that time were in social housing, while most of the remaining households were in the private rental sector. Certainly, not everyone in the private rental sector at that time were younger or students, but a good number of people were in those categories. They were very much there as a tenure of choice because it suited them. We are in a very different situation now, and it is not an accident. It is because, since then, successive Governments have pursued policies and put huge resources into changing the tenure and the stability of our housing system in Ireland.

When this State was set up in the 1920s, a huge portion of the population was renting, either in rural areas to landlords, or indeed in urban areas, a huge number of people were renting in tenements and slums. We did not then have the kinds of home ownership rates that were built up over the 20th century with a huge amount of public investment. The Land Commission put a massive amount of resources into buying land in order that people in rural areas no longer would have to rent from landlords but would own their small plots of land and their homes. In cities, vast resources were put into public housing with slum clearances and building social and affordable purchase housing. I often mention the example of Marino, which is in my constituency, where 1,200 affordable purchase homes were built 100 years ago. That area of Marino is still extremely successful.

In the last 30 years, there have been multiple measures taken by Governments to attack the high levels of home ownership. It started with the section 23 tax reliefs that were rolled out widely for investors. It is continuing now with a favourable tax treatment for investment funds that the Government is so keen on. What we have seen in the last year, as international investment in the rental-only model has dried up, is a significant bank rolling and financing of the rental-only model by the Government through hundreds of millions of euro from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, which has been invested to rescue some of these schemes. In fact, what it should have been doing is looking to convert these schemes into affordable rental and purchase homes.

There are particular effects of promoting this rental-only model. It is creating a retirement cliff edge. According to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, only 65% of people aged 35 to 44 are likely to become homeowners by the time they retire. This compares with more than 90% of those who are currently aged 65 and over. This is what this Government's policy is doing. That will create a retirement time bomb, in terms of people not being able to afford those high rents. It will put very significant pressure on the State to subsidise them. It will mean that an increasing number of pensioners are at risk of homelessness if those tenancies end.

This model is also contributing to the increased levels of homelessness. By its nature, the rental-only model, with its high rents and insecure tenancies, is insecure. That is leaving people vulnerable to eviction and homelessness. It is leading to more and more younger people and people into their 30s and 40s simply not being able to afford these extravagant rents and having to live in their childhood bedrooms. There are now more than 400,000 adults who are living in their childhood bedrooms well into their 20s, 30s and 40s. It is also leading to a mismatch in the housing stock. As households are becoming smaller, we are building smaller dwellings, including lots more apartments. There is a certain logic to that. However, when the vast majority of new apartments are rental only, it means that households who may be occupying a family-sized home may wish to have the choice of the right size of apartment. They do not have that choice. Some people will never want to do that, and that is absolutely fair enough, but some people do want to have that choice. I meet them regularly. They are very frustrated when they see large apartment schemes going up in their communities but they cannot buy an apartment in those schemes.

The apartments are only available at very high rents that people cannot afford and they will not move from the security of homeownership to a rental-only scheme. It will lead to a mismatch of housing stock, where there will be more and more families in smaller apartments, and more and more people in larger family-sized homes who would like to move to an apartment but do not have that option. This is all happening in the context of a multibillion euro Government surplus. There is growing frustration among the people I talk to that despite the huge resources at the Government's disposal, homeownership rates are falling, homelessness has reached yet another record high, rents are at a record high and house prices have reached record highs under this Government's watch.

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