Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

The housing crisis is no longer a crisis; it is a social catastrophe. It is an emergency, as the Government has accepted. However, Government actions - cutting key housing projects, suspending funding and gutting homelessness prevention schemes - tell a very different story. Instead of rising to meet this catastrophe, the Government is failing time and time again. That is because its policies created this crisis.

We had yesterday at the housing committee the Ombudsman for Children, who highlighted again the national shame that is almost 5,000 children in homelessness. I said it was a scandal and asked if he thinks there will be a redress scheme in the future for children who have gone through emergency accommodation in this country. It is over 10,000 children. We do not even know how many children have gone through emergency accommodation. The response was that those children can never get the childhood back that they lost in emergency accommodation. Right now, there are 4,775 children growing up in emergency accommodation. I do not believe the Minister of State or anyone in the Government really accepts that is okay. It is not okay. Unfortunately, this and the previous Government's policies have normalised it and accepted it. I can make it very clear that we are not accepting it.

When we look at this housing crisis, the Government's priorities are totally out of whack. Instead of funding the tenant in situ scheme, the Government is continuing to put families up in emergency accommodation, which is costing up to €180,000 each year per family. No monetary cost can measure the impact on these children as they grow up in hotel rooms, scarred for life by living in inappropriate accommodation.

Let us go back to the basics: infrastructure, Uisce Éireann, our national water utility, our local authorities, the ESB and land aggregation. The basics required to deliver housing have not been prioritised, delivered or funded. At the same time, in a bizarre, almost GUBU moment, the Government has suspended a delivery project that was going to build almost 500 social homes, almost 200 of which are in my constituency, through public-private partnerships. They were ready to start on site in the coming weeks but the Minister has pulled the plug on them. Almost 3,000 social homes are now in jeopardy. How does the Minister of State think that makes people feel - people in Ballymun, Finglas, Whitehall, Kildare, Wicklow and Sligo, and the councillors and councils who put massive work into developing these projects?

In fact, the Government spent €8 million on developing these projects. Contractors had almost been appointed. The not-for-profit housing bodies had been brought on board. It is absolutely confounding as to how this decision was made. The Minister for housing has yet to answer as to why these projects were pulled at the last minute when they were about to deliver social housing projects. I ask the Minister of State to bring it back to Cabinet and raise this issue. How the hell were social housing projects that were about to start on site pulled at the last minute? It is beyond comprehension. We talk about incompetence. This has gone from incompetence to sabotage. That is what it feels like for the communities across Dublin and across this country who were due to get social housing built.

The flaws in the public-private partnership model have been highlighted by myself and others for years. I have researched it and written about it. It is an inflexible process. It is expensive but the Government had brought it to the end line. It should have just delivered those projects and said the State would deliver the rest of them directly. Now we have almost 3,000 social homes in complete limbo. What is going to happen? The Minister needs to intervene directly. This is an absolute scandal and it needs to be highlighted.

Not only has the Government cut these social housing building programmes, it has also gutted the tenant in situ scheme. The scheme is a vital homelessness prevention measure. At the housing committee yesterday, we heard representatives from the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive say very clearly that the cuts and changes to the tenant in situ scheme is likely to result in people made homeless this year. This is because Dublin City Council and other local authorities across the country have said they have suspended the tenant in situ scheme because of the changes brought in. They do not have sufficient funding this year. We will see families and individuals evicted from their homes where it could have been prevented. The councils could have bought the properties but we are not seeing that happen.

The Minister for housing must urgently clarify why ready to go PPP housing bundles were suspended without a backup plan; whether the funding will be restored to essential homelessness prevention tools like tenant in situ; and how the Government expects to meet its targets with no infrastructural investment set out very clearly for Uisce Éireann, the local authorities and the Land Development Agency. There is no serious plan and the funding allocated is still inadequate. The Taoiseach says in the House that we are not putting forward solutions. We have put forward solutions. The homes for Ireland State saving scheme is a way to divert €160 billion in savings into funding affordable housing. Rather than going to vulture funds, we could be doing this. We could be funding the local authorities and not-for-profit housing bodies.

The Government is creating an artificial scarcity because it is saying the State cannot do any more. There are billions sitting in surplus. Why are we not allocating that to housing? The Government says no, the private sector has do it. The Government could hire the builders to build it, develop the capacity of local authorities and do it. We have the money to do it.

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward the motion today. We tabled an amendment in that we believe that local authorities should be giving the funding rather than putting in penal measures. We have seen that in other situations and it has not worked. Broadly, we absolutely agree that this is an emergency and we need a change.

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