Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Notices to quit give people a feeling of sickness in the pits of their stomachs and cause stress and worry. There is a sense that one's life is being uprooted. Often people in these circumstances talk about how the increased anxiety affects their children. They might tell you about how a child is doing well in school after having overcome several challenges in the preceding few years and that they are deeply worried that a notice to quit and an eviction will uproot that child just as things settle. I am referring to the families in luckier situations. Children with significant learning difficulties or challenges owing to their not receiving the mental health or disability supports they need face major anxiety and distress when an eviction notice is issued.

I thank People Before Profit for tabling the motion. When we hear the response of the Government to it, it seems to us that it is not listening or responding to the points made by us this morning. There has been no engagement. The Government displayed genuine arrogance by not responding and by listing off things it is doing that are part reality but also part fiction. As said before, the figure of €4 billion for capital expenditure on housing is not correct. Not only is it not correct but the Government is actually 30% behind in its capital expenditure on housing right now, according to its own figures published in the September Fiscal Monitor. How is it possible, in the depth of the crisis we have, that it is 30% behind in its capital expenditure? It is scandalous given the considerable hardship that people are going through.

You would swear from listening to the Government's response that it is not aware that we have the highest-ever rents in the country. New rents increased by 9% in the past year. We have the highest-ever house prices. They have increased by 12% in the past year. We have the highest-ever number of people living in emergency accommodation because they have become homeless. In this regard, there has been an increase of 30% in the past year. The number of children living in emergency accommodation has increased by 47% in the past 12 months. There has been no mention of that in the response by the Government, which denies the reality of what is going on and keeps telling us things are getting better. There has been no mention by the Government of generations stuck at home or the huge number of people who are now living in their parents' homes against their wishes. The number of people between 25 and 34 who own a home collapsed from 60% to 27% between 2004 and 2019. I suspect this proportion has decreased further in the past couple of years. The Government is oblivious to the impact this is having on people in terms of their not being able to get on with their lives or become independent, combined with the anxiety and impacts on mental health and well-being.

At the same time as this is happening, over €1 billion in public money is going towards the HAP, RAS and long-term leasing, which is pushing up rents and not directly increasing supply. The profits of those who are exploiting the housing crisis are soaring. Institutional housing investors' profits nearly doubled last year. The amount of effective tax they paid collapsed from 17.9% to just 5.9% last year as their profits soared. The profits of one of the largest house builders in the country, Cairn Homes, jumped by 84% in the first half of this year. While people are massively impacted by the housing disaster, the profits of those benefiting from it are going through the roof. The Government is in denial about the scale of the problem.

I will list a few things the Government could and should do now to address the crisis. We need to increase the delivery of social and affordable homes. We need 20,000 affordable cost-rental and social homes to be delivered per year. Incidentally, this is what the Minister promised during the last election campaign but which he has failed to achieve. We need to tackle vacancy and dereliction. Consider the Government's proposals in this regard. Fine Gael promised a tax on vacant properties as far back as 2017 but never did anything about it. We finally have a 0.3% tax on vacancy coming in but this is designed to fail. It will not have the desired effect. We need a strong, effective and punitive tax to get the more than 100,000 vacant homes back into use.

We also need measures to penalise developers for slow build-out and for sitting on planning permissions. There is a huge number of planning permissions in the system now for projects that are not getting built out. Where there are larger schemes, there is drip-feeding in an effort to control prices. At the same time, the profits of the larger developers responsible for the slow build-out and the drip-feeding of homes are soaring. We need this to be addressed. We need more support to get more small and medium builders back building, allowing them to compete with the larger developers. We need to strengthen the capacity of the not-for-profit sector and local authorities to build more homes. Recently at meetings of the housing committee, representatives of some of the local authorities have said that if they had better resources in terms of staff, they would be able to do more to deliver affordable cost-rental and social homes.

We also need to tackle vested interests that are making huge profits from the housing crisis. Land costs comprise a significant cost associated with new housing. Let me give an example from my constituency that the Minister and others will be aware of, namely a very successful housing development built 100 years ago in Marino in my constituency. The land for the development was bought for less than £5,000; it was bought for £4,974. I realise that was 100 years ago, which is a long time ago, but when the sum is adjusted for inflation, it equates to about €350,000 today. The land cost when the Marino development was built out was 1.5% of the overall cost. Now the land cost is about 16% of the total cost of a development. One can see that if land costs were tackled by the Government – they have not been – it would contribute towards bringing costs down and making homes more affordable. It would reduce the cost of delivering social and affordable homes and make it more feasible.

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I am delighted the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is here to listen to us. I am not going to tell him what is wrong, because I think he knows himself what is wrong. There is no point in me repeating what everyone else says. What we must do is look at a few issues and see how we can improve on delivery.

The very first issue I will address is the planning system. I give the Minister the example of Galway County Council, which has just completed a county development plan. The regulator put in recommendations that were accepted and signed off by the Minister. One of them was not to allow the zoning of land at Woodlawn train station where we can build residential houses. The reason is that there is no sewerage facility. If we do not zone the land, we are going nowhere.

The limiting of the amount of land zoned for R1 is resulting in the price going up. Why is there such a policy? If we have more land that people are willing to make available, and it is zoned R1 then we would perhaps get some houses built at a reasonable price because there would be competition in the market for the land.

I am coming at this from the point of view of what I see on the ground. The Croí Cónaithe scheme is in place to deal with vacant properties. I have one constituent who made an application to Galway County Council in August yet the property has still not been inspected. He has had to go ahead and build out what he is doing at the risk of losing the grant. Why is that the case? It is because the council does not have the resources to carry out the inspections. I know the Minister is giving each local authority €60,000 each to put an inspector in place, but that will not solve the problem. When the Minister issues his directive next week or whenever else for rural areas, we will have a significant volume of applications, as people are willing to take it up, but there is a logjam due to inspections not taking place. That is what is happening on the ground. Putting an engineer into the system is not what is needed. We need a full team in every local authority to deal with bringing vacant properties back into use. We must be able to deal in a very economical and quick way with the applications that come in. We have people who are willing to do something for themselves and the Minister has put a scheme in place, so let us resource the scheme properly so that it can function. Let it not be like the retrofitting scheme, which is an abject failure at this stage because only 59 houses have been retrofitted since the scheme was announced last spring. We must learn that there is no point in announcing something and saying we are putting money into it unless we put the resources in place to make it happen. What is happening right now is that the local authorities are being blamed because they are not carrying out the inspections. To be honest, these are the type of issues that gall me when I see them happening because it is not doing anything for the public sentiment for the Government or politicians.

The towns and villages that do not have wastewater treatment plants are currently frozen out of the planning process. In my parish, there is a fine track of land right in the centre of the village of Corrofin that could accommodate retail and up to perhaps 100 residential units, but Galway County Council cannot give planning permission, and neither will An Bord Pleanála because a previous decision made by An Bord Pleanála in 2007 stated that any further development in this village is premature pending the installation of a municipal wastewater treatment plant. We have a situation where the numbers in the schools in the parish are beginning to reduce because we cannot get people into the villages. We have six housing estates in the village and they all have private wastewater treatment plants. They need to be connected to the wastewater treatment system. There is a river running through the village which is part of the tributary into the Corrib. In effect, we have an environmental time bomb. One of these days we will see fish with their bellies up in the water and the river full of sewage. We must get real about this. These are not insurmountable issues. All that is wrong is that Irish Water does not seem to have any interest in the towns and villages that can deliver houses. People will build the houses and they will not be looking for State intervention to build them. The houses will be built at a lower cost and young families will buy them and move into them, rather than putting them all into the cities. We must think rationally about the issue. I am giving Corrofin as an example, but I could give the Minister 20 more, such as Abbeyknockmoy, Craughwell, Laban and Ardrahan. It is not possible to build any houses in these towns in my constituency all around Galway. People have sought planning permission and they have been refused.

On the other side of the coin, if somebody wants to build in a rural area, he or she is being told that the council has to watch out for linear development. If there are four houses in a row, planning permission will not be given for a fifth one. Another issue that comes up is an over-intensification of septic tanks. These are the type of issues that are driving people mad. Whether the Minister likes it or not, we now have a situation where the National Roads Authority, NRA, is the agency dictating who builds what, where and when, because it is restricting every road in the country that it can in order that people will not get to build on them. This is what is happening. Farmers' sons and daughters cannot build on their own farms. It is wrong and we must put it right. We have a crisis at the moment. We must stop talking about all the money that we are putting into it; the focus must be on what is coming out of it. Where are the houses being built and how quickly are they being built? Nobody knows anything about the shared equity scheme in Galway. It is supposed to be the greatest panacea to solve problems, but we have not seen it. What I am saying is that announcements are being made about funding, but nothing is happening. At the end of the day, we are just not doing it right.

We also have a situation whereby the private sector is not functioning either. It is dysfunctional. The cost of building houses is so high that builders cannot get people to buy them, yet the Minister came along and tried to put a further levy on construction materials at a time when it is ridiculous. It is time to take off the gloves and to get at this at the level it is at. Currently, in the private sector we have countless private landlords, who are selling up. In fact, there are 500 houses for sale in Galway and the tenants are local authority tenants on housing assistance payment, HAP, schemes. The private landlords are selling up. I declare a vested interest in that I am a private landlord. People are not interested in renting a property any more because there is too much hassle with it, and they are being demonised for having a rental property. If someone is on a HAP scheme for instance, if the tenant refuses to pay the rent, then the landlord does not get paid either and the State might have a free run for perhaps two years until the person can be removed from the house. There are a lot of ills, and we must start to rectify them.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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Like I always do, I want to declare an interest in all aspects of this issue that I am going to talk about. Some 20,535 properties were built in 2020, less than a quarter of what was constructed during the height of the housing boom in 2006. The national planning framework estimates that structural demands for new housing based on the demographics supplied is between 25,000 and 35,000 per year. Rebuilding Ireland has failed to meet its annual target every year since it was implemented. It was 41,000 units below its overall target. Cumulative annual defects in the new building completions have amplified trends in rents, house prices and homelessness. Supply-side constraints such as skilled labour shortages, rising costs of construction and excessive lead times are limiting the affordability of new dwellings. The shift in demand for dwellings has caused both house prices and rents to increase substantially. This surge in prices has made housing unaffordable for many, leading to a decline in homeownership rates from 78% in 2007 to 68.7% in 2020. High demand and low supply have been long-term obstacles in the path to providing a stable housing market. On the supply side, the most notable issues preventing affordable housing are the rising costs of construction, skilled labour shortages, poorly planned and executed Government housing policies and supply chain disruptions. Ireland's housing problems are rooted in the high cost of construction, which has driven up sales and rental prices and they are compounded by a lack of supply and a growing population.

It has become apparent that Rebuilding Ireland has failed in its objectives and that the past few years, under the rebranded Housing for All, have delivered little progress in providing a sufficient level of housing.

The eviction ban, for example, will not result in an increase in the provision of housing for people. It will not help any one person who is on the housing list in, say, County Kerry. It will not provide a home for them, and it has to be knocked on the head in case people think it is a magic bullet that is going to be great. People building houses on their own land should be encouraged, should nearly be given a medal, because if a young person wants to build a home on his or her own land, to hell with the crackpots, the objectors and the noodeenaws who do want not people to live on their own land. Let them go away and whistle their ducks to water but let the person who wants to build a house on his or her own land do it.

As for An Bord Pleanála, it is a discredited organisation that is a shame in its existence. It has held up building in this country for long enough and it is being shown up now for what it is.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I thank People Before Profit for tabling the motion and giving us an opportunity to talk about these very serious issues that are neglected in the housing programme. A week or so ago, Councillor Maura Healy-Rae tabled a motion in Kerry County Council asking how many vacant houses, voids, were in the county, and the number was 171.

I am glad the Minister is in the Chamber because I want to put this to him straight. The Government is boasting and blathering about the housing programme that it is responsible for. Perhaps it is doing it somewhere else, but it is not doing it in Kerry or for the people of Kerry. Perhaps Dublin is being looked after again. When a house becomes void in Kerry, the housing section is told it has to bring it back to a standard whereby it has to be deep-retrofitted and everything else that goes with it, and it costs €60,000 to €70,000, yet the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in Dublin will give only €11,000 towards the house.

The Minister can shake his head but I am saying it here and it is on the record of the House. If the house comes back into use after less than six years, the owner will get no bob at all. There are 171 such houses in Kerry, and if the Minister says he is doing something about the housing market, I am asking him now to give money and sort this out. Many of these houses have been void or vacant for years. I can name a lot of them.

I ask the Minister to raise the housing cap because it is not acceptable with the cost of living. Moreover, the family income supplement, where it is included in their income, should be disregarded and I ask the Minister to do that. Some single people and families have been on the list in Killarney and Kerry for 13 to 16 years. Will the Minister announce the repair grant scheme for vacant houses outside of towns and villages and give details of it?

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Thank you, Deputy.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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He has not given it and he should not laugh at me. This is the truth.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The Deputy should wait for the response from the Minister.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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He has not. He should ask the housing section in Kerry County Council.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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As the Minister knows, I have been in construction all my life, so I know the industry inside out. One issue with much construction at the moment that would help businesspeople relates to the planning laws that need to be changed or amended to allow business owners to build accommodation for their staff, which would encourage their staff to stay within the business they are in and which would allow businesspeople to future-proof their business and build apartments or housing for their staff. The current laws, however, mean that if they build housing for their staff, they have to give a certain amount back to social housing, which is causing a problem for some industries.

One person is looking to build 20 apartments to house people within his business but he cannot do it under the planning laws because, given the location of the property, adjacent to his business, it would not do for social housing. The company Eli Lilly is coming to Limerick and spending €500 million on the start-up stage, which will end up with a total of €1.3 billion invested in Limerick. Its biggest issue, however, relates to housing and getting houses for people to work there, yet in Croom, I have 130 or 140 houses that could be built but that have been held up by Irish Water for the past two years. Within ten minutes' drive of Limerick, I have 130 houses that, if built, would help the social housing aspect and the industry we want so badly within Limerick.

Will the Minister look at amending the laws relating to businesses that want to provide housing for their own staff such that they will not have to give back to social housing? That is the one thing I am asking. Can they be amended to allow for businesses to build apartments, if they wish, for their staff only, without having to contribute to the social housing sector?

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for the detailed motion. I have a difficulty with one issue, relating to the six months and the taking-over of houses, which I think needs a lot more thrashing out, but on a general level I support the motion. The five-page response from the Government is nothing short of shocking. When we look at the background to the motion and to the housing crisis, we have normalised homelessness. When I go back to my hotel at night, I walk past people in the street and ask myself what I have become. What have people become who are sitting there on one side of the little divide, having a drink and something to eat, while on the other side there is somebody on the ground in a sleeping bag? What has happened to me as a human being and what has happened to those people? That is something I have to fight with myself. Nevertheless, in regard to Government policy, I have had the privilege, or the torture, or being a representative for a long time. Over that time, I have watched the results of Government policy intensifying the housing crisis over and over. We on this side of the House have repeatedly begged and appealed to the Government to call it a crisis and begin to deal with that, and that has not happened.

And so we are here today with a five-page response from the Government that does not put anything in context. It does not deal with the gracious motion from People Before Profit-Solidarity that notes the background to it and highlights the positive aspect of the eviction legislation that is planned, even though it came only after sustained pressure. The homelessness figures are 10,805, including 3,220 children. As I have reiterated ad nauseam, surely there is something wrong with our policy when that is the level of visible homelessness we know about, not counting the hidden homelessness. The question is what is wrong. I go back to my experience as a councillor. We stopped building public housing well before the war in Ukraine and the illegal invasion by Russia. We stopped building houses in 2009, and then we copper-fastened that policy by saying the only game in town was the housing assistance payment, HAP, and people were taken off the waiting list. Much of our energy and time as councillors was spent arguing with officials about whether people were on or off the list. I was told I was telling lies, and I recall pointing out at the time that I was a lawyer, not a liar, although there is often a shady area between the two and I will be the first to say that. That was the level of the engagement, rather than deciding that HAP would be the only game in town and that people would be taken off the list.

That was to be a temporary solution, although that is not what the legislation said. It said a person was adequately housed if he or she was in a HAP apartment. Some Opposition Deputies now who are behind that, along with Government Deputies, say it was never meant to be permanent but it absolutely was, and HAP is a fundamental part of the problem. I ask the Minister please not to stand up and tell me he cannot get rid of HAP overnight – obviously, he cannot - but he has to acknowledge that the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government went down that road and the Minister is now in a position to make an announcement stating that this is not the correct way and that we need to phase it out and build public housing on public land.

The snobbery and duplicity that is inherent in the talk about balancing communities is simply unacceptable. I go back to the city council when its representatives were here reporting to the committee. Let me just stay with Galway. We have land in the docks run by a company on behalf of the people of Galway that is entirely answerable to itself, even though it is technically or theoretically owned by the city council. Why that public land is not simply being used for public housing is beyond my comprehension. I am told there is engagement with the Land Development Agency, LDA. This should be public land for public housing. We have land at Sandy Road. It is public land and should be for public housing. We have lots of other land although the council is now telling us there is no more land, but it has identified those sites. If the Minister wants to make a difference, he should make an announcement that public land is for public housing. Then, he should ask the LDA to give him a copy of the audit of all public land in the country. the agency was supposed to have carried out that audit years ago but we are still waiting for it.

The background of the Simon Community report is worth looking at. It does a snapshot every quarter of 16 study areas over three days. This is its 27th snapshot. It is worth looking at. These are not my words. There are no properties available in Galway city or the suburbs under any part of HAP or discretionary HAP. There are no properties available whatsoever. There has been a consistent rise in rents, which have gone off the deep end. The latter is the case and yet we persist with a housing policy that is fundamentally flawed, notwithstanding the good parts the Minister zones in on sometimes.

Let me look at the Mazars report. I read this into the record last night in the context of the help-to-buy scheme. I only mention it again today because when the Minister of State was in the Chamber, he referred to this as a good. On public money, Mazars tells us:

The scheme is poorly targeted with respect to incomes, location, house prices and ... socioeconomic factors. As a result, it ... [is] socially regressive ... [it has] considerable deadweight ... and it is poorly aligned with spatial policy.

The report suggests that if we were to start now, it would not be a rational way to do things. It is utterly condemnatory of the scheme. More than one third of people already had the deposit; they did not need any help. What we have done is help people buy houses costing up to €500,000. That is what the scheme is doing. Consultants and various professionals, some of whom are in my own family, avail of the schemes, and fair play to them. The problem is that the Government policy is a dead weight. Does the Minister know what Mazars said? Scrap it, but do not scrap it now. It is like the prayer to God that goes: "Forgive me for sinning. I am going to change, but just not now."

Mazars tells us that this is a terrible scheme but not to change it now. Why does it say that? Because it has become embedded in Government policy. What is Government policy? Feed the market on every single level across HAP, RAS and long-term leasing. The Minister is shaking his head but the facts are there for him to see. If a communication was issued to the markets to the effect that a home is sacred and is the most fundamental essential in a democracy for security, then the Minister would be sending a message. Prices would have to come down and the Government would be right there in the middle of the market providing public housing. We have to change the income limits. All that has to be done.

I live in Galway city. We cannot even meet the officials there. Can the Minister imagine that? Since the advent of Covid, we have to do everything by e-mail. Covid has been a great excuse. At one time, you could go with an applicant, reassure them and say, "Do your time and you will eventually get a house". That is gone by the board. Now, people are told to go on the choice-based letting scheme. Can you imagine telling someone in their 60s or 70s to go online, on a computer they have not got a clue about, and opt for choice-based letting? They are on the list and have been since 2007. I checked before I came here. Surely, the homeless figures and the fact that no properties are available would tell the Minister that something is seriously wrong with the housing policy.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett and his colleagues for tabling this motion. I fully accept the bona fides of what is in the motion and of the Deputy Boyd Barrett's perspective. I do not agree with everything in the motion, although there are parts with which I do agree. I will say to Deputy Connolly that there is nothing in the five-page counter motion that is incorrect. That is factual. She does not have to agree with it all, and I respect that too. However, this debate again shows the scale of the challenges we have in housing.

I will put it in context if I may. We have had ten or 12 years of significant undersupply of public social homes and no affordable homes to speak of at all. We have got to turn that around. We are not going to turn that around in a year or two years. We have had one year of Housing for All. I would say respectfully, to speak to what Deputy Connolly said, that this is true housing for all. We will be putting in €4.5 billion in 2023 and have put in more than €4 billion this year. It is about actually building public housing and social homes. I believe in social housing. This year, we have targeted 9,000 new build social homes between local authorities and approved housing bodies. That is really important. I had the pleasure of meeting many people in Deputy Connolly's county, in Deputy Boyd Barrett’s constituency and in the Acting Chairman's county of Wexford who are now getting those safe and secure for homes for life. There is a good pipeline into next year.

Of course there are challenges, and we were restricted. That is a fact. To be fair, Deputy Boyd Barrett recognised previously that we had two severe construction shutdowns in 2020 and 2021 that limited supply. Even in those years, however, if we take last year, on social housing alone, 9,183 social homes and just over 5,000 new builds were delivered. That is not enough at all. We will note this in the Deputy's motion as well. Looking at the quarter 2 delivery figures, which I say to the House and to Deputy Boyd Barrett specifically, we will have very strong delivery on the social housing side in the last two quarters of this year. Much of it is always back-ended to the last part of the year due to completions.

I will address some of Deputy Connolly's comments for the record because I want to respond specifically to Galway. It is about building the platform and putting in the foundations to deliver social homes at a scale we have not seen before, that is, 90,000 between now and 2030. I respect Deputy Connolly's suggestion, and the policy her party has, about creating a State construction company and letting that company do all this building of public homes. I would ask this question, however. How long would it take to get that State construction company established and up and running run and to be effective? How long would it take to get the people in to do the work, get the land and deliver those additional homes that we need?

Deputy Connolly mentioned the LDA. I fully agree with the concept of using idle State land to provide homes for our people. That is actually what we are doing this year. For the first time, the LDA has delivered homes. I was in the homes in Mallow in County Cork this year. We are breaking ground in Shanganagh Castle, which the Deputy knows very well, which will provide just over 600 affordable and social homes. The St. Kevin's site in Cork will provide cost-rental, affordable purchase and social housing. There will be thousands more. We have planning applications in through the LDA on State land for affordable and social homes for approximately 2,500 new properties. Therefore, it is happening. The overall target for delivery under Housing for All this year is 24,600. The Deputy will say that is not enough, and it is not enough. It is, however, about building that capacity of having the people to actually build the houses.

When we look at the levels and the numbers of people in construction pre pandemic versus what is there now, there are actually 20,000 more. That is because the plan is giving confidence in the sector that there will be a safe, secure and stable housing market. We must build that capacity up. Thankfully, this year, it is projected from the data and research I have done that we will exceed the overall target. We might not hit all the targets within it but we will exceed the overall target and deliver affordable purchase homes for the first time in a generation. These homes start from €166,000 in Lusk in my area to Kilcarbery in south Dublin and right the way across. I have already approved 1,900 local authority-led and deliverable affordable homes through 30 schemes across the country through the affordable housing fund, and we are approving more and more. That is with real money, with the State putting in that subvention and taking that equity piece to allow the low-income and middle-income earners to actually buy that home.

Deputy Canney mentioned the first home scheme, which I will address for the purpose of the record of the Dáil. People said they do not know about in Galway. We have already had approximately 20 approvals of houses for people in a very short space of time in Galway county. That is ramping up. We had 600 approvals for real families and real people to buy real homes at an affordable rate. These are people who were locked out of the market for years, many of whom were renting and who, if they could get a mortgage, would be paying much less. I want those targeted supports in there because I believe in home ownership and in public housing. We have seen a reduction in the numbers of people in social housing but not on social housing waiting lists. It is not near enough, however.

I want to address the issue of HAP that has been raised. HAP is a support for approximately 60,000 households. I am certain no one is suggesting that we flick the switch and turn off HAP overnight. What I have done in the two years I have been Minister is reduce dependence on HAP, transferring people out of HAP and into permanent tenancies. That involved about 4,000 households. I am allowing for a lesser increase in HAP tenancies this year and next year because I want more people in permanent social homes. What we have got to do is deliver them. This year we will have significantly more new-build social homes than last year and than in decades. We have to build on that again. Next year we are targeting 29,000 and it moves on from there. It is not going to be changed overnight.

On the issue of vacancy, by the end of this year I will have brought more than 7,500 vacant social homes back into use. Our local authorities have to be quicker at tenanting and re-tenanting them and turning them around. They do not all have to be deep retrofit, either, as Deputy Danny Healy-Rae suggested. I want those homes back in safe good use and we are doing it. That is actually happening.

When I look at the measures in the motion, with the exception of the commentary that led into the motion, there are elements that I would completely agree with. I want to use my opportunity here today to address in particular the notices to quit with tenants in situ. For RAS and HAP tenants, I have told every single local authority, in person with their directors of services for housing and their chief executives over a housing summit last Thursday week and again in writing, that for any HAP or RAS tenant who is issued a notice to quit, the local authority should buy the home, end of story, no conditions. They do not need to come back to me to ask for it. Since then, and I think the Deputy questioned the Taoiseach on this last week as well, we have about 650 properties, and I hope to get more. The local authorities have been told very clearly they are to do it. If anyone comes across instances where that is not happening - there are one or two exceptions such as criminal antisocial behaviour or something like that. That is fine; we would all agree on that. I want that done as a measure to help people not fall into homelessness as we are building up our supply. It also increases the public housing stock that we have. I have been very clear about it. I am not putting any further conditions on it. I want them to do it. I want to deliver affordable housing, which we are doing.

Cost-rental did not exist in this country 12 months ago. We legislated for it in the Affordable Housing Act, which the Deputy, as is his right, opposed. We legislated for a national cost-rental scheme for the first time. We have already got hundreds of tenancies in place in that scheme and I want hundreds and thousands more of them. It is extremely popular. Every single cost-rental scheme that has been advertised has been oversubscribed. I cannot deliver 10,000 cost rental units overnight. The Deputy knows that and, in fairness, the general public knows it too. It is about building the capacity and having a robust plan that is fully funding and is going to be able to drive this development, both public and private.

In the area of vacancy, in the budget and more recently I announced the Croí Cónaithe vacancy grants. We have vacant and derelict homes right across the country. It is expanded into the rural areas from 1 November. I have announced that, in answer to Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. That is done. The grants are €30,000 for a vacant home and €50,000 for a derelict home. Since August, there have been over 400 applications to that scheme by people who want to buy a home and use that money to affray the cost of renovating it. We are also expanding the buy and renew, which is local authorities buying vacant and derelict homes and doing them up, and bringing them back into public use. That is happening through repair and lease really well in some counties. Other counties need to be supported to do more. In Waterford and Limerick there is some really good work in conversion of old commercial buildings where I have set aside the planning, by the way, for conversion from commercial to residential. There are many things happening and momentum is building around it. Is it all done in one year? Of course it is not. No one would suggest that it could be. That is why I certainly take on board and acknowledge the manner in which the Deputy raised the points he has from his policy position. Many of those things are actually happening.

Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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There is something extremely dysfunctional about housing supply and policy in this country. The policy can be traced back decades. It is one of commodification of shelter. That is the heart of this debate about the crisis of homelessness. Corporate bodies saw that ideology and they saw bricks and mortar as something to invest and speculate in and get very rich on. They did this not only in Ireland but across the world. Politically, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil bought into that ideology as well. Big developers bought into it and they brought it into Fianna Fáil as well. The amount of donations that were given to Fianna Fáil over the last 25 years runs into millions of euro. That tells us something about the heart of dysfunction in the housing market. People have to go without a home and go into emergency accommodation. Over 10,000 people in this country are in that situation at this moment. It is absolutely incredible that the situation is getting worse rather that better. That ideology was one of looking to the free market and not to public or affordable housing.

To its credit, Fianna Fáil in the 1950s and 1960s had a very good policy on public housing. Many housing estates in Dublin and across the country were built by the Minister's party. It believed in public housing and social housing. It believed in communities. The ideology of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is one of the free market and commodification of shelter. This has only been compounded by Fine Gael, which has been in power since 2011. That is 11 years of power in the context of its policy. That has only compounded the issue. Until we change the ideology and ultimately the Government, the housing crisis will get worse and worse.

I was out canvassing a number of days ago and two young people, teenagers, asked me a very pertinent question. They asked me why is there homelessness in this country. I was not struck by the question but by the level of passion in their voices. Why are there some many people homeless in this country? I tried to answer that as well as I could. In that situation young people, and there are many young people here, ask themselves. They may be in a house at the moment or maybe not. They will ask themselves why politicians cannot for once sort out the problem of sheltering our citizens. It is the biggest question and issue of our time. Politicians on the Minister's side of the House cannot fix it. That is the question here. They cannot fix it. What is wrong? There is an answer and a solution to every problem. There should never be people homeless in this country at all. Once we go with the ideology of the commodification of shelter, unfortunately there are going to be tens of thousands of people in the future in the situation of being homeless.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank all those who contributed to this discussion. I am not going to get into the war of statistics that these debates often descend into although I am not saying statistics are unimportant. The Minister has to start with acknowledging the truth. When the Government says the number on housing lists has falling it is a misrepresentation of the reality. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office there are actually 122,000 households, if we take waiting lists where people are on HAP, RAS and leasing arrangements, that are not secure tenancies. The reduction in the numbers on the housing list is overwhelmingly because the Government failed to raise the income thresholds. People are taken off the list not because they no longer have a housing need, no longer need social housing support or are no longer in a position where they cannot pay the rents out there or afford the housing prices, but because their income goes slightly over the threshold. They are off the list, it makes the statistics look better and leaves their situation exactly the same. In fact, it makes their situation worse.

I referred to the woman who, with her teenage son, has been in one bedroom in emergency accommodation for four years and is not even entitled to HAP support, never mind a council house, because she is over the threshold. There has been a deliberate policy of not raising those thresholds. I read it in the Government report. In fact, it was Byron Warren, a transition-year student who is in my office this week, who read the review the Government got last November and pointed out that people in Dublin are paying 60% of their income in rent. Huge numbers of those people are not entitled to any financial support whatsoever, whether HAP or social housing. Many of them have been cut off the list because the Government refused to raise the income threshold. At a time when more households than ever need social housing and social housing support, the proportion of people entitled to that support has been slashed from 48% to about 30%. That is the reality of the situation.

The long-term solution is for us to build, on scale, public and affordable housing. We need at least 20,000 public and affordable houses a year. Setting that aside, there is stuff the Government could do now. The reason it does not do it goes back to the point made by Deputy Gino Kenny and others. We need to get something into our heads regarding the housing misery facing hundreds of thousands of families on housing waiting lists, unable to afford rents and so on, and now the desperate people fleeing from Ukraine. That misery is benefiting a certain group of people. In fact, the worse the crisis gets, the more valuable is the rental property of those who own it and the more valuable the lands of those who have planning permission but are sitting on that land. There are 80,000 such planning permissions and their value is clocking up the worse the housing crisis gets. That is the elephant in the room when it comes to the housing crisis. Unless we break our reliance on people who are profiting from the housing crisis, that is, the vulture funds, investors, speculators and property developers, we are not going to solve this crisis. Indeed, there are worrying indications that private builders are starting to slow down their delivery because they do not see it as profitable for them.

Setting aside the bigger ideological debate, we propose some immediate solutions to this problem. First, it should be a case of use it or lose it. If you have a vacant property - there are 48,000 such that have been vacant since the last census and 160,000 in total - you should have six months to use it or, if there is no good reason for not doing so, you will lose it. Of course, there are good reasons in some cases but we must have a proactive policy of saying that if a property is vacant for six months or more, it will be taken over by the State and used to provide social and affordable housing if there is no good reason for not doing so. We need teams of people in every local authority who will go out and pursue those properties and ensure they are brought into use.

We must rebuild the State's construction capacity. The Taoiseach is correct that we cannot rebuild it overnight, but he can stop the situation whereby property is being actively run down. The State and local authorities must start to take on apprentices again and begin to rebuild our direct construction capacity in order that we are not dependent on contractors and developers who, in many cases, are doing what was done in the case of the co-operative housing in Loughlinstown, of which the Taoiseach may be aware, whereby 45 properties are now frozen because the contractor pulled out. We need our own construction capacity to deal with that situation. In any situation, whether people are on HAP or RAS, leasing or, as in Tathony House in Dublin 8, where some of the people are over the threshold and are not getting RAS, HAP or leasing support, where a landlord is selling just to benefit from the high prices that can be commanded at the moment, the State must step in and buy the property. That is not happening and all sorts of excuses are being put up for why that is. St. Helen's Court still has not got over the line. There are 17 empty properties sitting there for three years when people, including children, are in homeless accommodation and so on.

Then we come to income thresholds.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We are way over time, Deputy.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Will the Government admit the truth about those who need housing support and raise the thresholds to ensure they are entitled to that support?

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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In accordance with Standing Order 80(2), the division is deferred until the weekly division time this evening. We are a little behind time, through nobody's fault, and I ask for Members' co-operation in this regard on Leaders' Questions.