Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am afraid the words of the previous speaker are a simplistic resolution to a serious and extensive housing problem that has bedevilled Members of this House for many years. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do the things that needed to be done at the time. First of all, we did not have money. It is important when one is trying to solve a housing problem to have money and to be able to borrow it at a rate that is possible to withstand and to pay back.

There were various other issues. First, we had the financial crash, then we had Covid, then we had various other things that interfered with the free flow of the provision of houses, which we all know is necessary. As the Ceann Comhairle knows, I come from County Kildare, which always had a simple attitude to housing. When there was a need for housing, the attitude was to build it, with whatever means could be found to do it. Under the Housing Act 1966, there were two ways to meet housing need. One involved the private sector. The local authority gave loans to a different category to appease that particular category. Then it provided what used to be called county council houses to another category of people. That had the effect of keeping a smooth transition between areas and categories of people to the extent that it was possible to meet the needs. Reference has been made to the 1970s and so on. The needs were met then and in the 1980s. People were always critical, however. I remember criticism coming from the other side of the house in the local authorities and in this House to the effect that the best value was not being achieved for the spending of money. In other words, the answer was not to spend it at all, which does not solve any housing problem.

I would say to the Minister that I disagree with those who say that housing policy has failed. It has not failed. It has failed to achieve the great heights that we all thought we would reach in the shortest possible time but it has not failed. As I have said privately to the Minister, now is the time to take any measures to accelerate the speed at which houses are built, because it can be done. There is a significant amount of building is taking place in the country. Under Part V, more houses are coming than ever before. That is a provision which I proposed at local authority level many years ago. Some people said we would not be able to use it because it would take up too much capital and so on. The fact is that it is working. It needs that push that will bring us to the level that we need. It will come much more quickly than we think. There are those who say there is no hope and that they will emigrate. I remember the 1980s when there were no jobs and people emigrated. People listened to soothsayers saying that the country was ruined and to leave. I remember within a couple of years, as does the Ceann Comhairle, that people had to come back from where they went because there was another financial crash in some notable economies. We had to house them here through the local authorities. It was a terrible drop-down for people who left their homes because they were wrongly advised.

I recently spoke to the Minister about this. He understands the current position, as did his predecessors. The problem was that it was not possible to get the finances and preliminary matters such as planning and so on all together to co-ordinate them in a way that would seriously impact, in a positive way, on the housing problem. We are in that position now and this opportunity should not be missed. It will come just once. If we miss it this time, we have a problem. I am convinced that the Minister is well-intentioned and well-disposed towards achieving what could not have been achieved heretofore simply by changing some of the regulations.

For example, other Members have made reference to the situation of a person who is a couple hundred euro over the income limit for a local authority house and is then taken off and scrapped from the list altogether. There is another ridiculous situation whereby a woman, for instance - it could be a man, but it is usually a woman - with three or four children is allocated a house and because she has very small kids, she feels that she cannot handle them in that type of house at that particular time. Maybe it has outside stairs, it is a duplex, or whatever the case may be. It is a serious problem and health risk. What happens to her is that if she does not take the house, she is put to the bottom of the queue again and fined. That is unnecessary. We should never treat people like that. They expect to be treated well and sympathetically by the State and they are entitled to be treated sympathetically. I ask the Minister to look at all those things that in the weeks and months ahead, to be able to ensure that whatever measures are taken will have a long-lasting impact and will bring on board the kind of people whom we were not able to facilitate over the past number of years.

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