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

Along with my Labour colleagues, I am glad to support this motion and I commend Deputy Cian O'Callaghan on bringing it forward. It is the latest in a series of Opposition motions and proposals to address the housing disaster, the chronic housing shortage and the Government's failure to address it.

We in Labour have put forward constructive proposals of our own to begin the path to secure and affordable housing and to effective provision and delivery. Among the measures we have proposed is a Bill to prioritise the needs of children in homelessness, legislation the Government parties supported when in opposition. We have introduced a Bill to provide an evidence base for the lifting of the eviction ban we called on Government to adopt. Unfortunately, all our proposals have been met with a dismissive response from Government, very much like the dismissive response to Deputy Cian O'Callaghan's motion. That is extremely disappointing given the scale of the crisis we face.

Now more than ever we need cross-party action. We need to see ambition and urgency from Government and we need to see a constructive approach taken by Government in adopting some of the proposals, ideas and measures we put forward to address this catastrophic situation. We need that level of collaborative work because we have a record number of people in homelessness. Last week's figures show 12,259 people are in homelessness, including thousands of children. Multiple generations have given up on ever being able to own a home.

Many younger and older people are stuck in an exploitative private rental market with no options left. One renter in my constituency asked me in despair, "How am I, a man in my 60s, supposed to get a mortgage?" He has been evicted from his private rental property. That is the reality. With a pension system based on the assumption that pensioners will be homeowners, will have paid off the mortgage and will not be renting, this housing crisis is in reality a ticking time bomb for an older generation, which we are seeing looming ever closer.

From the census figures released this week we know that the proportion of owner-occupied dwellings continues to fall, down from almost 70% to 66% in the 11 years since the census of 2011. Among young people these figures are even more stark, with hundreds of thousands continuing to live in their childhood bedrooms into their twenties, thirties and even forties. This is not surprising because house prices have skyrocketed, rising well above inflation and material costs and well above any increase in wages.

There is particular pressure on home ownership in Ireland because in reality it is the only method of achieving housing security for people in this country. When the Government made the unconscionable decision earlier this year to lift the temporary no fault eviction ban, that decision took away the only other form of housing security that had been available. It meant that thousands of renters who have done nothing wrong were set to lose their homes. They are living in fear of losing their homes. With home ownership becoming increasingly more unaffordable and social housing lists extraordinary oversubscribed, individuals and families are locked out of housing security. The Government should have continued the eviction ban until there were real options for housing security elsewhere, but instead it pulled the rug out from under renters and chose to prioritise landlord profits over people's lives.

One might think that in pulling security away from renters, Government would at least have sought to ensure that security through home ownership would be easily available but that has not been the case. We have seen massive underspending on housing. I am glad the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has joined us now. The failure by Government to deliver the necessary levels of State investment of public funding for the building of homes has held back the prospect for many people of having the security of home ownership. The failure to deliver housing at a time of massive budget surpluses proves that it is ideology and not the economy that is holding back necessary massive State investment. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been over-reliant on an ideology that expects the private market and private developers to deliver housing, but we have no evidence that has been the case. Indeed, the evidence all points to the opposite, which is that the private sector has not delivered affordable housing at the levels required.

When the Government refers back to the glory days of building of houses in large numbers, it fails to remember that it was it was the State through local authorities that delivered the affordable housing in the 20th century. It is extraordinary that the Government continues to remain reluctant to provide the necessary levels of State intervention to resolve this crisis. Secure and affordable housing is a human right and the Government has failed to vindicate this right. During the Covid pandemic, we saw how the State could mobilise and invest resources to intervene for the common good to save people from job losses and poverty. However, in the midst of a housing crisis, we are not seeing that level of State commitment. Instead, we are seeing a rollback on private agreements to deliver social housing.

Yesterday, I mentioned to the Taoiseach the Irish Glass Bottle site in Poolbeg in my constituency, which was set to deliver in the first phase a significant number of affordable homes. That first phase will now only produce 25. The Taoiseach has said that he would engage with the Minister to see what has gone wrong with the site. Labour councillors were part of the really strong campaign to deliver significant levels of social and affordable housing for local communities in Poolbeg. It has been deeply disappointing, first, to see the massive delays and now to see this rollback on the numbers of affordable homes to be delivered.

Poolbeg is an example of what happens in when private developers are left to their own devices and when the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage does not intervene. Instead of ensuring delivery of affordable homes through State investment, the Government has funnelled money into private developers' pockets and into schemes such as help to buy that have done little to make homeownership accessible. I see the Minister indicating he disagrees, but the reality is that the independent review of help to buy commissioned by the Department of Finance pointed out that successful recipients have higher-than-average incomes and that the scheme has socially regressive outcomes. A supposedly fundamental element of Government's policy to encourage home ownership has simply not been successful. It has wasted public money that could be better spent on the provision of affordable housing.

Again and again we in opposition across different parties have put forward constructive proposals for addressing the housing crisis. When we do so, we have been met with smugness, a reliance on figures from Government that do not add up and a certain fatalism. It is almost as if Government is despairing that anything can be done to address the housing crisis. The reality is that things can be done. Massive State investment and massive ambition for change could deliver.

We in Labour put forward a programme for delivery 1 million homes over ten years, based on the Government's own projections using ESRI data, IBEC proposals and constructive proposals from NGOs such as Threshold and Focus Ireland. We put forward this ambitious proposal in the hope that would be engagement from Government. Rather than engaging, Ministers have spent their time saying why this cannot be done instead of looking on how it can be done and should be done to meet the real needs of individuals and families in this country. Why does the Government care more about political point-scoring on housing than working with others in opposition to find constructive solutions to the housing crisis?

We in Labour say it is time for change. The Minister should accept this constructive motion with its strong proposals. Government also needs to reinstate the eviction ban to provide security while we revolutionise the housing sector, and while we rapidly scale up State investment to ensure delivery of the secure affordable homes that families and individuals across the country so badly need.

See this speech in context