Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I too congratulate the Ministers on their appointments. I welcome this debate on the Housing Commission report. I read through the recommendations in the report and I welcome some of them. The overview at the start of the report, in particular, jumped out at me where the Commission states:

Arising from its wide-ranging enquiry, the Housing Commission has identified over several decades, there has been a range of interventions to do with housing. However, these interventions have not resolved the failures that are fundamentally systemic.

That is key. There is a fundamental problem with the model and it is systemic in nature. The other line that jumped out at me was, "Only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will work". I call on the Minister to embrace that call to be radical and to have a full reset of housing policy to do things differently. As I said, the current model is fundamentally broken and it is failing people in this country every day. We are aware of hardship through contacts with all of our offices and we all know how bad the situation is. We need to see it fundamentally changed.

I want to discuss some of the recommendations. One recommendation my colleague mentioned was the 20% social and affordable target. I heard the Minister say he would consider it. I would like him to give this a bit more than consideration. I would like a commitment to that because increasing the provision of cost-rental and affordable housing is going to be key. As the report states, State support of housing must be thought of in a broader context than just providing housing the most vulnerable. It has the capacity to reshape the market. We need to think about it in that context. It can be a counterbalance to the private market. We need to look abroad at what they are doing in other countries. We could look at Vienna where 50% of people live in not-for-profit and affordable housing. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. Housing systems in other countries work; we could have one too if the political will was there.

Like others stated earlier, there are real issues with the current management of social and affordable housing. In my own city in Cork, there are currently 350 vacant council houses and thousands of people waiting for housing. It is a cause of real frustration. The retrofits have also been mismanaged. At the current rate, it will take Cork City Council 200 years to retrofit all its houses. It is utter madness and it needs to change. It needs greater investment.

A land price register is another recommendation. The Social Democrats put forward a Bill in 2021 to provide for a land price register and the Government voted it down. Will the Government reconsider this and follow the recommendations of the commission to introduce legislation in this area? There are also calls in the report for measures relating to child homelessness, which has increased by 300%, according to the Simon Communities, over the past ten years. There are also real commitments in the report surrounding Traveller accommodation. There are appalling conditions on many Traveller sites around the country. In Spring Lane in Cork city, the Ombudsman published a damning report of abuses of the rights of the child with regard to the accommodation for Travellers, which need to be addressed.

Finally, there are good recommendations regarding climate. We need climate-informed housing policy and homes that are fit for the future. I hope the Ministers will implement many of these recommendations.

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