Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

The Social Democrats are happy to support this increase to the borrowing ceiling for the Housing Finance Agency. It is the correct thing to do, but it is limited. We would like it to be higher. We believe there needs to be a significant increase in the delivery of social and affordable housing beyond what is currently being delivered and financed.

Many questions are being asked at the moment about housing and the Government's housing plan, what has happened to it and where it is. We heard earlier from the Taoiseach that the Government's plans are working and it is a case of doubling down and keeping going. I disagree fundamentally with that approach and the way in which the Government is going about things. I said today that it is out of its depth in the housing task. It is not just the Minister. This Government is entirely out of its depth in taking a response to the housing crisis that will solve it.

Unfortunately, the Government's response appears not to have thought through what is needed and the evidence base that underpins decisions. Its response is being driven by lobbyists from the construction industry, investor funds and developers. They clearly have a revolving door into Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. As I raised last week with the Tánaiste, the Parliamentary Budget Office stated clearly that there was a lack of an evidence base to the decisions being made on housing policy changes. I am still exasperated with the decision to give a VAT cut to developers and investor funds for apartments that are already in the process of being built and that will be built. The Tánaiste said that I was talking about billions of euro but that it would not be billions of euro. If we calculate and go through it, it will be billions of euro. Within three or four years, well over €1 billion will have gone to developers and investor funds in VAT cuts. Based on last year's figures, approximately 8,000 apartments will be completed this year. They will all benefit from the VAT cut even though building started a year or two ago. The following year, it will probably be a similar number. We are heading towards 16,000. It takes two to four years for apartment developments to be completed, from start to finish, so we are going to see in the region of 20,000 apartments or more for which developers will get the VAT cut despite the fact the apartments were already being built. I do not see the logic. It has annoyed me and others. It seems that the developers and investor funds said they needed the money because building would otherwise not be viable. I do not think the Government was addressing the viability of each apartment. I think it was bailing out the developers and investor funds, who have told the Government they do not have sufficient finance, or do not earn sufficient profit, to build more. We are going to funnel money into apartments that are already being built. It was a disgraceful decision, with which I fundamentally disagree. I will keep calling out the Minister and the Government for that decision.

When we look back on it, the lack of evidence for it will be really called out and it will be one more decision that was made for the investor funds and developers. There is the opportunity cost and the missed investment in this.

It is so frustrating to listen to the Taoiseach during Leaders' Questions go on about how we in the Social Democrats are against the private sector and how the State is doing all it can. The State is not doing all it can. There is still a budget surplus. There is still additional funding that could be put in. We have put forward a very clear solution that is about setting up a bank account and savings system whereby Irish people would be able to take the money in their bank accounts, put into this "Homes for Ireland" scheme and the finance would be able to then be channelled into delivering affordable housing. That would be additional private finance so I find it really disingenuous of the Taoiseach to go on about how we are against private finance when we have put forward a very clear solution that would involve bringing private finance in. It is months since we put forward that proposal. Is there any progress on it whatsoever? Will the scheme be implemented? The Taoiseach also said, "Oh, your proposal or that proposal would not build a home next year or the year after." That is not actually true. If we started work on implementing that scheme immediately, within six months or a year there is no reason it would not be financing the building of homes.

It is always the case that any alternative idea is something that will not deliver homes for years so there is no point in doing it but, of course, when it comes to a VAT cut for developers, the Government does it straight away. There is still a market ideological blinker on the Taoiseach and on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which limits the idea of what the State can and should be doing on housing and this real fear that if the State goes too far, it might somehow disrupt the market. The State does not want to build the volume of social and affordable housing that would actually bring house prices down. The ambition to bring down house prices and make housing affordable is never set out in the housing plans. I would love to see it in the coming housing plan, whenever we see it. It is completely unsustainable and we have created, once more, the Celtic tiger situation whereby house prices are completely out of whack with incomes and we will see rents continue to rise, as they have been. It is absolutely economically unsustainable. We are pushing ourselves into more economic instability as result of housing and economic policy that is built around continually rising house prices and there is no questioning of that. There is no questioning of how these rents are economically sustainable and socially sustainable. It beggars belief.

I want to raise the issue of homelessness again. I still cannot get my head around the change the Minister made to the tenant in situ scheme. He argued in favour of it and then went back on that. It is still not properly reinstated. Dublin city councillors tell me very clearly, as have other councillors from counties Kildare, Wicklow and Cork, that the councils do not have funding to buy up the homes people are in so as to prevent homelessness, in the same way as before. The change the Minister made did something that changed the way the councils were doing this and created huge uncertainty. Dublin city councillors have told me the scheme has been suspended and the council is not buying additional properties in cases where people are being made homeless. If the Minister genuinely feels this is an emergency, he should reinstate the scheme and go back to the councils and tell them what I understood the previous Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien told them, which is to buy what they need and if someone is facing homelessness, to buy it up. The councils have the money. There is an open chequebook to a certain extent and that is what councils should be told. If there is someone facing homelessness, they should buy the property and say they will cover it. Instead, the Taoiseach inserted his own view, which came from someone who was lobbying him on the idea that if the councils were buying up properties, home buyers could not buy a property and we do not want to be seen as removing properties that could be bought by home buyers. This is a completely flawed argument because when someone is evicted from his or her home and goes into emergency accommodation, the costs are put on the State and it becomes a zero-sum game in terms of what is actually there. The tenant in situ scheme should be reinstated, completely and in full. That is something the Minister could do. I ask him to go back and tell the councils they can do this rather than feeding this situation whereby there is huge uncertainty.

It is similar to the uncertainty in the AHBs. The Minister said there were no issues around delays in projects. There clearly are some delays in some aspects of projects but the fundamental point he made is that he will not agree to every application for affordable housing that comes to him because the funding is not there. There needs to be a sufficient allocation of funding.

I will also raise the issue of affordable housing. In regard to affordable housing delivery schemes, the Minister said 7,500 new affordable purchase and cost-rental homes will be delivered in 2026. He said that would be an increase. Will he answer a question for me? How is an affordable home a vacant property grant given to a landlord who is a multiple property owner? They avail of the vacant property grant. How is that an affordability measure? I would like the Minister to answer that question. Vacant property grants should not be allocated under the affordable purchase and affordable rental schemes. I do not see how it is affordable housing, particularly when a landlord can get and use this vacant property grant. Maybe the Minister can give us the figures on how many multiple property owners are currently in receipt of the vacant property grant.

At the moment, we are seeing decorations go up across the country. Our kids are talking about how Hallowe'en is coming up but the scariest thing about this Hallowe'en will not be the ghosts or goblins or even Donald Trump costumes; it will be Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies that are absolutely terrifying renters and generation locked-out as landlords hike the rents up further under the Government's new measures. Young people are living in fear of never being able to buy their own homes. Of course, the Government's biggest Hallowe'en scare is its phantom housing plan, which has been promised for months but is clearly stuck in the spirit world that is the space between the Department, the Minister, the Taoiseach and the vulture fund lobbyists. At Hallowe'en, will a space open up and the plan appear? Unfortunately, that plan is likely to be one that leaves us all terrified long after the Hallowe'en ghosts have disappeared. We need a radical change in our housing policy. The Minister is not delivering it. This Government is not delivering it. It was elected on a false promise and I will keep calling it out, the false claim that the Government would build 40,000 homes. Had it been known during the election that the Government was nowhere near that and that 30,000 homes would be built last year and not 40,000 homes, it would not have been elected on the basis it did and secured a mandate, and we would have alternative housing plans in place.

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