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

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Gould for tabling this motion. Before I turn to some of the particulars, at the heart of this is a discussion of what happened to public housing and how it has been allowed to be run down over the years. I will talk about the individual impacts that has on people who rent but part of that running down of public housing and the stock, not investing in, retrofitting or maintaining it, is running down the very idea of public housing. That has been part of an attempt over the years to try to say public housing does not work, we cannot have more of it, we need to rely more on the private sector and contract out to private contractors for maintenance or private landlords to provide temporary replacements for social housing. Running down our housing has also run down the idea of public housing. We should not let go of the fact that when a lot of public housing was built, it was of its time. At the time, it was of good, high quality. It was ahead of its time in a lot of instances. In fact, it was quite radical in many instances, when we took people out of appalling conditions in tenements and slums and provided good quality public housing we were proud of. What has happened since, especially in recent decades, is that public housing has been deliberately run down as part of a process of running down the very idea of public provision of housing. We should strongly oppose that.

An issue around this subject is the funding model for public housing and maintenance of public housing being broken and not being addressed. There is no detail on that in this motion - it is the only criticism I have of this motion. Successive Governments have failed in not having a sufficient model of funding in place. I am grateful for the extra time I have been given.

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