Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and congratulate you on your elevation to high office. It is well deserved.

The starting point, which the Minister of State will have to accept, is that house prices, rents and homelessness have skyrocketed. He cannot argue with that. A total of 51 people were homeless in County Laois in February. House prices have gone up 11.6%. The number of new homes is down. The number of new homes was down last year and 10,000 fewer than the Government parties promised during the election campaign. We have a housing crisis but is not being treated as a crisis by Government.

Average rents across the State are €1,956 per month. That is a month's wages for most people and that is 43% higher than 2020. We have 143,000 on social housing waiting lists and the current overall housing shortage, according to the Housing Commission and not according to us, is 235,000. Tens of thousands of couples and families are just above the income threshold for social housing, which is €35,000 in Laois. The Government is not looking after this cohort of people who are on between €35,000 and €50,000 or €60,000. They cannot get a mortgage or a local authority loan. It is a real problem. Some of them are over the age of 40 or 45 so they cannot get private finance. We have to gear up the cost-rental model for those people. I appeal to the Minister of State to do that and I say that in a constructive way because they are trapped forever in private rental accommodation and they will be pensioner renters. This will be a real problem in the years to come.

The Government needs to enact the emergency measures that are called for in the public interest to create a State housing bond. The credit unions have been saying for years that they have a lot of money on deposit that can be used to build housing. There is potentially €160 billion in savings, much of which could be used for housing schemes. They could be used for affordable purchase and cost-rental schemes and they do not all have to be used for social housing.

One of the proposals we need to examine is making finance available to small builders to build schemes in small towns such as Mountrath and Rathdowney and in some of the larger towns such as Mountmellick and Portarlington along with Portlaoise, Graiguecullen and Ballylynan.

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