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

The Government's disastrous approach to housing has meant record rents, record numbers of adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s stuck living in box rooms and childhood bedrooms, record numbers of people living in homeless emergency accommodation and now, shamefully, record numbers of children growing up without a home. At the same time there has never been such an opportunity to solve the housing disaster, with billions available that could be used to build more homes and crucially, many more affordable homes which are needed. With today's budget, never has such a huge opportunity been wasted. Today's budget is a budget for investors, developers, speculators and land hoarders. When it comes to housing, this budget is taken straight out of the Fianna Fáil developer's handbook, and continues the disastrous approach of giving hundreds of millions of euro, in subsidies and tax reliefs, away to investors in measures that will not build one single additional home.

What does this budget mean for renters? Since this Government took office, rents have reached record levels. Rents have almost doubled in the last decade. The average rent nationally is now €1,792 a month. That is a staggering €21,504 a year. That means that someone on the minimum wage putting their entire take-home pay into keeping a roof over their head would still be left €15 short every week before they spend a single cent on food, heating or electricity. Somehow, the Government looks at these skyrocketing rents and figures that it is the landlords who need a dig-out. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, said in recent weeks that he wanted to see a €1,000 tax credit for renters to help pay for these exorbitant rents. However, the Government has fallen short today by a staggering €250.

In the fully costed Social Democrats alternative budget proposals, we allocated funding for a tax credit for renters to cover a full month's rent. Where has the funding that could have been used to fund this gone in this budget? It appears that it is being used to provide tax relief for landlords. It is a tax relief for landlords in receipt of some of the highest levels of rent in Europe. It is a tax relief that does nothing to help renters and does nothing to improve security of tenure. It merely requires that the landlord does not sell for a period of four years. The rationale for this relief - that landlords are fleeing - has been debunked as misinformation by the census data. According to the Central Statistics Office, between 2016 and 2022 the number of privately rented homes grew by 7%. Renters paying exorbitant rents and some of the highest rents in Europe are losing out to landlords due to a narrative spun by lobbyists that simply does not match the hard data of the census figures. Is this what decision-making under the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government has been reduced to? Worst of all, this tax relief for landlords will not build a single additional home - not one. What this tax relief will do is it will push up the price that investors are willing to pay for a home, putting further upward and inflationary pressure on house prices.

In relation to the renter's tax credit, raising the credit without accompanying measures to prevent this credit being gobbled up by rent increases is irresponsible and inflationary. Rents are skyrocketing under this Government. Rents have risen by over 10% in the last year alone. The tax credit must be accompanied by a strengthening of rent regulation, or it will act as another incentive to raise rents even further. Receiving a tax credit in one hand, only to immediately hand it back to your landlord with the other, is not what renters consider help from the Government. A report published by the ESRI showed hard evidence of how the rent pressure zone regulation is being flouted and circumvented by a cohort of landlords. We need a three-year ban on rent increases and a nationwide production of rent pressure zones.

In terms of vacancy, the setting of the vacant homes tax at a derisory 0.5% on vacant homes, after years of prevarication, shows a complete lack ambition to get many of the more than 100,000 empty homes around Ireland back into use. In our fully costed alternative budget proposals, we proposed a vacancy tax of 5%. This tax would have clear and fair exemptions so that no one who has a genuine reason for having an empty home, such as having an illness, is penalised. Setting this tax at a meaningful rate would send a clear message to the owner of an empty home to use it, sell it or rent it. However, in this year's budget the Government has failed to grasp the nettle and has set the vacant homes tax at an ineffective and derisory 0.5%.

In relation to the land hoarding tax, the announcement today to delay the collection of tax on land hoarding, the residential zone tax, until 2025 shows yet again that when it comes to tackling land hoarding and speculation, there is simply no urgency at all from this Government.

Is it not aware that we are in the middle of a housing disaster? As the Government delays and dithers, the housing crisis gets worse and worse for people all over Ireland.

On mortgage interest relief, the announcement by the Government appears to be full of holes. This has the potential to be hugely divisive. There does not appear to have been any attempt to target the measure at those in mortgage distress specifically. Excluded are those who fixed their rates before July 2022, those who will be coming off fixed rates in the coming months and first-time buyers who do not qualify for any Government supports. The Minister for Finance should tell us how he came up with the qualifying criteria and how he made the decision about which mortgage holders to exclude.

In the context of affordable housing, analysis published by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that since Fine Gael took office, house prices have increased at a much faster rate than wages. Since 2012, wages have increased by 27% compared with a 75% increase in house prices. Rents have increased by a staggering 90%. Year after year, housing is becoming less and less affordable. Homeownership levels are at their lowest for more than 50 years. One of the best things that could have been done in this budget would be to give people a chance to buy their own homes by building thousands of affordable homes next year. It is important to remember when we talk about affordable housing that 100 years ago, when this State was newly founded and had very few resources, we were able to build affordable houses in large numbers. This affordable housing was revolutionary at the time and it changed people's lives. One of the best examples of this is Marino, in my constituency, which is a very successful, well-designed and well-built community that is thriving to this very day. However, since this Government took office, it has never come even remotely close to meeting its targets on affordable housing. This year, the Government promised to provide 5,500 affordable homes. In the first half of the year, only 22 cost-rental homes were completed and only 101 affordable purchase homes. In the last election, the now Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, promised 10,000 affordable homes each year. Only 424 affordable purchase homes have been completed since this Government took office. This is an abysmal failure.

In the fully costed proposals contained in the Social Democrats' alternative budget, we allocate funding for 10,000 affordable homes next year. Significantly, under those proposals we would also provide early-stage finance to get affordable housing projects off the ground so the design and planning costs could be met. We would also provide for multi-annual funding over five years for modular and off-site construction in order to give the industry the certainty it needs to scale up production to at least 5,000 modular homes a year. This would kick-start an additional supply stream of high-quality and environmentally sustainable homes. Announcing targets for affordable homes is easy; it is building homes that matters. Affordable housing targets that are never met have zero credibility. You cannot live in an affordable housing target.

The people most let down by the housing disaster are those without a home. There are now 12,691 people living in emergency accommodation. This includes 176 pensioners and a record 3,895 children who are growing up without a home. The Government should be moving heaven and earth to reduce the number of people becoming homeless and yet we do not see any evidence of this in the budget. Incredibly, under this Government some local authorities are actually selling off more social homes than they are building. Last year, four local authorities - Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Longford County Council, Roscommon County Council and Sligo County Council - sold off more social homes than they built. They are reducing their social housing stock in the middle of a homelessness crisis. The Minister for Finance's announcement earlier about further incentivising and supporting the sale of social housing by local authorities means that next year the number of local authorities that sell more social homes than they build will be even higher again.

Young people living in State care are particularly vulnerable to becoming homeless, especially when they leave that care. Among the proposals the Social Democrats have put forward is one to significantly increase the capital assistance scheme for care leavers. Targeted funding in this area would reduce the number of young people leaving State care becoming homeless. I implore the Government to take on this proposal, which would make a very real difference.

In terms of housing, the one group that has not been failed by this budget is developers. In its fully costed proposals, the Social Democrats suggests abolishing over €400 million in subsidies for developers. We propose to allocate this money instead to building more affordable homes. However, this budget continues to throw hundreds of millions of euro at developers despite all the evidence that this approach is nothing short of a disaster. Analysis by architect Orla Hegarty shows that the introduction of the shared equity scheme by the Government has driven up house prices. In west Dublin, for example, the scheme pushed up house prices on new-build homes by €92,000 a year within 12 months of its introduction. Separately, BNP Paribas has pointed out that new-build house prices in Ireland are increasing at 18 times the rate of second-hand homes. This is specifically due to Government schemes and subsidies. Under this Government, people looking to buy somewhere affordable to live lose out but developers always win.

Housing adaptation grants are extremely important for assisting people with reduced mobility, older people and people with disabilities to stay in their homes. They are an absolutely key measure in adapting housing stock and providing good outcomes for people whose mobility changes and decreases, especially as they get older. A review of the housing adaptation grant scheme was due to be published before the end of 2022 but has still not been released. However, information released to Alone under the Freedom of Information Act shows several local authorities with significant waiting lists for housing adaptation grants. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, for example, has 85 on its waiting list, while South Dublin County Council has 95 and Fingal County Council has 194 - and it had already spent almost 100% of its budget by the beginning of August. Dublin City Council has 203 households on its waiting list, Galway County Council has 550 and Louth County Council has 562. Nationwide, there are at least 3,500 older people waiting on housing adaptation grants. It could be more. Budget deficits and overspends are being run up in a number of local authorities. Monaghan County Council has overspent its budget by over €500,000 and Meath County Council by €300,000. That was by the beginning of August. There are huge challenges in this area, and we have only seen a derisory increase from the Government in housing adaptation grants in this budget. In comparison, we set aside €25 million for this in our proposals.

This is a budget that has delivered for investors, land hoarders and speculators. This comes at a major cost for those paying record rents and for the record numbers of people stuck living in their childhood bedrooms into their 20s, 30s and 40s. This Government has an abysmal record of spending hundreds of millions of euro in subsidies and tax reliefs for developers and speculators, using public money to push up prices and profits. Instead, this money could and should be used to build more affordable and social homes, to give people a chance to find somewhere affordable to live and to get people out of homelessness.

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