Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Housing is the biggest single failure of the Government without a shadow of a doubt. Statistics released to Aontú under the Freedom of Information Act have shown that 400 people have died homeless on the streets of Dublin since 2018. This is a shocking figure. An average of ten people were dying on the streets of Dublin in homelessness in the latter months of last year. We know that 14,486 people are officially on the homeless register at present, a figure keeps increasing under the Government. A total of 10,000 adults and 4,419 children were accessing emergency accommodation this month. This is an incredible figure. That is the equivalent of the population of the entire town of Killarney in County Kerry being homeless currently. The figure for children who are homeless as a result of the Government is equivalent to 180 classrooms of children. These figures are getting worse by the day under Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party Government. This is not counting the number of families who are sleeping rough or the number of families sleeping on the couches of friends and families. Tens of thousands of families in this country are on the brink of this situation. That is one of the most fearful things that is happening right now. Families are one serious car issue or one rental hike away from becoming homeless themselves. Many families will be going to sleep tonight, or at least trying to go to sleep tonight, with the pressure of this on their shoulders.

At present 60,000 people are on homeless waiting lists throughout the country. Eurostat has found that rents in Ireland have increased 100% since Fine Gael was elected to Government in 2011. In my county of Meath the average rent is €2,000, which is an incredible situation. House prices are out of reach to all but the wealthy. The average home in Dublin is selling for more than half a million euro. Buying a house under Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party is a luxury good for many people. On the combined gross income of doctors, gardaí and nurses, a normal three-bedroom semi-detached house in the greater Dublin area is simply not affordable. As a result, many people have to live 30 to 40 miles away from their jobs and have to commute three hours back and forth each day, which has an enormous effect financially, on their families and on the environment.

The Government's targets on housing are a major problem. The Government is in no way near to achieving these targets. The Government's targets are not even the size they should be to meet the housing crisis. The ESRI has stated we need to be building 60,000 houses a year to meet current demand. A total of 2,642 new social houses were built In the first nine months of the year. These were new builds by the Government, but this was a long way short of the full year target of 9,100. A total of 2,000 affordable homes were delivered in the first three quarters of the year, but this is far fewer than the 5,500 target. The Government is increasing the population of the country by 100,000 people a year, equivalent to the population of the city of Galway, but it is not building the extra university hospital, the extra university or the dozens of schools and certainly not the tens of thousands of houses needed to meet this extra demand in the system.

Fine Gael has been in government for 13 years. Fianna Fáil has been in government for eight years. From Phil Hogan to Alan Kelly to Simon Coveney to Eoghan Murphy and now to Darragh O'Brien, the situation is getting worse. Incredibly, in the census in 2022, we learned that half a million adults over the age of 18 were living with their parents. That is an astounding figure. This was a 14% increase on 2016 and a 19% increase on 2011. Under the Government, a total of 13% of all the adults in this country are living with their parents. The Government has destroyed the ambition of young people to be able to have their own homes. In response, young people are emigrating at a rate of knots. Couples are putting off having their families, those who are having families are having fewer children, and I am told that, as a result of these changes, in certain schools in certain parts of the country, fewer and fewer children are presenting for junior infants. Sports clubs throughout the country, many of them in Mayo, will say that teams are being decimated by the number of young people being forced to emigrate. This is having a massive effect on the delivery of public services. We heard this week there are 1,000 teaching vacancies nationwide. Australia is recruiting more gardaí this year then the Irish Government because so many gardaí are voting with their feet and going to Australia. That is an incredibly damning statistic with regard to what is happening in housing.

Aontú has developed detailed, costed, common-sense housing policies that we believe, if implemented, would seriously increase housing supply in this country. The first thing we want to do is tackle the number of empty homes in Ireland. Having empty homes in the middle of a housing crisis is similar to having ships leave the country with food in the middle of a famine. Right now, the Government is giving out refurbishment grants for vacant homes. We have found out, through parliamentary questions, that the Government is delivering approximately five or six of these refurbishment grants every month. If the Government is to continue at this rate, it will take 1,600 years for the number of empty homes in this country to be refurbished. This is not a Government that is inspired by urgency at any level.

There is also the situation that we are not giving out the grants speedily enough for families who want to live over shops. I was born and raised above a garage in Navan. At that time, many families lived in the centre of towns above shops. We in Aontú want to see 8,000 vacant home grants being given out at €70,000 each at a cost of €560 million a year. We want to see an equivalent number of grants for over-the-shop living at €30,000 for each refurbishment at a cost of €60 million a year.

There are also approximately 4,000 empty local authority homes in the country. It takes an average of eight months to flip these homes and rent them to another family. In the private sector it takes an average of three weeks for the same thing to happen. It does not make any sense whatsoever. It costs approximately €25,000 to refurbish each of these homes.

We in Aontú want to make €100 million available to get those homes back into use. We will mandate local authorities to bring those homes back into use within a month, on average.

Human resources and infrastructure are major problems in the delivery of homes here. In fact, the Government has completely ignored the infrastructural deficit that has existed in this country for the last ten years. For most of those years, infrastructural spending has been second last in the EU, with only Romania beating us to last place during that time. We want to see significant investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in this State. This would free up many house builds waiting for those two services to be provided in local areas.

We also want to look at the issue of construction workers. Hundreds of thousands of Irish construction workers are building homes now. The truth, however, is that nearly half of them are constructing homes in Australia and Canada. We want to see those workers brought home. Aontú would develop Operation Shamrock to attract Irish construction workers abroad back to Ireland. We would give a relocation package of €5,000 in vouchers to help people with flights and accommodation. We would also provide a €10,000 tax credit over three years to allow these workers to come back to Ireland. We would also see that accommodation for returning workers would be built in a speedy fashion. Under class 17 of the exempt development regulations, we would be able to provide 1,000 homes in a significantly faster time for those returning construction workers.

We would also improve on workplace planning to increase the number of construction workers and to see the number of apprentice positions increased from 1,500 to 3,000 annually. The cost of building is crucifying not only young couples but also many builders who are simply not building at present. We would significantly reduce the current cost of funding through the HBFI fund in this State. We would zero-rate VAT on construction materials for three years and reduce the cost of building homes to make it more viable for small builders, especially outside Dublin, to build.

We believe these proposals would reduce the cost of building homes by €55,000. We also believe a bird cannot fly on one wing. We want to see 15,000 social homes and 7,000 affordable homes built every year. To do this, we want to speed up the entire planning process by recruiting more planners in the system and improving the pay and terms and conditions of planners in the system. There are many other issues in this regard too. We brought forward legislation to reduce the tax advantages of REITs and to stop Airbnb accommodation functioning in large towns and cities for a two-year emergency period. The Government is just not getting to grips with what is needed.

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