Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I must now deal with a postponed division relating to the motion regarding housing. On Tuesday, 24 October 2017, on the question that amendment No. 3 to the motion be agreed to, a division was claimed and in accordance with Standing Order 70(2), that division must be taken now.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “exigencies of the common good” and substitute the following:

“further notes:

— that this House has passed several motions and legislation pertaining to the housing crisis over the past number of years and the Government has had four housing Ministers, four policies and numerous launches since 2014;

— that the State has built fewer than 3,500 social homes since 2011, less than the number constructed every year on average from 1994 to 2010;

— that fewer than 600 new social homes will be constructed in 2017 when the Rebuilding Ireland target is 5,000;

— that only 24% of 10,000 units in the ‘construction pipeline’ are on site, so it will be 2021 before most are built compared to the already unambitious target of 26,000 units;

— that despite announcements in Budget 2018, the overall housing budget is too low and skewed toward current housing programmes, such as the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme;

— the capital house building budget - €730 million in 2017 and €1.14 billion in 2018 - is still 24% below 2008 levels;

— that, as a result, insufficient housing stock is being added as social housing provision coming from the private rental and owner-occupier market;

— that due to years of under-supply and pent-up demand, Ireland needs 40,000 to 50,000 new homes per year to make a dent in demand and a noticeable impact on affordability;

— that the Government target is 25,000 by 2021 and 15,000 to 18,000 new units expected in 2017;

— that clearly there is a market failure in housing and new interventions are required to stimulate supply;

— that the Government’s reluctance to accept the actual challenges and its refusal to make any interventions in the housing market is making a crisis situation worse;

— the commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government to initiate an affordable housing scheme and the failure of the Government to date to reintroduce affordable housing initiatives for low and middle-income households;

— that it is in the area of homelessness that the Government’s inept housing policy really comes into plain view, and the abandonment of targets on hotel accommodation and continuing failure to make a dent in rising homeless figures cannot continue to be ignored;

— that the Eighth Report of the Convention on the Constitution, outlining economic, cultural and social rights to be enshrined in the Constitution of Ireland, including the right to housing legislation, is currently before the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach; and

— the commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government to increase funding for a special resolution fund for unfinished homes; and

calls on the Government to:

— acknowledge the pressing need for delivery over spin in addressing the housing crisis;

— commit to meeting the Rebuilding Ireland targets on moving homeless families out of hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation by the end of 2017;

— revise the emergency homeless strategy, in particular, redesigning homeless HAP and the HAP scheme, so households are not discouraged from taking up tenancies and are not removed from main social housing waiting lists;

— continue to increase and rebalance the housing budget toward capital expenditure;

— accelerate the establishment of Home Building Finance Ireland, utilise National Asset Management Agency proceeds and expertise to invest in housing and develop new vehicles to enable off-balance sheet funding for social housing projects from private sources and the credit union movement across Ireland;

— devise a strategy to enable and encourage far greater scale and size in social house building projects;

— recognise the significant market failures in housing, including in planning, finance, infrastructure and costs of construction, which the market requires State intervention to overcome;

— acknowledge that the Government’s target of 25,000 new house completions by 2021 is not adequate, given years of pent-up demand and under-supply, and that at a minimum we need 45,000 to 50,000 units output annually over the next few years;

— commit to reintroducing affordable housing schemes, including affordable owner-occupier and rental housing schemes, for middle-income households and explore possible financial incentives aimed at encouraging development of housing at more affordable price points;

— introduce financial incentives to build high-density developments, where they are currently not commercially viable to build, in Dublin City and other local authorities;

— commit to greater enforcement and implementation of rent pressure zones and other rent regulations including more staffing and resources for the Residential Tenancies Board;

— tackle land hoarding by large investors, which is clearly holding back supply including by making changes to capital gains tax and introducing a new site tax to encourage the use of empty sites; and

— devise new strategies to manage vacant properties including an active occupancy register.”

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I amendment No. 2:

To delete all words after “exigencies of the common good” and substitute the following:“reaffirms the conclusion of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, in its Ninth Progress Report on Private Property, that the power of the Oireachtas to impose restrictions on property rights in the public interest is by now constitutionally well established;

recalls the examples listed by the Committee where the courts have stated that private property rights are far from absolute and that far-reaching interferences with such rights may be justified by reference to the common good;

highlights the decision of the Supreme Court in the matter of the Planning and Development Bill 1999 (2000), in which the Supreme Court held that the Oireachtas is entitled to conclude that the provision of affordable housing, and housing for persons in special categories and of integrated housing, is rationally connected ‘to an objective of sufficient importance to warrant interference with a constitutionally protected right and, given the serious social problems which they are designed to meet, they undoubtedly relate to concerns which, in a free and democratic society, should be regarded as pressing and substantial’;

notes in particular the Committee's conclusion that the recommendations of the Kenny Report on the Price of Building Land would survive constitutional scrutiny;

believes, therefore, that the Constitution of Ireland can no longer be used as a shelter and excuse for inaction by those who, for their own reasons, oppose the necessary reforms to our laws to ensure accessible and decent public and private housing;

concludes that there is no need for a constitutional emergency to give cover to special measures to deal with the housing crisis but, instead, what is needed is a willingness on the part of legislators to use all their available constitutional powers, so as to design and maintain, on a permanent basis, a stable and functioning market that provides a sustainable and affordable supply of public and private housing, for owner-occupier and for tenants; and

calls for a major programme of law reform to:

— make home ownership a realistic goal for many through a permanent reduction in the price of building land, an effective and dissuasive vacant property tax, and a new and affordable housing purchase scheme;

— make rental accommodation both affordable and secure, through a proper system of Consumer Price Index linked rent control, a transformed role for the National Asset Management Agency, long-term security of tenure, and reforms to the deposit retention scheme;

— put the consumer at the heart of a reformed mortgage protection law;

— solve the homelessness crisis by putting local authorities back into the business of building and letting affordable homes, with at least 5,000 constructed each year on top of existing targets; and

— ensure sustainable planning for our future under a revised National Planning Framework and the full use of all powers available to our local authorities to buy, zone, design and build for our future.”