Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. The Labour Party welcomes it. There is not a word in it that we would have any reservations about supporting. All the asks set out are reasonable and sensible and I see no reason the Government would not accept and implement it.

Housing, as Deputy Bacik has said repeatedly, is the civil rights issue of our time. It affects every family and individual. It is the single greatest issue holding us back from the real progress this country is capable of achieving. It is the reason our schools cannot fill teaching posts, our hospitals are understaffed and so many of our young people are looking abroad because they cannot find affordable accommodation at home. Day after day, week after week, all of us are getting emails and have people calling to our offices talking about the housing crisis. Things are truly desperate.

This is obviously a huge topic. It has many facets. We have concentrated on the supply issue, correctly because of the lack of supply. However, I welcome the opportunity this motion presents to look at housing in the broader context, that is, particularly tonight, the issue of social housing maintenance. We have not discussed it very often in this House. Often, if we do touch upon it, it is in a tangential way. Tonight we have the opportunity. This is a very significant issue. State-owned housing should be the standard bearer, a national exemplar, of the quality of housing we present. Many of the new estates that are being opened now are of that standard. Wexford County Council has opened a number of nearly zero-emission building, NZEB, houses, which are fantastic, but we have a significant stock of houses that require significant investment. Local authority tenants required to pay differential rents are looking at the most recent allocations and saying "By God, I wish we could live in a house like that". They would like to live in a house that is warm and comfortable but for many council tenants across the country, this is not the case. We have issues of damp, mould, drafts and leaking drains. We have inadequate maintenance, leaking roofs and an endless wait for the type of refurbishment and repairs that are so urgently required.

It is not the fault of local authorities. I know from talking to my local authority and my party's councillors across the country that it is an issue of resourcing. Far too often, council tenants are told their requirements have been approved and the improvements are necessary but that the resources are not available to do the work. This is a fundamental issue. The advent of the so-called Celtic tiger period, during which Bertie had two terms as Taoiseach, saw the virtual dismantling of the excellent housing departments that used to exist in local authorities across the country. Instead, a dependence was created on the private sector. We could lease back or purchase houses from the endless new estates, some of very dubious quality, that were being built at the time. The old idea was to have a housing department. We had excellent ones in County Wexford which had a five-year rolling programme identifying need, purchasing and servicing the land and building the houses, so there would be a constant flow of appropriate housing coming on stream. All of that was dismantled in the Celtic tiger period. When we inherited a broken economy and a collapsed construction industry, I tried to rebuild that system as soon as we got a few bob back. One of the first things I was asked to do was to provide more than 400 additional staff in the housing departments across the country to start rebuilding that again.

I hope, from this motion, that there will be a sense that we can rebuild that sort of energy within our housing departments and that they will be resourced to provide forward planning and identify and service land. This would ensure that five years from now, we will know where the next array of houses will be and how many there will be to meet need. They would constantly look at demographics to ensure the right types of houses are being built where they are needed.

We also need to develop adequate housing maintenance skills. We need more apprentices and to ensure that they are not being bought in but are intrinsically part of the workforce of the local authority, to have a team of permanent expert rebuilders, refurbishers, plumbers and masons - all the skill sets needed to ensure the quality of housing is maintained. Equally important is that if we had that capacity, we could bring in the vacant properties. We are all scandalised looking at the vacant properties. People on the street are homeless and we look at empty properties, sometimes empty for years. They should be compulsorily purchased. We should strengthen the law in that regard and have the capacity in the council to bring them back into public use at a fast pace. An allied issue is dereliction, which is a blight on our towns and villages. It needs to be addressed. I hope the Minister of State will reference that issue when he speaks later in this debate.

Most local authority tenants are extremely proud of their homes and communities and maintain them to an extraordinarily high standard. There is the occasional tenant who does not maintain the house, causes dereliction and brings down the quality of life for all their neighbours. We need to strengthen the capacity of local authority housing departments to have trained professionals to deal with those people. Some have very serious problems; sometimes it is addiction and sometimes mental health issues. We need the capacity to deal with those individuals who do not maintain their homes. We see it, in a beautiful estate - a wreckage of a garden in the middle of it, to the shame, annoyance and abuse, in terms of quality of life, of their neighbours. I hope the Minister of State will also take note of that.

A retrofit programme is under way for local authority houses - the warmer homes scheme and other schemes which are applicable across the country. Not all homes are capable of being retrofitted completely. I spoke to a specialist in the area who told me it would be cheaper to knock down the house and start again, in some instances, than to try to properly retrofit it. We must ensure this can be done in a reasonable timeframe. I have talked to several elderly people on the doors in the past few weeks who were told they would get around to retrofitting their homes but it would be a year away. A year is very important in that person's life. We need to put the resources in, including recruitment of skilled personnel, to ensure that can be shortened. We also need proper adaptation of houses for an ageing population. A previous speaker talked about the difficulty getting a ramp - for God's sake - and putting in proper supports in the house, in walking areas, supports in the bathroom, walk-in showers and so on. That should be part of the norm.

I will conclude on the issue of downsizing. There are lots of people in large houses they cannot maintain or heat and who want a comfortable, smaller house but it is not available in their areas. I hope the Minister of State will address that issue too, to ensure larger houses are utilised in an appropriate way for larger numbers of people. It is not that anybody should be forced out of their house in any circumstances but that those who want to downsize should have the opportunity of not having to move out of their communities. That means having smaller, comfortable accommodation available to them close at hand. This is an important motion. There are many aspects to it. I hope it will get the appropriate attention from the Government and be implemented. That would transform the quality of life for many of our people.

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