Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)

We need to see a major influx of funding and investment in housing and particularly in affordable, cost-rental and social housing. Right now, thousands of people are without secure, affordable housing and they are crying out for solutions. They are looking for the Minister and this Government to bring forward solutions. Cost rental is a good idea - it is one of the things we can all agree on - but why then has it not been delivered at the scale it needs to be? Last year, only 2,027 cost-rental homes were delivered across the entire State. In Cork alone, 1,200 people applied for 73 cost rentals in one unit. That tells us the demand. The supply being delivered, though, does not meet what is needed.

More than half of those homes were delivered by AHBs. They are telling us they have the capacity to build and deliver more. Why is more not being done with these organisations? The problems they are telling us about include the bureaucracy, the red tape and the barriers. There are also barriers in relation to cost-rental equity funding. It is holding the AHBs back. Additional funding would help them to deliver, but there is a need to get rid of the red tape and the bureaucracy. This is about delivery. Everything should be done to speed things up.

Last week, the Minister announced tax breaks for people building apartments, but some of these are being built and are nearly ready now. We have a lack of funding in some areas, but then the Minister has set aside €640 million over the next two years for tax breaks for building apartments. It is more than double the budget for affordable purchase homes in the next two years. That is €640 million being spent on apartments. These apartments are viable. As a TD and a former councillor and in my position as my party's spokesman on local government, I have met with developers and builders. They do not go into a development unless they know there is a profit at the end of it. Why is the Minister giving them more money to increase their profits? It just does not make sense.

It is costing the local authorities on average €31,000 to renovate a vacant house and that is according to the National Oversight and Audit Commission, NOAC, report. It is estimated it would cost €13 million to renovate and repair every boarded-up and vacant county council property. These are properties owned by the State. That €13 million is a drop in the ocean. This is at a time when councils are crying out for funding. They want to do it, but they are not getting the funding from central government. They are not getting it from the Minister.

Right across the board, we see these issues. Just to let the Minister know, according to an answer we got at a meeting of Cork City Council last night, the council has spent over €250 million boarding up houses and putting up these metal shutters. It is an absolute disgrace. What a waste of money to spend €250 million boarding up houses that families should be living in because the Minister will not give the money to the local authorities. If that is happening in Cork, there are 30 other local authorities doing the same thing. This does not even include every house being boarded up, because sometimes houses are left to look like they are being lived in and they are not.

Families are crying out for housing and somewhere safe to raise their families to live. They are looking around communities where there are boarded-up houses. Who is responsible if the Minister is not responsible?

See this speech in context