Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I read the Taoiseach's interview in the newspapers last week and I thought it was a particularly sly bit of politics to talk about building public housing and the lack of homes to buy in the same breath. The reason homeownership is going down is that successive Governments led by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party have allowed our housing market to become a casino through speculation, financialisation and massive vulture and cuckoo funds. They cannot challenge the extortionate price of housing because they have built an economy that only works for the big banks and finance funds, and half of it is propped up by our overinflated housing market. They created a market in which ordinary people have no chance of affording a home. The first-time buyer of a new home has a median household income of €90,000, which is more than twice the national median household income for one person. It is also far more than twice the income threshold to get onto the housing list.

The solution is public housing, built on public land by a publicly owned construction company, where the people who benefit are the workers who build the houses and workers on the average industrial wage. We used to do this between the 1930s and 1960s, when we built a huge amount of public housing. We had no money but we did it, and we can do it again. What is lacking is the political will to do so. The idea that the Government is now building the most public houses since 1975 is a joke. Putting aside the fact that Dr. Rory Hearne’s figures showed that only about 3,000 homes were planned and delivered by a local authority or an approved housing body last year, we do not live in the 1970s anymore. Our population has increased by 56% since the 1970s, up from 3.8 million to 5 million. Our GDP has increased from €8.88 billion in 1975 to €472.45 billion in 2021. Adjusting for population increase, the State will have to build 13,718 homes to match what was done in 1975. Luckily, perhaps, we have an extra €463.57 billion in our economy now.

Ordinary people should be able to afford their own homes and the Government should invest in making sure there is a supply of affordable housing in the State. I have no problem with people aspiring to own their homes. The problem is that as long as we have this deeply unequal society, and as long as it takes twice the median household income to get close to even being able to afford a home, we will need to build vastly more public housing. We need to radically take on the big banks, speculators and developers, kick out the vulture and cuckoo funds, end the tax breaks, ban the wholesale purchase of new-builds, go after the profits of companies that are making billions off this housing crisis, create a State construction company and start building public houses on public land. We need to repurpose the Land Development Agency to buy land and build homes, and fold the affordable housing bodies into this so we can retain public ownership of the public housing stock in perpetuity. We need to increase the public housing income thresholds so anyone who cannot afford a home can get on the housing list.

It is very simple. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world. If somebody needs a home, the State can and should provide them with one. We have done it before and we can do it again. I took out a mortgage in 1989 on one wage as a post office clerk. That just would not be possible now. Many thousands of people are being affected by that.

I thank Deputy Cian O’Callaghan for introducing the motion.

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