Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is worth repeating and stating at the outset that the housing crisis is but one crisis that underpins other crises we have throughout our society. As spokesperson for transport, I meet bus companies and rail companies and ask them why they do not have enough staff and why we have ghost buses in Dublin city. They will say they do not have enough staff because they cannot afford to live in the city. They cannot afford to live in Cork or Galway. When your child goes to a secondary school and is unable to do certain subjects and you ask the principal why that is, the principal will say the school cannot hire geography, German or maths teachers. They cannot hire teachers for mainstream subjects. The school I am on the board of at the moment has not even had applications for the last four openings we have had. One of the reasons is the housing crisis. When one looks at why the wards in our hospitals are struggling to retain staff and talks to trade unions representing health workers, to hospital CEOs and managers, they will say the housing crisis is one of the key causes of the failure to retain or attract staff.

All of these problems we discuss in other parts of society all come back to housing. The inability of this Government to crack the housing nut or even make progress in this area is a part of that. How do we know the Government is not making progress? The key figures that continue to go up are homelessness. We have 13,531 people in emergency accommodation in this country, including more than 4,000 children. Despite the Government's measures and plans and because of its choice last year to lift the eviction ban, against all the advice of housing agencies, us in the Labour Party and other Opposition parties, we have seen numbers go up. It is a damning indictment of the Government's approach to housing and of the housing system. Any night in emergency or homeless accommodation, as my colleague and leader, Deputy Ivana Bacik, has just said, is a disaster for a family and a child. This Minister has had 1,346 nights as Minister. The litmus test of whether a housing policy is a success or a failure is the number on the housing list, which just continues to go up and up.

We have offered proper solutions. Last year at our party conference, our leader said we needed 1 million homes over ten years. That is 500,000 retrofits and 500,000 new builds, with 50,000 a year. What happened? We were scoffed at. The Minister stood up and, playing to the Gallery when it was full of the media, said we wanted to build 1 million new houses, or 500,000 new houses in the course of ten years. What has happened since Christmas? The Minister for housing said he would revise his targets upwards. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, said in response to Deputy Bacik on Leader's Questions a couple of years ago that, by 2026, the target would be 50,000 a year. We did not pluck those numbers out of the air. We got them from ESRI reports. That is what is needed. The Government has now come around to what we said last year and what other Opposition parties have been saying, that we need those targets to be at a minimum of 50,000 if we are to meet the scale of population demand. Please listen to us.

The Government is making a cynical effort to let this pass through tonight as if it is supporting it, while it will just continue to coast with its failed policy of Housing for All, or housing for some, as we call it. We are calling for a State housing construction company to be established through the LDA to increase the delivery of public homes by more than 20,000 a year. Why do we need this? We have an apprenticeship crisis and our construction sector is still on the boom-bust cycle. We still have that fear. If we have a State construction company that will continue to build no matter what the cycle or where the economy is, if we have our own direct hires and our own company under the LDA, we will be able to look after the most vulnerable in the decades to come. We need that sort of long-term planning. This Government does not have it. Housing for All and its success or otherwise is predicated purely on the private construction sector and we do not have the confidence that that is a stable sector. We know it is under-resourced and that there are not enough people working in the sector across all levels of skill sets.

Regarding the Government's own knowledgebase, it does not even know the true scale of empty homes nationwide, including homes that need to be brought into the national supply to address the housing crisis. The numbers vary depending on what source one uses. A total of 57,206 properties are vacant, according to the local property tax returns. Census estimates are much higher, at 166,752. Those figures exclude 66,135 seasonal holiday homes. This is an extraordinary number of buildings and property that are either vacant or not being lived in full-time, which this State should be doing more to bring into stock to help the homeless and those who are looking for a stable, long-term, secure home.

The Labour Party would take radical action to tackle vacancy and dereliction. It would introduce a minimum vacant home tax and increase funding for councils to have compulsory purchase orders for vacant and derelict properties. As our motion states, we would also look to expand the tenant in situ scheme, which, quite frankly, has been an absolute disaster for lack of resources. We have landlords willing to sell. We have tenants willing to stay, and we have a Government that has put money towards it but we are not getting enough tenant in situ homes through the system. That is down to lack of resources because we have housing officials who have to do too much. They have to do allocations, estate management and now they are having to deal with private sales on the market. It is totally under-resourced and the Government needs to scale that up.

We need to ensure we are building enough homes for people with disabilities. We are not doing that. There are no targets in Housing for All for wheelchair liveable homes or homes for people with disabilities. They are always add-ons or extras. Local authorities are going directly to developers as part of the Part V process and asking if they can build two or three homes that are wheelchair accessible. We need targets from the top down. The disability capacity review that the Government commissioned and published three years ago states the need for proper housing for people with disabilities. It is not being delivered anywhere near scale. This Government is failing those people yet again.

My colleague Deputy Bacik has spoken about the rental crisis in this country and the eye-watering figures that people are paying for rent. They are unaffordable for many people. If we generously take the average salary in Ireland, which is said to be about €45,000 a year, and subtract the rent for Dublin, that leaves you with €25,000, with just under half your salary going to rent. That is if you are even able to find a property in Dublin or any of our major cities.

The Government's absolute failure of policy in lifting the no-fault eviction ban almost one year ago has been a catastrophe for those in the rental sector. It has added instability and increased homeless figures. It has done nothing but bring hardship to the most vulnerable in our society. The Labour Party proposed just two years ago in our Bill on renters' rights that there are a number of things we can do right across the rental sector. The Minister said it is a constructive Bill and there are many good things in it but it has done nothing to implement it.

I will finish on this. My colleagues will speak to other areas of our motion. Despite all the figures we have, many people in the country are not captured by the homeless figures. There are people who have fallen between the gaps. My colleagues and I deal with them at our clinics every week. We are trying to get them involved in services. It can be difficult and there can be complex needs. The reason it is difficult to get them involved in services and to get them housing is that the services and housing supply that should be on stream are just not there. It is so disheartening. It is a real indictment of this Government and a real stain on a wealthy, modern country in Europe that we have a housing crisis of this scale. I ask that this Government not only support this motion but actually enact its provisions.

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