Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In order to solve the absolutely disastrous housing situation we are in and the human misery that is wrecking the lives of the 13,500 people who are homeless and the hundreds of thousands of young people and working people who are absolutely locked out of the possibility of ever owning their own home and who, increasingly, are leaving the country because of that or because they cannot even find a rental property, we need to understand how we got to this situation. The simple answer is that people who want to make money from housing dominate the Irish housing market. This led to the madness of the Celtic tiger, the crash that followed and the disastrous decision of the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government to stop building council housing and to flog €40 billion worth of assets to investment funds that are now charging unaffordable house prices and unaffordable rents.

The biggest residential development in the country is in Cherrywood in my area. Two-bedroom homes there cost €485,000, three-bedroom units are €650,000 and a four-bedroom home costs €830,000. These prices are ten, 11 and 12 times the average income of ordinary workers. It was brought to my attention that at 4.20 p.m one day this week, a one-bedroom rental property was advertised for €2,150. At 5.20 p.m., one hour later, the advertisement was taken down before being put back up again, with the price for the same property having gone up by €500. The people renting out the property knew the demand was such that they could charge what they liked. If the cost of housing and rent is dictated by people who are trying to make a profit, we cannot solve the housing crisis. Surely we should know that after the past 20 years of utter disaster.

In short, the State must intervene. We have to break the link between the market and those who make profits. The State must provide affordable purchase housing and affordable rental. In other words, housing must be subsidised. A number of actions need to be taken on that front. We need rent controls that set rents at affordable levels. This is done elsewhere in Europe but we refuse to do it here. The consequence is rents that are simply off the Richter scale.

The State must build housing itself and it needs the capacity to do so. Even the people profiteering from the housing crisis are now saying this. I have mentioned the people at Goodbody Stockbrokers saying it a week or two ago. The latest, very ironic, news is that Michael Stanley of Cairn Homes, whose company made €667 million in revenue from these unaffordable houses, is now saying we are destroying our economy because of the housing shortage and the unaffordability of housing. This is the guy who is profiteering from the market. He is saying his company simply cannot provide affordable housing.

The State must have its own construction capacity. The Taoiseach said to me the other day that we have the LDA. However, the latter does not have its own construction company. It is sourcing construction from private developers. In Shanganagh, where we fought against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to get 100% social and affordable housing, we still do not know how much that affordable housing will cost. It is being benchmarked against market prices that are at the levels I just described. Even if there is a 25% discount on these absolutely astronomical house prices, the homes will be totally unaffordable.

This is the madness of relying on the private sector. We need a State construction company to build houses. We need rent controls. We need a permanent ban on no-fault evictions, not just a pause as an emergency measure. We need to dramatically ramp up the amount of social and affordable housing we deliver. In the short term, we should not be buying 10% or even 20% of new developments for social and affordable housing. We should be buying at least 50% until we ramp up construction levels to such a degree that the State can fill the gap left by market failure.

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