Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I raise the issue of housing conditions at the Oliver Bond complex because the House will be aware that it made headline news yesterday when a report was published about the conditions in which the residents live. I congratulate those behind the report and indeed the residents and campaigners who have been working on this for years. The campaign related to the promise of regeneration started ten years ago. We are being told it has been put on hold for four years. This is not just an issue for the local authority. The State bears responsibility for the conditions these people live in. The question is not just about the speed of the proposed regeneration programme but highlights the systemic, State neglect and disregard for Oliver Bond tenants and others, including in Balgaddy, Pearse House, Bernard Curtis House in Bluebell and hundreds of council homes.

Although it was in the media today and yesterday, it is worth going over some of the conditions people live in. One woman who I spoke to today talked about a neighbour, a 27-year-old mother of four, babies and kids up to the age of six. She is pregnant again. She has sewage constantly coming up through her shower onto her bathroom floor. Most neighbours have complained about sinks being blocked. From last March until now, there have been several complaints about blocked sinks that have not been addressed by the council. After a fire in her home, the mother of a woman I know there had to wait for 11 years for her windows to be replaced while the wind and rain howled through her windows.

Another neighbour waited three years for a hall door to be replaced. A 77-year-old woman is still waiting for broken latches to be fixed on her windows. It should interest the Minister of State, as a Green Party Deputy, to hear that these people are absolutely crucified trying to pay heating bills because the wind howls through their properties. There are broken latches, pipes bursting in kitchens and sewage outside the flats. Most of the tenants say the washing machines they purchase last just three to four years because of blockages that wreck the machinery.

A report and a promised regeneration have been put back on hold for four years. This is not just because these buildings, built by Herbert Simms in 1936, have preservation orders and are very beautiful to look at, which is true. It does not explain how tenants have been treated for decades or how issues of mould, damp, sewage, etc., continue. These tenants still have no legally enforceable mechanism to vindicate their rights.

I have one comment. We often hear in this House - we have heard it repeatedly from the Tánaiste but also from other Deputies and the mainstream media - that people should not expect the right to free housing. That "free housing" says much about the nature of the deep class bias against public and social housing in this country. These people are tenants and they pay 15% of their total family income on their rent. This attitude is very ignorant and shows there are vested interests in this society who see property as a way of generating wealth rather than a way of housing families.

I am asking that the Government makes the regeneration of Oliver Bond flats a priority. It should not just put everybody out in the sticks and expect hardly any of them to come back. Tenants were promised they would be temporarily rehoused in a block of apartments on Bridgefoot Street while Oliver Bond was regenerated block by block. That promise has now been taken from under them when the council told them no other tenants will be going into that block. These are huge issues and the Government has to intervene.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank Deputy Smith for raising this issue. I did not see the report but I am shocked at what I have heard. These are certainly unacceptable conditions for people to be living in. At the very least, people should expect a basic minimum decent standard of living and a decent standard of quality housing in 21st century Ireland. I agree with the Deputy in that regard.

Our Department is committed to ensuring that tenants in social housing are provided with adequate housing that meets the standards most recently laid down in the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019. Our Department is actively engaging with the local authority sector to promote the preventative maintenance of local authority housing stock and provides significant funding for stock improvement works.

In addition to funding provided by local authorities in respect of their own housing stock, approximately €350 million per annum, our Department provides funding across a number of programmes to support the local authority work to maintain and improve social housing stock. In all cases, it is the local authorities that identify priorities. The continued work of local authorities in undertaking stock condition surveys, their responsive and planned maintenance programmes, as well as important programmes such as the energy retrofitting and voids programmes, seek to support the local authority maintenance programme.

Specifically with regard to Oliver Bond House, as the Deputy said, built in 1936 by Herbert Simms, and one of the oldest and largest flat complexes in Dublin city with 397 units and approximately 1,200 residents, the upkeep, refurbishment and regeneration of this social housing complex is a matter, in the first instance, for the local authority. However, it is my understanding that Dublin City Council is actively engaged with the residents and is working on a number of short-term projects to improve the outdoor common areas as well as long-term proposals for the retrofitting and refurbishment of the flats at Oliver Bond House.

Dublin City Council is working on proposals and designs for two projects that will see the total refurbishment of all 397 flats at Oliver Bond House in two phases to bring them up to modern standards, including size and energy efficiency. Our Department looks forward to receiving these submissions for funding consideration from Dublin City Council and we will work with it to ascertain the appropriate funding mechanisms for these projects. Deputy Smith spoke about other projects such as Pearse House and Bluebell.

In addition to the normal voids programme funding, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, recently announced funding to bring flats that are vacant in older flat complexes, including Oliver Bond House, back into stock.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is very disappointing that the Minister of State comes to the House to address this issue but has not read the report and is only now hearing the testimonies I have given him. I am very disappointed and, again, I echo what the Tánaiste said in his last two criticisms of responses from Ministers, or those who advise them, as inadequate.

I ask the Minister of State to cast his mind back to a European Committee of Social Rights ruling that stated Ireland was in breach of the European Social Charter. This was a class action taken by communities throughout the country in relation to local authority accommodation. It ruled that Ireland breached Article 16 of the charter which states that: "The family as a fundamental unit of society has the right to appropriate social, legal and economic protection to ensure its full development". The ruling found that the provision of family housing is "to ensure the right to housing of an adequate standard for not an insignificant number of families." This ruling was made after a collective action was taken to the European Committee of Social Rights but it has never been acted on by this State. It has never been put in legislation and has never been ruled upon, but it is about local authority tenants and their rights. The Minister of State may not be aware of this either, but local authority tenants do not have recourse to the Residential Tenancies Board. A significant cohort of tenants in this country are completely excluded from any independent complaints process.

I ask the Minister of State two things. I ask him to really use every power both he and the Department have to hurry up the question of the regeneration of Oliver Bond House. That is the first and most important thing I ask. The other is to speed up legislation to address our breach of the rights of tenants under the European Social Charter. Local authority tenants, no matter where they are in the country, have no independent body to which they can go to make complaints. It is a bit like somebody who feels they have suffered a grave injustice going to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, and having gardaí investigate gardaí. Local authorities do not investigate their own complaints properly. Oliver Bond House, Bernard Curtis House and Balgaddy are the evidence of that. I could go on naming them but the dogs in the street know this is true. Local authority tenants live in appalling conditions. This is the 21st century.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I apologise to the Deputy for not having read the report. I was at meetings all afternoon when I received this question. I apologise for that but I will read the report. I give the Deputy my commitment that I will work with our Department, and with the Minister, to try to advance the regeneration of Oliver Bond House. I give my commitment on that and I will try to expedite matters with Dublin City Council.

On the legislation on the EU charter on the rights of tenants, again, I will get a response for the Deputy on that as well. It is really important that we try to work together to achieve this. Again, I am appalled at what I have heard this evening. It really is unacceptable that people have to live like that in this day and age. I give my commitment that we will work to try to resolve it.