Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage had a capital budget underspend of €1 billion between 2020 and 2022;

— the primary cause of this underspend is the excessive bureaucracy and red tape imposed by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies;

— zero affordable purchase or Cost Rental homes were delivered by this Government in 2020;

— zero affordable purchase homes and just 65 Cost Rental homes were delivered in 2021;

— the target for affordable purchase and Cost Rental homes for 2022 was too low, and will not be met;

— the cost of much of the affordable rental and purchase homes delivered to date is beyond the reach of many working people;

— the Government failed to put in place the Cost Rental Tenant In-Situ Scheme before the ending of the ban on no fault evictions;

— the controversial 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme does not deliver affordable homes – it pushes up house prices and saddles working people with increased debt;

— the so-called Help to Buy scheme pushes up house prices, and 40 per cent of the fund has gone to buyers who did not need any State support to buy their own home;

— the lack of affordable homes is impacting on the economy and causing recruitment shortages in crucial areas of public and private sector employment; and

— the Government's failure to deliver genuinely affordable homes for working people is driving up rents, house prices and levels of homelessness; and

agrees that:

— the Government must dramatically increase its investment in the delivery of genuinely affordable homes for working people;

— investment should deliver at least 8,000 affordable homes to rent and buy per year;

— the funding streams and approval processes for the delivery of affordable homes must be streamlined to accelerate the delivery of these homes;

— the financing and delivery of these homes must be reformed to ensure that house prices and rents are genuinely affordable;

— greater action on the use of vacant and derelict homes and new building technologies must be taken to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing;

— the ending of the ban on no-fault evictions will lead to an increase in homelessness; and

— the controversial 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme and the so-called Help to Buy scheme should be scrapped and the funding diverted into the delivery of genuinely affordable homes for working people.

The figure that has been ringing in people's ears for the past number of weeks is €1 billion. Some €1 billion in capital expenditure for the delivery of much-needed social and affordable homes has gone unspent by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien. In 2020, the underspend was €90 million; in 2021, the underspend was just over €400 million; last year, the underspend almost reached €500 million; and this continued into the first quarter of this year with a 29% underspend in capital funding, which is another €90 million unspent. The most immediate impact of the underspend can be seen in the figures released by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage yesterday. Since Deputy O'Brien has been the Minister, he has missed his social housing target by a staggering 8,500 social homes. That is almost the same number of households currently in emergency accommodation funded by the Department. Even more startling in the Minister's failure has been the non-delivery of affordable homes. Sometimes when listening to him, one would think the affordable housing scheme only emerged last year. In fact, those of us who were in this House in 2018 will recall Deputy O'Brien proclaiming from this side of the House to have secured €300 million for the delivery of 6,000 affordable homes between 2019 and 2021. I think he called it a housing budget for which he would make no apology. Amazingly, during all that time, not a single affordable home to purchase was delivered and only 65 affordable rentals were delivered in 2021. Since the Minister took over, things have not got much better. In fact, last year, despite the promise of 4,000 affordable homes, we got 323 affordable purchase homes, the vast majority of which were not available to purchase last year with sales only closing now, and just 684 cost rentals. Increasingly, those cost rentals are not affordable. Cost rentals for €1,450 and €1,550 per month are not affordable to many of the people eligible for that scheme.

Why is this? When we listen to the Minister, he blames everybody else, because it is clearly not his fault and he is not in charge. He will, therefore, blame the war in Ukraine, Brexit, supply chain disruptions and inflation, yet when we look around, nobody else has this problem. The Department of Education overspent its budget last year and early this year, in fact, so much so that school projects had to be delayed. That Department did not have a problem with supply chains, Ukraine or inflation. The private sector not only met its initial targets for last year but exceeded them. Why is it the case then in the world of capital expenditure that the Minister's Department, in the context of the delivery of social and affordable homes, is the only one not only not spending its allocation of funding year-on-year but accumulating an ever-greater underspend? The answer is very simple. He knows the answer because he has heard it over and over again. His Department is imposing far too great a level of bureaucracy and red tape on local authorities and AHBs and, as a consequence, they cannot spend the money they have been given.

There is a human cost to the Minister's failure. It is rising rents and house prices; it is people having to consider whether they should give up jobs; it is people with good qualifications and employment prospects wondering if they will have to emigrate; and, for many others, it is real financial hardship. Worst of all are the rising levels of homelessness. Let us go back to the figure of 8,500 social homes promised by the Minister that have not been delivered. What would this have done in the context of the emerging homelessness crisis? We all know the answer. As a consequence, not only are the numbers of homeless people rising but they will continue to rise because of the Government's decision to end the ban on evictions.

I listened to the Minister speaking on RTÉ today. He indicated that we are turning a corner, the plan is working and things are getting better. This really means he has his head buried in the sand. Not only are we getting a continuation of the failed approach of the previous Fine Gael Government, but the two major policy initiatives of this Government, expanding the highly controversial so-called help-to-buy scheme and the even more controversial shared-equity loan scheme, are laughable because they have ended up pushing up house prices, pushing up debt and pushing up risks for buyers and making it more difficult for people to buy.

My colleagues will set out some of Sinn Féin's key alternatives as we go, but the Minister knows these as we have dealt with them many times. I must say, though, that the Minister's housing plan is failing. He is not even meeting his own miserly targets. We need an alternative and, on that basis, I commend this motion to the House.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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The failure to spend the money allocated for housing, the exclusion of most of County Mayo from the affordable housing scheme and the callous decision to remove the eviction ban are devastating families right here, right now. Men, women and children are being directly impacted. I am working with a woman from Westport. She has three daughters and is going to be evicted next Monday, 24 April. This woman cares for her elderly father and her husband has a degenerative brain disease and is confined to a nursing home in Westport. Her daughters are in full-time education in Westport. She is studying for a part-time degree with the ambition of getting back to work full time. This family has been on the housing list for 12 years. They have waited that long and from next Monday they will have nowhere to call home, no stability and no security. These people are the victims of a system designed and delivered by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The ban on no-fault evictions was the only protection they had. Without warning, the Government pulled that out from under them. This family has now been told by Mayo County Council that they must present as homeless on Monday. Currently, there is no emergency accommodation and they do not even know if a bed and breakfast will take them. The best Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have to offer is: "but Sinn Féin, but Sinn Féin". What does the Minister have to say to this family and to all the others living in fear of homelessness? This is more than a housing crisis; it is a humanitarian emergency, right here, right now. Where will these people go?

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing forward this motion. The shortage of, and absolute need for, affordable homes to buy and rent is a major issue in my county of Meath. The motion further calls on the Government to dramatically increase its investment in the delivery of genuinely affordable homes for working people and to deliver at least 8,000 affordable homes to rent and to buy annually. We have a proven track record in delivering housing in County Meath but it is nowhere near enough to meet demand. The Government's targets are way below what is needed, particularly according to the Housing Agency. The current spatial strategy plans to significantly curtail development in the county during the lifetime of the current county development plan out to 2027. We have development and that is welcome, but it is slowing. We have development, but it is most certainly not affordable to buy or to rent. The opposite is the case.

I looked at what is available to buy in County Meath this evening. In the Willows development in Dunshaughlin, a two-bedroom home is available from €375,000 and a three-bedroom terraced house from €445,000. In Ashbrooke, Ratoath, there is a four-bedroom house from €539,000, while in Tara Close there is a four-bedroom house from €535,000. In Churchfields, Ashbourne, there is a second-hand property with three bedrooms from €400,000, while on Dún Riabhach Park, a new estate in the town, there is a three-bedroom semi-detached house for €475,000. There is also a four-bedroom property to rent from €3,200 monthly. These are simply unaffordable.

We are a county that has seen affordable housing schemes in the past and the Minister will be aware of that. In 2019, when other places did not have them, we had ten affordable houses in Broadmeadow Vale, Ratoath, a project significantly supported by the taxpayer through the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, to build a road to unlock land for development. The road is still not built and the remaining development has still not happened. We have the largest strategic housing development in the State. The diggers are on site. Some 20 affordable houses are planned in the Willows estate, Dunshaughlin. The closing date was last week. It is very welcome, but it is hugely oversubscribed and not affordable for many people. There is a minimum purchase price of €292,000 for a two-bedroom house and €320,000 for a three-bedroom house.

The motion further calls for a cut to the red tape for the delivery of social and affordable housing. We have social housing developments in County Meath. It took eight years, though, to deliver housing on the Department of Education site in Ashbourne, while on a site on the estate in Kells where I grew up, it has taken seven years to deliver housing. This is simply unacceptable and has a huge impact. There is a real human cost to this situation. I call on the Minister to recognise the need to support the Sinn Féin motion.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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Last year, the Government promised to deliver 4,000 affordable homes. It failed and failed miserably. Instead, just over 1,700 homes were delivered across all affordable housing delivery streams. This is a shocking indictment and again shows that the Government is failing to ensure that people can access affordable homes to rent and to buy. Coming up to its third year in office, what my constituents hear very clearly coming from the Government parties is that they are simply incapable of responding to this crisis with any level of urgency. They have failed to deliver affordable homes to buy or to rent and failed to reach their own low new-build social housing targets. The Government's third year will be completed soon, so when is it going to admit its housing policies are not working?

Figures speak for themselves and they are speaking as loudly as those Government's failures. In my constituency of Longford-Westmeath, County Westmeath, with a population of approximately 90,000, had a whole three properties delivered under the first homes strand and ten allegedly affordable homes. The entry level for a two-bedroom terraced house there was priced at in excess of €240,000. Heaven forbid that people might have larger families because the cost of a four-bedroom house was just under €300,000. I said "allegedly affordable" because today a two-bedroom terraced house in that same area of Athlone is priced at €145,000. This is more than €95,000 cheaper than the so-called affordable housing scheme and no equity is held.

Then there is County Longford, which has a population of 45,000, and not one single affordable house. There was not even one, zip, nada, none. In fact, that county did not even qualify for an affordable housing scheme until recently. So much for housing for all. Across two counties, therefore, with approximately 140,000 people, the grand achievement of this Government in affordable housing to buy, but with an equity held, is ten units, while under the first home scheme, it is three units. There has been not one cost-rental home built. Overall, this is a whopping total of 13 properties. The Government set low targets and failed to meet them because it knows as well as we do on this side of the House that its housing policies have failed.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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We are in the midst of a housing crisis where nearly 12,000 people are accessing emergency support, and 3,500 of those are children. This is not counting our rough sleepers and it is not counting those who are sofa surfing. Then we hear that the Minister did not spend almost €1 billion of the Government's capital budget for social and affordable housing since 2020. It just beggars belief. I cannot understand it. This is affecting people across the spectrum. Last week we heard from the teachers' conference that teachers cannot afford to live and teach in Dublin. They are leaving. They are going elsewhere in the country or they are leaving the country. The same is happening with our nurses and our gardaí. People who should be working in our disability teams assessing children and providing services cannot afford to rent on their wages and they are leaving the country for a better quality of living. They are leaving the country because they cannot afford to rent or to buy in this country.

I had conversation last year with the housing officer in Cavan County Council when the Minister announced measures around affordable housing. I asked her how many affordable houses would be produced in Cavan under the scheme. She told me it was none. Yet, I have people coming into my office who are above the income threshold for social housing. They are working and they are earning more than the €30,000, or whatever the limit is, so they are not eligible for any housing supports. Yet, they cannot afford the exorbitant rents being asked in Cavan. Rents are now at €1,200 to €1,500. They are rising uncontrollably. It is not a rent pressure zone. It needs to be declared a rent pressure zone because nothing else will stop landlords from raising the rents. There is no availability so they can do what they want and they can ask for what they want.

I know of a number of people whose circumstances have changed. One woman lost her job and cannot afford the rent she was paying when she was working. Obviously, there is nothing else available. She has now applied for social housing, to get the housing assistance payment, HAP, so she can get help with her rent. It will take five months for her application to be processed. Why? It is because the local authority is under resourced. That is the Minister's Department again. The local authorities are under resourced and they cannot process the applications that are coming in. We will see people homeless because they have nowhere to go.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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We all accept the Government's targets for affordable housing have been too low. Yet, yesterday's announcement of the housing statistics highlights that even with these very low figures the Government still cannot hit its targets. Affordable housing represents the only opportunity for many families to ever be able to own their own home. Yet the Government still cannot give those people the opportunity to buy a home. There were 4,000 affordable home promised and just over 1,700 were delivered. How can the Minister, Deputy McGrath, stand over that?

I will break things down a bit. Cork City Council confirmed to me just today that not one of the 135 affordable homes built last year, which are ready right now to be moved into, have anyone living in them. The reason is the Minister's Department; its bureaucracy and the red tape. The houses in Cork are ready. They are ready and are built, and people are looking for them. I will give two examples of the consequences of the Minister's ineptitude. One family that contacted me gave up their rental property so they would be able to move into their home, but the house will not be ready at all. This family is now facing homelessness. They are facing homelessness and will have nowhere to go on Friday. What will the Minister tell them? I am asking the Minister. Another family was also due to be in phase 1. They had to move back in with the parents of one of the couple. There they are now, a husband and wife and two children, who got a pass for an affordable house, and for months they have been living in a room with their family. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is the Minister for housing. This is on his watch. How can he justify people waiting for months while the houses are built? It is happening because the Minister has not done his job with the legislation to get the Department to deliver on these.

Local authorities, such as Cork City Council and others, are crying out to deliver affordable housing. The Minister is the person who is blocking them. I will give another example. Hawke's Road in Cork had 135 completions advertised on 14 March, but none has been allocated yet. Cork City Council is doing everything it can but the Minister is letting them down and the buck stops with him.

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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As the Minister is aware, the ban on no-fault evictions ended on 31 of March, and still this Government has failed to answer the question we have all been asking, before that and since then: where are these people supposed to go? The cost of rent has escalated year on year and those who are providing emergency accommodation are advising that they have reached their capacity. They have told me this repeatedly, for months, in Limerick. I have said this in the Dáil Chamber also for months. Those who can afford the high rents have said they cannot afford a property in Limerick. Ondaft.ietoday there are three properties available in Limerick: two one-bedroom apartments and one three-bedroom house. There is absolutely nowhere for anyone to go.

My office has been contacted by many families who have already received the dreaded notice to quit. Others are now worried upon receipt of any correspondence or communication from their landlord in case it is a notice to quit. They have a sense of shame because of their predicament. The shame should not be felt by them but by those who backed the ending of the no-fault eviction ban. The shame should be felt by those who failed to deliver. The shame should be felt by those who failed to use the space of the eviction ban to prepare. This Government has beenin situfor three years, and it has been three years of failure in the context of housing. The Government dramatically missed its targets and it has underspent its capital budget by not building.

Let us consider two things that the Government could have done. In the Limerick local authority area there are 230 void houses. These are not being refurbished as fast as they could be or to any scale that they could be because the local authority simply does not have the money. It is the Minister's Department that puts them through red tape that takes so long and we just cannot get them turned over. That is 230 houses. We can talk about voids all we want but if a person is living in a council estate, or what was a council estate, and there is a boarded-up void house next door, that person must heat their house more. Rubbish could be dumped in there. It is not fair that people have to live next to these houses because the Minister will not free up the moneys that the local authorities want.

The Minister also announced a tenant in situscheme. Limerick has been approved for 75 houses. However, the local authority there told me that it does not have the staff to do that. Today I raised with the Taoiseach the specific case of a woman who was hoping have her house bought under the scheme. Her circumstances have changed. She has two children, a boy and a girl, but the local authority will not progress her application because it simply does not have the staff. They told her that she will have to wait as long as everybody else. Meanwhile, the landlord has abused her on the phone. He started out being friendly to her but he has said he is not now selling the house to the council. This is because the local authority does not have the staff. I have said this in the Chamber a couple of times. I said a number of weeks ago when the Minister announced the scheme that if he did not fund the local authorities and did not fund the staff, and did not give clarity to what they are doing, then it could not and would not work. Unfortunately, it has come to pass.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I move:

To delete all words after "That Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"notes that:

— the Government recognises there is a housing crisis in Ireland affecting ordinary working people who aspire to affordable, stable tenancies or the security of home ownership, and this demands a response from the Government on an unprecedented scale;

— Ireland is experiencing an acute gap between housing supply and demand, exacerbated by the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, global supply-chain disruption, Russian aggression in Ukraine, which further exacerbated significant supply chain issues, as well as higher costs for construction materials; these challenges required both short and longer-term State interventions to address;

— increasing social, affordable and private housing supply, for renters and those looking to purchase a home, is key to improving our housing system and eradicating homelessness, with almost 30,000 homes built last year, an increase of 45.2 per cent from 2021 (20,560) and 41.3 per cent from 2019 (21,134), and 5,250 or 21 per cent higher than the Housing for All: A New Housing Plan for Ireland target of 24,600 for 2022;

— the Government will continue to expand the provision of social, affordable and Cost Rental accommodation to ensure that all sectors of our society have accommodation that meets their needs available to them;

— 10,263 social homes were delivered in 2022, including 7,433 new-build social homes - the highest level of new-build social housing since 1975 - with a strong pipeline of over 19,000 social homes either onsite or at design and tender stage; and

— 1,757 affordable homes were delivered in 2022; 5,500 affordable homes will be delivered in 2023; 2,800 affordable homes have already been approved in respect of 42 specific projects across 15 local authority areas;

further notes with regard to unprecedented levels of spending:

— despite significant challenges including war in Europe, the lasting effects of the global pandemic and of Brexit, 2022 saw the highest capital spend ever for the Vote of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, an overall increase of 28 per cent in 2022 versus 2021;

— Section 91 of the Finance Act 2004, provides for the carryover of up to 10 per cent of the Real Estate Valuation allocation (capital) from one year to the next, and in the case of significant capital projects and in accordance with effective management of a multi-annual housing programme, it is important to note that the capital carryover ensures that where delivery arises beyond the calendar year in which initially anticipated, the capital can transfer to meet the commitment up to a maximum of 10 per cent; and the capital carryover amount is the first call on the Vote following the signing of the deferred surrender order in the following year and is spent in full and does not therefore represent a cumulative underspend;

— 2022 also saw the highest level of housing expenditure ever in a single year, with almost €3.5 billion expended on housing, representing an increase of 21 per cent on 2021;

— 2023 will see further record investment in housing, with total Exchequer funding of €4 billion to deliver housing programmes, including €2.6 billion in capital funding and €1.4 billion in current funding; and

— overall, there will be €4.5 billion available for capital investment in housing, comprising €2.6 billion in Exchequer funding and €1.9 billion in Land Development Agency (LDA) investment and Housing Finance Agency lending; and

agrees that:

— in relation to improving processes and delivery for efficiency:

— this Government has a clear vision to achieve both value for money and more efficient processes in our housing programmes, which includes both affordable and Cost Rental provision, and is delivering on this vision to support our ambitious public housing programme;

— the Government has advanced key initiatives to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness and, in particular the pace of delivery of social homes, involving fundamental change and improvement in social housing delivery processes;

— this Government is also working with local authorities on a programme of over 1,500 new social homes via Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), with accelerated processes for the councils to advance their proposals including early funding approvals and utilising the new Planning Regulations (Section 179A), so that those projects will be on site in 2023 or 2024; and

— these actions, alongside continuous improvements and streamlining of work processes and the sanctioning of 250 additional local authority housing staff for social housing delivery and similarly up to 70 staff for affordable delivery on an initial basis, is what the Government is delivering in order to support our ambitious public housing programme;

— with regard to addressing immediate need:

— this Government considered a number of courses of action in advance of the ending of the 'winter emergency period' and agreed on 7th March that a focus on additional new supply is the best way forward in dealing with the end of the winter eviction ban in a manner which best protects tenants;

— this included the development of a bespoke Cost Rental Tenant In-Situ Scheme as a support to households who face the termination of a tenancy due to the intended sale of a property and consequently are not able to purchase it from the landlord and are at risk of homelessness;

— while the process to establish this scheme on a legislative basis is being advanced, the Government have provided a temporary administrative scheme which was in place from 1st April in order to support tenants who are at risk of homelessness due to notification of termination; and

— there will also be a significant increase in the number of social housing acquisitions, with a minimum of 1,500 social homes to be acquired during 2023; and the majority of these acquisitions will be properties where a Housing Assistance Payment or Rental Accommodation Scheme tenant has received a Notice of Termination due to the landlord's intention to sell the property;

— the Help to Buy scheme that the Government launched in 2017 has subsequently supported over 38,000 First-time Buyer households secure a new home, with over 900 of these supports delivered in January and February this year; and this scheme has been extended to 2024;

— in relation to the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme:

— this Government is supporting people and families to achieve the security and stability of home ownership via the 'First Home' scheme to bridge the clear viability/affordability mismatch in a sustainable way;

— a total of 3,556 potential buyers have registered their interest in the scheme, with over 1,000 new expressions of interest received in the period January to March; and

— as of Q1 2023, 1,336 buyers in 24 counties have been approved under the scheme and have received eligibility certificates allowing them to buy their chosen home;

— in relation to establishing and stepping up pace of affordable delivery:

— this Government introduced the Affordable Housing Act 2021, the first ever piece of standalone affordable housing legislation establishing four new affordable housing measures to deliver on the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future commitment to put affordability at the heart of the housing system and prioritise the increased supply of affordable homes;

— 2022 was the first full year of affordable housing delivery in a generation, increasing the scale of affordable purchases will be achieved through a mix of new or extended initiatives, including the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme, Local Authority-provided Affordable Purchase Schemes, the Help to Buy initiative and the expanded Local Authority Home Loan;

— Cost Rental housing - a new form of State-backed secure, long-term rental tenure with rents targeted at a minimum of 25 per cent below open market rates - is being delivered in increasing numbers, with hundreds of Cost Rental homes tenanted;

— given the viability challenges resulting from cost increases, and to provide further necessary support to Affordable Housing Bodies (AHBs), and local authorities in bringing forward a short-term pipeline of Cost Rental developments, the Government has approved changes to the funding ceilings available which involved increasing the ceiling of Cost Rental Equity Loan (CREL) beyond its current rate of 30 per cent of costs up to 45 per cent;

— in addition, as part of the drive to facilitate greater direct delivery of Cost Rental homes by local authorities, the amount of Affordable Housing Fund grant funding currently available to local authorities has been increased from the current €100,000 per Cost Rental unit up to a maximum of €150,000;

— to ensure that the CREL scheme continues to meet the needs of both AHBs and tenants in facilitating the delivery of Cost Rental homes, a Working Group has been set up to consider the parameters of the scheme more broadly; this includes examining the CREL funding model in delivering Cost Rental homes in strategic locations at affordable rents, and considering any new, sustainable funding structures and/or interventions that could be implemented to improve the viability of delivery and the development of a longer term Cost Rental pipeline;

— development of the Cost Rental sector will have an impact on the wider rental market, reducing rents over the longer term, as households have more affordable options available to them;

— the past 12 months have represented the first year of a very ambitious programme of delivery of affordable housing; this momentum will continue with delivery stepping up in 2023, and significant investment is in place to support affordability measures and deliver more affordable purchase and Cost Rental homes in 2023;

— additional supports have been put in place for local authorities, AHBs and the LDA to further develop their growing pipeline, and enhanced regional price ceilings will also ensure continued high levels of activity under the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme; and

— in support the Government is also taking steps to address viability in the provision of apartments, including activating uncommenced planning permission through the expansion of the LDA Project Tosaigh and the Housing Agency's Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme which will help to deliver increased supply over the next few years;

— with regards to addressing vacancy:

— the Government has published the Vacant Homes Action Plan, which outlines progress and details new actions that will be implemented to continue to return as many vacant properties back to use as possible, increasing the supply of housing available, and revitalising local communities;

— measures already taken by the Government include expanding the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, funding full-time vacant homes officers in every local authority, exemptions to planning permissions to convert vacant commercial premises to residential use and enhancing the Fair Deal scheme to incentivise the selling or renting of used homes;

— measures in the Action Plan include a €150 million Urban Regeneration Development Fund for local authorities to acquire vacant or derelict properties and sites for re-use or sale, and the fund will then be replenished from the proceeds received from the sale or reuse of a site, allowing a local authority to establish a rolling programme to tackle vacancy and dereliction;

— a new Compulsory Purchase Order Activation Programme was launched recently, with targets identified for each local authority for bringing properties back into use; this programme includes guidance and supports for local authorities to actively use their legislative powers to acquire vacant and derelict properties, where engagement with owners has been unsuccessful;

— the Government is building on the initial success of the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant; it is now being further expanded to increase the number of vacant and derelict properties being brought back into use, this includes:

(i) changing the eligibility date for properties from 1993 to include properties built prior to 2007;

(ii) expanding the grant to include properties which are to be made available for rent and not solely for owner occupation; and

(iii) reviewing of the existing grant rates with a view to increase the financial support available to refurbish vacant and derelict properties; and

these amendments are currently being worked on, with a view to implementation in May;

— in regards to deploying new building technologies funding of €94 million has been allocated to pay down local authority loans on legacy indebted sites, which can deliver social housing projects through the use of accelerated delivery models, principally off-site/MMC; and by paying down the outstanding loans the fund will free up these sites for immediate development;

— in relation to improving local authority delivery efficiency to help expedite the provision of housing by local authorities, new provisions came into effect from 8th March, 2023 and, subject to certain criteria, will provide a temporary exemption from the 'Part 8' planning approval process by elected members for local authority own developments for social and affordable (including Cost Rental) housing which commence construction before the end of 2024; and

— having regard to evidence based target setting:

— Housing for All: A New Housing Plan for Ireland targets were set, for the first time, using a Housing Need and Demand Assessment, developed in co-operation with the Economic and Social Research Institute to support the identification of the level of housing need across and between all tenures;

— affordable housing delivery targets were set for local authorities, the AHB sector and the LDA and the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme; and

— the Housing for All: Action Plan Update commits the Government to reviewing the national housing targets and projections when the full Census 2022 is published later this year; this will include refreshed targets with subsets for social, affordable and market delivery that reflect need and demand, and a scaling-up to ensure optimal levels of sustainable supply over the lifetime of the plan in line with increased capacity in the construction sector."

I thank colleagues for their contributions this evening. With regard to Deputy Quinlivan's contribution, there are more than 300 new council staff on housing appointed by this Government. Since January of this year we have expanded the tenant in situscheme. More than 1,000 properties are in process of being purchased with the tenant in situscheme, even though the Sinn Féin party spokesperson comes in here and would have people believe that only seven houses were purchased in Dublin. This is where the Deputy's party starts playing with figures to suit a political narrative. No one on this side of the House is unaware of the very difficult situation that many families find themselves in. This Government is committed to turning this around. How we do this is through supply. It is by building good social, affordable and private homes at scale.

I will just put some facts on the floor of the House, if I may. Members will be aware that we announced the figures yesterday of our social housing delivery with 10,263 social homes delivered in 2022. Of those, 7,433 were new-build social homes. It is indisputable. That is the highest number of new-build social homes since 1975. If one considers the overall social housing delivery, year on year, between 2021 and 2022, it is about a 12% increase on that. Over the two years we have more than 20,000 new social homes delivered. Is it enough? No it is not, but is it scaling up on delivery? Absolutely it is. Some people may not want to recognise that. That is fine because it might suit a political narrative from the main Opposition party.

Deputy Ó Broin likes to say that I use the excuse of Covid. There was a 20-week shutdown in construction through Covid. By the way, Sinn Féin was silent on that and never called for the pause in construction to be lifted either. It remained silent because it was not sure what side it was on and so said nothing. The reality is that we had to deal with issues around the supply chain. Building houses is very different from building schools and Deputy Ó Broin knows this as well, along with the different types of properties built.

There was double-digit price inflation last year which affected the delivery of some projects. The Government brought in the inflation framework to deal with that. Even with the issues we had around supply chains and inflation, particularly in quarter 2 of last year, we managed to deliver just short of the overall target of 10,500 social homes last year. That is a significant step up. Whether people want to accept that or not, it is the reality. We also need private supply. Some 30,000 new homes were delivered in the first year of Housing For All. Those were homes for 30,000 households and families across tenures. That happened even though we had difficulty with delivery last year. We hope and expect to do more than that this year.

People talk about affordable housing and bemoan delivery in that regard. I would remind them of the 1,757 new affordable homes. That is below the target and we are honest with people about that. However, that is a significant increase on the year before. It represents a proper footprint of good, affordable homes that were provided for purchase or rent in 2022. For the first time, cost rental was available. Sinn Féin has talked about it but has never delivered it. As Deputies know, 42 schemes have been approved across 15 local authority areas to deliver another 2,800 affordable homes through the affordable housing fund, and more are coming in each week. We must be flexible about how we are dealing with those schemes and we must manage their costs. Deputy Ó Broin said previously that the public spending code should be thrown out the window but that is not a way that one can operate, as I think he knows. The figures for the delivery of new-build social homes and social homes last year were very good overall, considering the year that it was. Most fair-minded people would recognise that.

I want in particular to discuss voids. Since I took over as Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, more than 8,000 void houses have been brought back into use. I regularly get lists from local authorities of what is being brought back into use. We are focused in that regard. We will continue to ensure that any vacant property is brought back into use.

There is another indisputable fact about last year. The main Opposition party will say it is for people buying houses. However, its actions demonstrate something completely different. There are measures that are helping people to buy homes. Some 52% of new homes bought last year were bought by first-time buyers. That is a significant increase and the most since 2007. The assistance they were given was through the help-to-buy grant, which is their tax back. First-time buyers are getting back the tax they have paid to help them with a deposit. At least Sinn Féin is now being honest and saying it will remove that support, which has helped well over 30,000 households to buy houses. I want Sinn Féin Deputies to be clear when people come into their constituency offices to talk to them. When people are looking for supports to buy homes, do Sinn Féin representatives tell them not to apply for the help-to-buy grant? I doubt they do.

The first home scheme, in a very short space of time, has approved 1,400 applications. These are real households of real families and individuals. We have brought through a scheme that works to bridge the gap between the finance people have and the finance they need because the State steps in and takes an equity. It is not a second mortgage, as Deputy Ó Broin and his colleagues in Sinn Féin said at the time. There are no 6% or 7% interest rates involved. The scheme is working and taking hold across the country. We had more applications and registrations in the first three months of this year than we had in the six months from July to December of last year. It may disappoint Sinn Féin that schemes such as this are taking hold and are working. They are helping real homeowners. They are helping homeowners in Fingal, Cork, Kerry and across the country. In 29 of our 31 local authority areas, people have been approved for the first home scheme. It is working.

I will be clear about expenditure. In 2022, expenditure on housing alone was €3.5 billion. That represented an increase of more than 21% on the year before. That €3.5 billion was €700 million more than Sinn Féin had proposed to spend on the capital side. That is what we did last year. There were difficulties. People can dismiss the influence of the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and all of those things to suit a political narrative. However, at the end of the day, the Government is focused on building up supply. Approximately 19,000 social homes are in the pipeline. Deputy O'Reilly may laugh but there would probably be more if members of her party did not object to social homes in Fingal.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister should stop talking nonsense.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I was delighted to see the scheme in Ballymastone receive approval from An Bord Pleanála. That will deliver 253 social homes and 253 affordable homes, as well as private houses. Sinn Féin councillors in Fingal did not support that scheme. That is fair enough but it is on the council record. There are many other such examples. That is one aspect of matters. We must deliver more affordable housing, which we are doing. We also need to deliver more social housing. The figures in that regard do not lie.

I will turn to new tenancies. There is, of course, a very serious issue within the private rental sector. That will be dealt with by exiting in particular those people in HAP and rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenancies into permanent social housing. That is happening. It is not happening at the scale I would like but it is happening at an increased scale. The tenant in situscheme has ramped up and is delivering. The local authorities are resourced to deliver on it and are very focused on doing so. In respect of other backstops that are there, the cost rental backstop is in place now for people who cannot afford to purchase a home. Cost rental with the tenant in situis now available. We will work night and day to ensure that all the supports are there for the people who need them. A continuation of the eviction moratorium would have made a difficult situation even worse. What Government must do, and what all governments should do, is to take the responsible and correct decision even if it is difficult in the short term. Fundamentally, the way out of this situation is to deliver more homes. We did that in 2022 and will do more in 2023. I hope we get the support of Sinn Féin representatives across the country to do so. We need to ensure we are delivering social housing at scale through the likes of the Land Development Agency, LDA, which was set up and capitalised to deliver social and affordable houses on idle State land. What did Sinn Féin do? It opposed the LDA. It was against the LDA. Sinn Féin is against every single measure that the Government brings forward.

I will move to the vacancy grant. Deputy Gould, who has now left the Chamber, consistently talks about vacancy. There is a dereliction and vacancy issue. We brought forward a support, the Croí Cónaithe vacancy grant, for which 1,500 applications have already been made. Some €30,000 is available for vacant homes to homeowners across constituencies and €50,000 is available for derelict buildings. Sinn Féin opposed the scheme without ever explaining why. I note that a reference to the scheme has been dropped from the motion before the House so perhaps Sinn Féin has had a change of heart in that regard.

Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Sometimes when I listen to debates about housing I wonder whether those sitting on the Government benches live in some kind of alternative universe. Earlier today, I heard the Taoiseach say that we in Sinn Féin are gaslighting young people. That is from a government that tells us it is there for the people who get up early in the morning, whatever that means, and is there for the people who want to own their own homes. Since 2012, the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds who are living with their parents has increased from 21% to 41%. Is the Minister trying to tell us that those young people want to be living with their parents? I can tell him they do not.

The Minister said that his focus is on building capacity. The only thing that I can see the Government building on is homelessness. The Minister tells us that we are gaslighting people but I can tell him it is the Government that is doing the gaslighting.

On affordable housing, since 2019 there has been talk about an affordable housing scheme in Galway.

It keeps getting delayed. They are now saying it will be delivered in Galway in 2025. Does the Minister know how many houses will be delivered in that affordable housing scheme? It is 85. It is not just me saying that is not good enough, but the Minister's own colleagues who are saying it is not good enough. Does the Minister know what is colleagues are also saying? They are saying it was wrong to lift the eviction ban, but if his mantra is to build and build and build on homelessness, then it was the correct decision. I heard the Minister say on television that he knew it would increase homelessness and yet he made the decision anyway. I ask him to provide the circular for councillors so that they know what to do in terms of buying houses for people who are on HAP in a different county. As they have not got it, the Minister may as well get his act together on it.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister mentioned several times that his is the party that wants to ensure that people have home ownership and that Sinn Féin is against home ownership. I give an example from my constituency of a separated woman with two children living in a rented house. Her rent increased by almost a third this time last year. Obviously, she can hardly afford it as it is. She has now received a notice that she is to be evicted. She contacted her local authority. She is over the income threshold to get HAP or get on the housing list because she works. She applied for a local authority loan under the local authority loan scheme. She did all the work and sent in all the paperwork. She was very confident she had it because she needed to have a 10% deposit. She said she showed the bank statements from her mother who was giving her the 10% deposit. She was turned down because she must show that 3% of that 10% deposit comes from savings. If it does not come from savings, out the door.

That kind of bureaucracy puts us in the position where people cannot afford to buy a house and live in it. She wants to stay in the house she is in. The landlord is prepared to sell it to her. Everything else is in place. Her only problem is to prove she got this 3% from savings. She cannot do that. If she got the loan and had the mortgage for the house, her mortgage repayments would be almost half of her rent at present. There are the savings if somebody wants to show the savings. However, the Government puts bureaucratic obstacles in the way of people trying to buy a house. I would like the Minister to deal with that.

The Minister has said there will be flexibility. The experience of all of us on this side of the House - I am sure it is the same for Deputies on the other side of the House - is that when we make representations for real people with real problems, there is no flexibility. The flexibility the Minister talks of does not exist. They are told that these are the guidelines, these are the rules and people must obey them. Will the Minister tell the local authorities, not through a letter but through a circular, that they must ensure that people are not made homeless. As has been asked many times on all sides of this Chamber, and I am sure by Government backbenchers as well, where are these people going to go? Where will that woman and her two children go if she cannot buy that house?

At the moment in Sligo town five houses are available for rent. The other day staff in my office were ringing around to see if they could find one for a person on HAP. When they heard the person was on HAP, every one of them said, "We'll come back to you." That means "No" and that when they come back somebody will have that house because immediately they cut them down.

Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein)
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We have an underspend of €1 billion and the list of work that could be done with this €1 billion is extensive, including regeneration of flat complexes and maintenance of the flat complexes. The Minister mentioned voids and said he was focused on voids. I could bring him to any number of flats around here and show him that the number of voids is extensive. There are two voids in Leo Fitzgerald House and they have been empty for more than a year. There needs to be more focus on voids. Why would the Government not use that €1 billion to get a share in the Irish Glass Bottle site to increase the number of affordable and public homes on that site? The Irish Glass Bottle site will have 950 homes on it with the mix between social and affordable. It is hard to see how the affordable homes on the Irish Glass Bottle site will be affordable. Even with the current Government subvention guidelines, affordable homes will not be even close to affordable. The well-informed speculation is that homes in the Irish Glass Bottle site will cost approximately €650,000 to €700,000 at cost price, which is far from affordable. Even with the subvention it will not make them affordable.

Building enabling works are advanced and yet there is still no affordable scheme. When will we get an affordable scheme on the Irish Glass Bottle site? Every day I get emails and messages asking when an affordable scheme will be in place. What is the delay? The Minister should explain to residents who are living in overcrowded conditions what the delay is. The delay is only adding to the prices residents in Ringsend and Sandymount will need to pay. The affordable schemes need to be tied down as a matter of urgency.

It is also very important that the Government and Dublin City Council are committed to ensuring that the social housing is on the site and not moved away from the local community. The area around Ringsend, Irishtown and Pearse Street has lost many homes because developers were allowed to buy their way out of the Part V clause in providing homes in those communities because of the cost of the land. This cannot be allowed to happen on the Irish Glass Bottle site and Government needs to give a commitment that it will not happen.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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When will the Minister treat this emergency like it is an emergency and a crisis, and bring everything to bear to deal with it? We have often heard about Fianna Fáil's history on building houses when the State had no money. The Minister can talk about all the issues that there are from Covid right through to inflation rates and all the rest of it. We all accept that but let us be absolutely clear that the buck stops with the Minister as regards delivering for the people. It is a matter of doing it. People do not have much hope when they hear about €1 billion that has not been spent. They feel that it is the case of a government that does not understand exactly what the issue is for people.

I looked at daft.ie, as we all do from time to time, and I noticed it listed 15 houses in Dundalk, which is probably considerably more than the last time I looked. It made me feel somewhat hopeful because I was trying to get a couple of people across the line in a clientelist scenario. Then I looked at the prices: €1,650; €1,900; €1,950; and €2,200 for a three-bedroom house in the environs of Dundalk, which was unheard of before. This is a rent pressure zone. None of this is working in any shape or form. We really need to see delivery. We know it is local authority houses. We know the targets are not where they need to be. We know it is affordable homes and cost rental. We need to see the schemes. We cannot have this scenario where Government party Members blame the local authorities which then bat it back to the Minister. That is not good enough. We just need to see solutions.

I think political pressure had an impact on the tenant in situscheme. In some local authority areas, the rules were manoeuvred. Therefore, some people are able to get across the gap. My fear is that as local authorities attempt to purchase some of these properties, they will have issues in dealing with the housing department. We all know how under-resourced they are. People earlier spoke earlier about some people waiting up to six months to get on a housing list. This opportunity was not taken when the election ban was there. As more people face eviction, how do we absolutely ensure that they will have the resources to be able to deliver quickly enough, that they will be able to do this and that it is absolutely streamlined? We are also hearing of different local authorities operating these systems differently. There needs to be an absolute answer from Government to ensure this happens. These are only bit actions that need to be taken. We need to do serious business. There has been absolute failure by the Government.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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On behalf of the Social Democrats I welcome this motion and I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing it forward. It complements the motion which the Social Democrats will be bringing forward in the morning on the vacant homes tax, where we are looking for such a tax with teeth. The derisory 0.3% rate of the tax which the Government has brought forward will not be an effective tax and will not unlock the potential of the more than 100,000 vacant homes we have across the country.

Even with the open goal of vacant homes, the lack of seriousness in the whole-of-government approach to that signifies we are not seeing the kind of response we should see. About a year ago, the Minister was unequivocal that 2022 would be the year of delivery. He was clear it would be the year he would meet his housing targets and his targets for social, affordable and cost-rental homes. It is deeply disappointing that the Government has now failed to meet those targets three years in a row. It is a kick in the teeth for people that it is happening at the same time as money is left unspent. In the region of €1 billion in capital funding from the housing budget could and should have been spent on building homes.

A total of 4,100 affordable and cost-rental homes were promised for 2022. That figure is far too low. The Minister at the last general election promised 10,000 affordable homes per year. Only 4,100 were promised last year, out of which we got 1,007 affordable purchase and cost-rental homes; of those, only 323 are actually affordable purchase. That is hugely disappointing given the promises made and given the huge need for affordable homes. Under this Government, we have reached record levels of homelessness, record rents, record house prices and record numbers of people in their 20s, 30s and even into their 40s still living in their childhood bedrooms. They are adults living in their childhood bedrooms who want to move on in life, have an independent life and return to visit their childhood homes and their parents.

Increasing numbers ask if there is only one option for them to become independent. I am talking about people in good, well-paid jobs who have done everything right and put themselves through education, often working hard to get through college in terms of part-time work. Years later, having done everything right, got qualifications and got a good job, they are still stuck in their childhood bedrooms. They ask if the only way out of this is to emigrate.

We are losing people with skills we desperately need across our society and economy, especially in areas like healthcare and education. We have all dealt in our constituency work with parents who cannot get the services they need for children with disabilities or additional needs because front-line staff trained here cannot be retained. We cannot fill posts because we are losing them, partially because there is not affordable housing.

On the €1 billion the Government has failed to spend, it is worth asking what could have been done with that in housing. Most affordable and social homes are built with an upfront subsidy of somewhere between €50,000 and €100,000. The rest of the funding for a social home will typically come through loan finance that is then paid off over time. Even if we base it on €100,000 being the full cost of that subsidy, which is the upper end for a social and affordable home, for that €1 billion we could have had 10,000 homes built which people could be living in now. That would have an incredible impact on people’s lives and get families who are under pressure and worried about evictions out of the private rented sector, get families out of homeless emergency accommodation and get huge numbers of people in their 20s and 30s out of their childhood bedrooms and into housing. If the Government had met its targets and used the funding it allocated to housing provision to do so, we could have a much better outcome for people right now.

Most people expected the Government to move heaven and earth to ensure that more affordable housing that people can move into is built and that we get thriving, cohesive, sustainable communities with that. Instead, we read this week that the Land Development Agency, LDA, turned down multiple sites offered by State agencies for affordable housing. In Limerick, 16 sites the LDA was offered for affordable housing were turned down. If the Government was meeting its affordable housing targets and spending its allocations, that may not be as serious. However, given it is so far off meeting those targets, how is it that the LDA is turning down so many sites for affordable housing?

There has been mention this evening of gaslighting. I think the Minister boasting about selling public land to private developers to build predominantly expensive private housing is a form of gaslighting. The Minister’s predecessors in Fianna Fáil from the 1950s, 60s and 70s would be aghast at this. While 1950s Ireland was a very dark place for a huge number of people, one thing we can say about the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is that not only was public land not sold to private developers, but actually the State and local authorities were obtaining land through compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, at scale to build public housing.

In my constituency in areas like Artane, Edenmore, Kilbarrack and Coolock, a huge amount of land was compulsorily purchased by the local authority to build public housing, rather than being sold off to private developers. About 90% of those lands compulsorily purchased were used for affordable and social homes, with about 10% used for private housing. That was the kind of mix that was gone for and it was effective in delivering homes people could afford. I constantly meet people who moved into those homes and tell me the success they and their families were able to have by having somewhere secure to live where their family could thrive. I was talking to a lady last night who told me about the social home she got on one of the public lands compulsorily purchased from a private owner. They moved in 50-odd years ago and she told me with real pride about how well her now grown-up children have done and the contribution they are making to this country’s public services and private sector because they had such a good grounding with their housing and used that as a foundation for their education and for what they have contributed in life.

How could a Government miss targets and leave money unspent like that? Missing from this is a realisation of the huge importance of home. It is not just bricks and mortar. It is where relationships are built, newborn babies are brought home to and family celebrations are held; it is where people live, thrive and make friends in their communities for life; it is where they get stuck into their communities and GAA clubs, youth clubs, senior citizens groups and boards of schools; it is where people spend their final years. All of that foundation people have is being taken away from people who cannot move out of their parents’ home in their adult years or who are living in the private rented sector in constant fear of eviction and paying some of the highest rents in Europe with some of the lowest levels of security.

I implore the Government. We cannot afford to be back here next year with missed targets and unspent money again. We need to do everything we can to ensure the targets are met, homes are delivered and the money allocated for housing is spent in its entirety.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I guess the Minister could have a bog-standard speech stashed away in his filing cabinet or computer to pull out at least once per week as we deal with this housing catastrophe.

There will continue to be Bills, motions and proposals coming from the Opposition to the Government in Private Members' time to try to highlight and deal with an absolute catastrophe. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have for decades neglected the provision of public housing on public lands. They have left the provision of the country's housing needs in the hands of private developers, builders, landlords, financial interest groups, banks, estate agents, real estate agents, vulture funds and cuckoo funds. They have effectively gutted local authorities and have left social housing in the very limited situations available to people on incomes so low they could never afford to rent and particularly not the skyrocketing rents we see around our cities and towns now.

When we on this side of the House make concrete and rational proposals to try to deal with various aspects of the crisis that flow from these policies we are always told by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, by experts and possibly by legal advice - albeit we do not know where it comes from - that our suggestions would be unconstitutional as they would interfere with the rights of private property. This excuse was used for our proposal for effective rent controls, the compulsory purchasing of vacant and derelict sites and policies to stop land hoarding by developers.

The housing crisis has moved from being a crisis to being a disaster and now, I would argue, to being a catastrophe. Month after month we are told by the Government that it is delivering record levels of housing and social housing but it is a joke, except it is not a funny joke, that everything that gets blamed for the housing crisis, from the war to inflation, masks that it is not delivering affordable and social homes. Behind the rhetoric we see that the house building programme has not in any way been significantly wrapped up, not like it was in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and even in the 1970s in this country. We are now one of the richest countries on the planet and we do not seem to be able to give people the basic provision that they need in the world, which is a nest where they have their young and rear them. Even the birds and the animals have a right to this and they get it but people do not, not in Ireland.

I want to take the Minister up on something that he said. He is gone now but the Minister of State has also said it. They said that the continuation of the eviction moratorium would make a difficult situation even worse. It has been repeated time and again by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister of State and the Minister who has just left that this would be the case but they have never proved it. They have never given us the reason for this and explained how it can be proved. They say it in the same way somebody says their prayers in the morning or says "Good day" to people they pass on the street. They just say it but they never actually prove the claim that the continuation of the moratorium on evictions would have made the crisis worse. Someday I hope they will at least try to give us the evidence for that statement.

I want to spend time speaking about Tathony House. It is in my constituency and some of my friends live there. Out of 34 tenancies that were in Tathony House 15 are left. Others have gone, some of them back to their countries of origin. A lot of them were migrant workers, including a hospital worker and her four-year-old daughter who are still there. A lung cancer patient who is receiving chemotherapy in St. James's Hospital nearby is still there. They have worked hard to put pressure on Dublin City Council to buy the complex. It is a small enough complex on Bow Lane in Kilmainham. It has 15 families still living in it. Dublin City Council has finally agreed to approach the landlord to look to purchase the building. It has been trying to do so for the past couple of weeks but guess what? The landlord is not responding. We do not know why but the landlord is not responding to calls, emails or letters. The 15 families who remain have decided that no matter what, they have no choice but to stay because they will not put themselves into homelessness. They want the landlord to realise that he must respond to the council.

Here is the big question for the Government. What are and what will be the consequences for landlords such as the landlord of Tathony House who refuse to engage when the Government has said it will try to purchase properties? In this case it is a multiple tenancy property. He refuses to engage and would rather make the tenants homeless. Is there no compulsion for landlords to engage with local authorities? It seems there is not. If not, should there not be a disincentive for landlords trying to sell a block of housing to an aparthotel, for example, and restrictions on planning for sites that are only free because dozens of people have been made homeless? There will be no-fault evictions of 15 families from Tathony House. The due eviction date is 2 June. The tenants have said they will not be leaving on that date.

This Saturday we will be joined by the controversial but very successful artist Spice Bag who did the very controversial painting of an illegal eviction recently. He will join us outside Tathony House as will musicians, local residents from Dublin 8, political parties and campaigning housing groups. We will all come together to show solidarity with those families and to demand that something is done to deal with this crisis. We cannot see those families being moved into a situation like another family I am dealing with, on which I will come back to the Minister of State afterwards. They have been in a hotel room for 15 months. There is a 19-year-old young woman, a 15-year-old autistic boy, a five-year-old autistic boy and two-year-old baby girl who doctors have said is underdeveloped. Why would she not be? She has nowhere to crawl, she has nowhere to go and she has nowhere to play. The father suffers from depression. He is suicidal because he blames himself that he cannot provide a nest for his children. Fifteen months later, they are still there. In any society this would be regarded as inhumane, unacceptable and disgraceful and that is exactly what it is.

This is a consequence of the housing policy of the Government. This is why the families in Tathony House refuse to go. They do not want to live like that. Can the Minister of State blame them? They cannot live like that even if they were fortunate enough to be able to get one room in a hotel, and a very low-class hotel I must add, for the multiple elements of the family, the mammy, the daddy, the baby, the young boy and the young girl or whatever. Something has to be done and something is not being done by the Government. It members have their heads in the sand and they are refusing to look to the one method of housing that did work and could work again in this country, whereby public housing is built on public land, not for profit, by public housing companies. The Government has stripped the local authorities of the ability to do this. It could have a local authority building company that works not for profit. There could be building on a scale that we had when this country was on its knees and had nothing. Now we have a surplus of €10 billion this year and a possible €18 billion next year. What the hell are we like? It is down to the Government to make the changes. What we can do is come back week after week and shout and roar and get down to the likes of Tathony House and show real solidarity and support for people who will resist evictions.

Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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It is fair to say that the housing sector is in crisis. It must be acknowledged and I acknowledge this is a multifaceted problem. It has not occurred only in the past couple of years. It goes back to the banking crash and construction sector withdrawals and liquidations and the loss of skilled labour. Then we had Covid and now we have Ukraine and the energy crisis. We must also acknowledge the rise in our population of more than 360,000 since the census of 2016.

That being said we have a regulatory, planning and cost environment that is adding to our construction woes. In the Sunday Independenttwo weeks ago an article referred to a site in Balbriggan where landowners proposed a scheme of 600 houses to be developed. This scheme has been proposed for more than eight years. The land bank is required to undergo a local area plan review by Fingal County Council before planning can be granted. This is one of 33 local area plans yet to be considered by Fingal County Council. According to itself, it is completely understaffed and overtaxed with work and these reviews take significant time. What is very interesting is that despite the council intimating it does not have the resources for up to two years, in the interim the council is considering that the land should be liable for the new residential land tax. This is despite the fact there is no possibility of it getting planning permission.

This shows that there is not a lot of thought going into some of the processes and policies we have. Beyond that, the construction sector is now a big boy's game. It is no longer the purview of small house builders because the costs that arise in developing a scheme are mammoth and are only the preserve of the very large house building schemes.

Let us look at where the development of housing is going at the moment. Generally speaking, the developer will carry the cost of the site. As soon as a developer applies for planning permission, they will be faced with having to make an upfront payment of a bond to Irish Water. For any reasonably sized scheme of houses, such as 150 to 200 houses, that upfront payment is a minimum of €1 million in addition to a bond for Irish Water. The developer will also pay development and planning levies to the local authority. It will take a minimum of two years to develop and get approval for a planning scheme before a brick is laid on the site. Once the planning scheme is in place, the developer must finance the cost of building the houses until they are completed and secure all the engineers' and surveyors' certifications and so forth before a mortgage can be placed on them or anyone can buy them and before the financial institutions will sign off. On top of that are the interest charges that are being levied. Most developers can only access 50% of the funding from the pillar banks. They have to get the rest from private equity or wherever else they can get it and many of them are paying an annual interest rate of 8%, 9% or 10% on these loans.

In my city, Waterford, I cannot see any new entrant to the house building sector. That is because it is not a sector that can support anyone except those with the deepest of pockets and those with access to institutional funds. This is a major pinch point in trying to get construction activity going. Beyond that, affordability for the renter and buyer is falling. We know that about inflation, but I wonder whether anyone has looked in the past few weeks at what effect the rising costs of utilities are having on the discretionary income of households.

I got an electricity bill for my office that was five times higher than usual in the past two months. It was a fivefold increase only for heat and light. That is not sustainable by anyone. I do not know how it can be arrived at but we have created a monster now as regards the delivery of new housing. I have heard the idea many times in this House that somehow local authorities can now magic up new public building quangos. It is fanciful to be honest, not least because public procurement practices will create housing inflation twice and probably three times higher than what is being delivered by the private sector at the moment which at least has some control of its costs.

We need some new thinking and that means we must address the critical pinch points in the construction sector. Planning regulation is a major problem. Development levies are a major cost, as are utility costs, prior to construction. Surely we can find a more credible way of financing house builders than going to the commercial mortgage markets. In addition, we need to look at the labour shortages we have. A builder's labourer is now as rare as a hen's tooth. You just cannot get them and the costs of labour have risen dramatically. We cannot entice new entrants into the market unless we can provide some framework under which smaller builders could potentially combine to tender for housing schemes. While some factors are outside our control, fundamentally our housing sector is out of control because we lost control of other levers in the State trying to support those in the sector and trying to provide subsidies where needed to build houses.

I accept that some of the schemes the Government is promoting are providing additional housing units, especially social and affordable ones. I see that in Waterford. Waterford is an outstanding local authority area with respect to the repair and lease scheme, which has brought a significant number of new homes into the social market sector. The fact remains that we are in a game of catch-up. We need additional targeted supports for the refurbishment of vacant and derelict property. I am sure the Minister is aware that under a number of those schemes where properties are looked at they would not qualify for grant aid because engineers will say the properties are not fit to be refurbished. Then we are into a different cost, which basically involves knocking and rebuilding. That has not been thought through to any great degree that I can see.

We must give consideration to the standards we are demanding for short-term letting. I am not sure whether the Minister of State spent any time in Dublin in his youth and availed of the bedsits that were ubiquitous throughout southside and northside Dublin for years. They did very well for many people because the rent was low. I accept that we might not accept those standards now but in trying to bring in minimum standards in accommodation we have created unbelievable expense. We must find ways to get around it.

I hear Deputies talking about modular building. There was an article in the English press recently about one of the largest modular building companies in the UK which is up and running for almost three years and has yet to make a profit out of modular building. That tells us about some of the difficulties in that sector. It is not the panacea that people like to promote. I have spoken to representatives of a number of construction companies and I asked them why they will not go to modular building. There are two main reasons they will not go there. There are exceptional difficulties in the layout of the site because of levels. It is far easier to build in brick as different levels on the site can be allowed for. That cannot be done with modular housing. A way has to be found to make everything fit and match. Beyond that, builders are being asked to give guarantees whereas modular companies will not guarantee buildings beyond 20 or 30 years. That is a significant problem. We need to look at some deleveraging of the housing standards we are asking for and look at the likes of bedsits. Perhaps emergency legislation is needed because in Dublin it is chronic trying to get any accommodation, even for students and certainly for single people.

As the Minister of State will be aware, the Regional Group recently proposed a number of policy changes the Government has adopted, but they need to be moved on now to try to deliver additional accommodation units. We need a fundamental rethink of our planning processes and a fundamental re-examination of the construction sector because we have to find a way to bring in the people in smaller construction companies. Without that we cannot create the capacity we need in the market to try to fix this housing problem.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I too am interested in this motion. You could not make it up. You could not dream it up. We have an underspend in housing while so many - 10,0000, 11,000 or 12,000 - people are homeless. Mention has been made of bedsits. We had them in Dublin but many parties on the left were clamouring for them to be closed down stating they were scandalous, abusive and everything else. They were thousands of roofs over people's heads who had units. The standards are too high now across the board. We have regulators and regulations and everything else for everything. Builders are walking away from it. It was the same for the ordinary householders who had a second property. I will not call them the dreaded "L" word. They were ordinary decent people and have been demonised by parties of the left as bad, horrible, greedy people. Then we stoke up a fear here. We have a housing crisis. Of course we have, when you will not allow people to build and you will not build yourself.

The people who make the most noise here would not know one side of a bag of cement or a shovel from the other and never built a house. They can talk all right. I spent four or five years on the housing committee. It was the biggest waste of time I ever spent in my life. Reports and reports and discussions and debates and site visits. The Government parties do not have the will to build the houses and the regulations are too high, even for all the schemes the Government announced and will announce after the eviction ban. I voted for the continuation of the ban. I voted to keep it. All the regulation and schemes will be announced but they get bogged down in red tape. I have been a member of the voluntary sector for decades, of Caisleán Nua Voluntary Housing. I was chairman for years. We have our AGM next Monday night and it does great work and many more hundreds of organisations like it can and will do it. Unshackle them. They will build within the regulations and everything, but we cannot pile on more and more regulations and demonise the good people who want to build houses, demonise the developers, demonise everybody. To hell or to Connacht with them all. We will keep rattling the can and we will get more votes by doing so. We will tell the people that we will look after them. However, we see that they are not being looked after in Northern Ireland and other parts of the country are not being looked after. This is a damn fine charade.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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It is crazy. You could not make up that there is a massive underspend in housing while we are in the middle of the biggest housing crisis we have ever seen. In my time in politics and doing the clinics I have never seen people in such distress as they are in at present. Quite simply, there is not enough supply. It is known that there would not be a supply because those in the private household domestic market where people had a second house, were in it as a business or were accidental additional property owners after they inherited a house are getting out.

Why are they getting out? They are getting out because they are being demonised in here. There are people shouting them down all of the time. They are paying 56% tax and they are providing a service, the same as any other person providing a service. The very people who are shouting about them in here are serial objectors. We have individual Deputies in this Dáil who have been here since 2020 and who have objected to over 5,000 homes being built in their constituency. That is not normal behaviour and it has to be called out here. It is abnormal behaviour. If a person in this House objects to 2,800 homes, that is also abnormal. It is not a proper thing for an elected representative to be doing. It has to be called out for what it is, which is the worst type of hypocrisy. These individuals are saying that they want houses but they object to houses at the same time because they do not want them as they are being built by the private market. Of course, we all want social and affordable homes. We all want the voluntary housing agencies to have more and more housing but there has to be a private market as well. They must stop demonising those people because there is no good to be got out of it.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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We have a very serious housing problem and there is no point in me mincing my words here. It is a scandalous situation in which we find ourselves. Year after year, since I came into the Dáil, we have spent a huge amount of time talking about housing. I often say that if we had a house or two built every time we spoke about housing in here, we would not have a crisis but, unfortunately, we do. At weekend clinics in my constituency, I have five or six people coming to me with issues related to planning permission. I am talking about ordinary, one-off planning applications from young people trying to start off in life. They do not want social housing. They have tried to get a loan and are trying to get going on their family's farm but they cannot get permission. If the planners in Cork county and all over the country, where this seems to be an issue, cannot get it right, it is no wonder we cannot get the housing crisis sorted. The Government has no issue with building modular homes or other types of homes. There is no need for planning or to worry about water or sewerage - just shove them in wherever they are going to be - but when it comes to the ordinary, one-off house in rural Ireland, the Government will do its best to stop that. Whatever is in the mindset is shocking.

People want permission to build temporary timber-frame structures and the Government should be supporting that. These are family homes that will enable people who cannot afford a mortgage and who do not want to go on the housing list to get a start. They just want to do something and they can buy a timber structure for €10,000 or €15,000. The Government should support that. As rural Independents, we are trying to come up with ideas for homes, including mobile homes, just to get people a roof over their heads. It is far better than leaving them out on the street and adding to the numbers that are there already.

Doing up houses in rural towns and villages is obviously a good idea and while there are grants available now, the Government has left it far too late. I put forward that suggestion on behalf of community and voluntary organisations, including one in west Cork with which I was involved, years ago. The Government should have been grant-aiding that a long time ago to bring people back into rural communities, super communities like those in Schull, Goleen, Ballydehob, Durrus, Kilcrohane and Castletownbere, but it failed in that as well.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I agree with some parts of the Sinn Féin motion and disagree with other parts. We are talking here about housing and Government policy on producing housing for people. The number of vacant houses in Limerick in the ownership of the local authority is absolutely scandalous. Is the Minister of State aware of the time it takes to bring a vacant local authority house back into stock? It takes three months for the local authority to get the house ready but, on top of that, there is a wait of another two to three months before the house is allocated. A house is ready for someone to move into but it takes the local authority three months to allocate it. If that was my business, I would not have a business. I am a building contractor and I understand this. How can it take three months to retrofit one house? It is because the local authorities are trying to do it all themselves. They should just hire people to go in and retrofit the house and give it to people. If it is not 100% up to current retrofitting standards, the inside of the house should be done first and the outside should be retrofitted later, when the proper labour is available. We need to get people into the houses. There are people who are homeless at the moment and there are houses in stock. People are now breaking in to vacant local authority houses because they have nowhere else to live. They are able to live there for a time while they try to be accommodated. Our biggest problem is that it is taking too long for vacant local authority houses in our own areas to be returned to people, when they could be returned today.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about housing again this evening. We should be striving to give confidence to home owners. At the present time, they are frightened about the eviction ban and by all of the talk about eviction. I honestly feel that this is doing more harm and is ensuring that people will not rent out their houses. That is where we have gone wrong. There are so many vacant houses in good places but people just will not rent them out. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the tax they have to pay, at 52%, is too much. In Kilgarvan and places in that vicinity, one will only get €600 or €700 per month and if one has to pay half of that in tax, what has one got left? However, the biggest problem is that people are worried that they will not be able to get tenants out if they want their place back. They are afraid that they will not be able to get their place back and that is wrong. Even without the eviction ban, if a tenant goes through the legal process and does not want to leave the house, it takes four years before the householder can get the house back. That is if the tenant is paying. If the tenant is not paying the rent, it still takes 12 months. That is all wrong and it has to be looked at.

The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, is too strict with the regulations and is not being fair. It is not even not helping the tenants either, when it comes down to it. The RTB is on the house owners' backs. People are afraid and are frightened away from renting. They would do anything now. They will sell their houses or will leave them idle. We cannot force them to rent out their houses because they are totally frightened away from it. All of this talk about extending the eviction ban, day in and day out, is totally wrong. If people build a house or buy a house and pay for it, it is their house and if they want it back, they should be able to get it back in a reasonable time and reasonable fashion.

Most tenants and landlords get on fine. I do not like the word landlord but most of them get on fine. There are problems with a few and that is what has caused all of this hullabaloo. It is frightening so many house owners and stopping them from getting into the market.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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Once again we are debating the critical situation that many families and individuals find themselves in when it comes to putting a roof over their heads. It is truly frightening for many people and families. They are fearful, even if they do not have a notice to quit. They are worried that if one arrives, they will have nowhere to go. In my own constituency of Sligo-Leitrim the CEO of North West Simon Community, Mr. Noel Day, said that homelessness in the north west has increased by over 50% year on year, from 2022 to 2023. This is not Dublin or Galway or a major city; this is the north west. These figures do not include the hidden homeless, the people who are couch surfing, those in tents and makeshift arrangements and those aged in their mid-30s and 40s who are still living at home. This gives some sense of the extent of the problem and with the ending of the eviction ban, it is just getting worse.

Equally, there are those who want to buy their own homes but when they look at prices, at supply and at the cost of renting in the interim, so many know that they will not be able to save enough to get a deposit. For those who manage to save enough for their deposit, their chances of buying a home are very poor because of the lack of supply.

While I agree with most of this motion, I have some reservations about the call to scrap the first-time affordable purchase shared equity scheme and the help-to-buy scheme because so many people have used these schemes to help them to buy their first home. If a scheme is delivering for some people, albeit not for everybody, in that price bracket, I would like to see it remain in place.

I also wonder whether there is an anti-rural issue here because many rural homes are not part of any housing scheme and the help to buy scheme can certainly help some of those home buyers. Maybe diverting that money into more affordable housing might give better outcomes but I have seen no analysis of this. I would like to hear what that perspective is. There are certain schemes in place that are helping to deliver some homes. That is important for every single family that gets a home.

Finally, I will say that I am totally perplexed as to why we are not building the maximum number of modular homes. Seven or eight weeks ago I raised this issue here with the Government. A German company has an agent in Cookstown. My colleague, Deputy Fitzmaurice, travelled there to look at these modular homes and at the possibilities of getting these homes on stream as soon as possible. I am not touting for any company. I fully understand that we have a proper tendering process. However, these modular homes are coming in at €75,000 for a three-bedroom home. They are manufactured in Germany. They are all over Europe. They are selling them as far away as Texas at the moment. I am informed that we could have as many as 50 three-bedroom modular homes on stream. There is a real sense of urgency here but I do not see it.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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It is the Minister of State and I again, at the end of a debate and a crisis that is deepening. I will pick up for a moment on something Deputy Harkin said. Let me outline the analysis that has been done on the help to buy scheme by many agencies. The original cost was €40 million. It is now €175 million and rising which is four and a half times the estimated cost. More than one third of those who availed of it did not need any help with a deposit. The Mazars report said it should be scrapped but not now. We cannot scrap it now, just like all the other initiatives that the Government has brought in which have become embedded to raise the prices upwards to super prices that nobody can afford. Looking at the analysis done, all of these schemes confirm that. What did they say about it? The scheme is poorly targeted with respect to incomes, location, house prices and other socio-economic factors. It has a socially regressive impact. One-third of the recipients did not need any help with a deposit. That is the help to buy scheme.

The housing assistant payment, HAP, was brought in as the only game in town. The Housing Agency at the time said it was absolutely delighted with it. It said it makes a real and positive difference. The HAP scheme costs €1 billion per year with the other schemes. We persist in calling that social housing. That is not social housing. I listened with dismay to the Taoiseach this morning saying he had no ideology. That is absolutely disingenuous. He has an ideology and so had the previous Government. So had Labour and Fine Gael together who brought in the HAP scheme. The ideology is “the market will provide” and when it does not provide we will bring in any amount of piecemeal initiatives to make sure that we keep the prices high, including the setting up of the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and the disgraceful way that it dealt with property and not homes.

Here is the Simon Community again, locked out of the market, telling us there are absolutely no properties or homes available in Galway city or suburbs; under the HAP – the only game in town – none is available. No homes were built in Galway other than two or three. A task force which I foolishly welcomed more than three years ago has no sense of urgency and not one report has been published from it. I have asked a question. The junior Minister was honest and said it should have been given but has not. I will finish by quoting somebody who happens to be a postgraduate, PhD student - I will not go into the details - and is going to be evicted on 1 May, but has nowhere to go. She went to the city council but no emergency accommodation was available.

There are solutions. The most basic solution is public housing on public land and a very strong message to the market. That is not happening.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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When this Government decided to lift the eviction ban at the end of last month, it made a decision to allow a level of homelessness that would have been thought unconscionable before. We have had so many people in our office in the past month with notices to quit, people from all walks of life facing eviction with nowhere to go. They face eviction because it is Government policy now. They are losing their homes because of Government housing policy. It voted to end the eviction ban with eyes wide open, knowing that it would affect thousands of people and families. It voted knowing that it had not done nearly enough to provide supports or resources for those people, nor provided nearly enough emergency accommodation or alternative housing for them to fall back on. The RTB stated that it received 9,000 active notices to quit due to the lifting of the eviction ban. The estate agents, Sherry Fitzgerald, estimate 15,000 tenancies this year will be lost. The councils admit they have little or no emergency accommodation places left. The Simon Community and other NGOs say their services are already stretched and even if they got more money for beds, to get professional teams around those beds would be very difficult at this point. Meanwhile this Government has more than €1.5 billion capital budget unspent in the housing budget, a €5 billion budget surplus unspent, a €10 billion surplus this year and €15 billion next year. It missed last year’s affordable homes target and provided a fraction of what is needed. Half a million adults still live with their parents, that is one in ten adults or 350,000 people aged between 20 and 35 live at home. The Government has led this country down the garden path. It allowed the housing crisis to reach breaking point, then took away the eviction ban, one of the last barriers to thousands of people facing eviction. Its targets and promises are not delivering what is needed and certainly mean nothing to young families coming into my office distraught, facing homelessness and left with nowhere to go.

A young woman rang me today. She is a nurse in the Children’s Health Ireland hospital in Crumlin. She rents in the Drimnagh area. She said her landlord told her this morning that she has to leave, and asked me what she can do. I advised her to come down to our offices and bring the notice to quit. She asked “what is that?” She had not a clue what it was and did not even receive a notice to quit. The landlord told her to leave.

The Labour Party spoke earlier about the ESRI proposal to get construction workers from abroad. We would do better to keep our construction workers here. We had a young man in recently who lives in a car. He bought the car with the deposit for the apartment he hoped to get. Now he is thinking of emigrating to Britain. Before, I would have said the Government does not have a clue about what is going on but now I believe it is worse - it knows exactly what it is doing. It voted for this, this is the Government's housing plan, the Government's policy led to this level of homelessness and desperation and now ordinary people face the consequences. I support the Private Members' motion and thank Deputy Ó Broin for putting it forward.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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Before I sum up I will respond to a few of the contributions from Deputies. In Deputy Bacik’s contribution she mentioned again the 1 million homes and about engagement with Government. We would love to engage with the Labour Party on how it proposes to achieve that. We are always willing and open to the ideas of the Opposition. That is critical. Deputy Bríd Smith mentioned that we are putting it into the hands of private developers. That is not true. There has been the greatest investment by the State in the history of the State.

It was also claimed that we gutted local authorities. Again that is not true. We have provided additional staffing around planning, vacancy and CPOs. We have front-loaded that as well. Deputy Smith mentioned the Dublin City Council and Bow Lane and Kilmainham. If the Deputy wishes to raise that with us separately, it is a matter for Dublin City Council and the engagement of the landlord in that case. Deputy Shanahan raised the issue of development being prohibitive for smaller building companies. Again, that is not the case. We try to facilitate all types of development right across the market. In regard to labour shortages, we are working with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, on apprenticeships. The planning Bill and planning reforms will expedite supply.

Vacancy and dereliction were also mentioned. Deputies Mattie McGrath, Danny Healy-Rae and Donoghue mentioned vacancy and building standards being too high. That is not the case.

10 o’clock

Building standards need to be high for renters, people who are buying homes and those in social housing. There must be a consistent standard.

Deputy Harkin raised the issue of homelessness in the north west and this is something the Government is committed to tackling. I will mention modular housing later, as we are giving good, active consideration to modern methods of construction.

Housing for All is a comprehensive plan with the largest housing budget in the history of the State to transform our housing system and achieve our ambitious targets of more than 300,000 new homes by 2030. Increasing supply across all tenures is key. Almost 30,000 homes were built last year. That was up 45% from 2021 and 41% from 2019. This was 5,250 or 21% higher than the 2022 Housing for All target of 24,600. Within that overall supply, the Government will continue to expand the provision of social, affordable and cost-rental accommodation to ensure all sectors of our society have accommodation that meets their needs available to them.

We know the challenge is immense. New housing supply in Ireland, as in much of the EU, has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and global supply-chain issues. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated inflationary pressures. These factors have combined to have very real impacts on the cost of housing provision. We are acutely aware that behind the demand for secure, stable and affordable homes are real people and families and that is why we are committed to continuing to work to overcome these challenges. Despite the challenges we face, Housing for All is taking effect in terms of delivering a supply of homes of all tenure types across the country. Last year saw the highest level of housing expenditure in a single year. Almost €3.5 billion was expended on housing and this represented an increase of 21% on 2021. The number of new social homes delivered was 10,263 and this included 7,433 new-build homes, 960 acquisitions and 1,870 homes delivered through leasing programmes. The delivery of 7,433 new-build social homes in 2022 represents the highest delivery of new build social housing since 1975.

Increasing investment in the delivery of both homes for social housing and renting and genuinely affordable homes for working people is exactly what we are doing. There has never been more Government funding available for housing in this country than currently. This Government introduced the Affordable Housing Act 2021, the first ever stand-alone affordable housing legislation to establish new affordable housing schemes to deliver on our programme for Government commitment to put affordability at the heart of our housing system. Over 2022 this included 1,336 approvals issued under the first home scheme in the nine months since its inception in July 2022; local authorities delivering the first affordable purchase homes in a decade; cost-rental housing being delivered in increasing numbers, with hundreds of cost-rental homes tenanted by AHBs, local authorities and the LDA and the LDA’s first cost-rental delivery secured via its market engagement initiative, which is titled Project Tosaigh.

This year will see further record investment in housing, with total Exchequer funding of €4 billion to deliver housing programmes. This includes €2.6 billion in capital funding and €1.4 billion in current funding. Additional supports have been put in place for local authorities, AHBs and the LDA to further develop their growing pipeline. This includes sizable additional resources in local government of up to 320 additional staff for both social and affordable delivery. New provisions came into effect from 8 March 2023 that, subject to certain criteria, will provide a temporary exemption from the Part 8 planning approval process for local authority-owned developments of social and affordable housing that begin construction before the end of 2024. The Department, with the support of its delivery partners, continues to advance specific initiatives to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness and especially the pace of delivery of social, affordable and costrental homes. This involves fundamental change and improvement in the delivery processes.

Recognising their potential, the Government is advancing the use of vacant and derelict homes and new building technologies. This area was mentioned by Deputy Bacik. The Minister launched the Vacant Homes Action Plan 2023-2026 on 30 January. It outlines the work needed to bring the maximum number of vacant properties into use. At that time, the Minister also announced details of the new €150 million urban regeneration and development fund vacancy fund. Local authorities are being encouraged to actively engage with owners of vacant or derelict properties to raise awareness and support uptake of the schemes available to them. Housing for All sets clear targets under these schemes for the tackling of vacancy and dereliction and this includes a CPO programme. Where owners of vacant or derelict properties cannot be identified or where they are unwilling to engage with the local authority, compulsory purchase or compulsory acquisition will be considered by local authorities to bring the property back into use. Local authorities are being encouraged to take a proactive approach in availing of their available legislative powers and the vacant homes unit in the Department is currently engaging with all local authorities in respect of these powers.

The Department is also working closely with the local authorities to increase the use of modern methods of construction in social and affordable housing. To this end, funding of €94 million was provided to local authorities to address legacy land debts in December 2022. The provision of this funding was linked to the immediate development of a housing proposal, a commitment to use modern methods of construction and construction itself starting in 2023, or no later than 2024. Local authorities received funding for 26 sites that will be part of an accelerated delivery programme and additional sites have since been added.Overall, approximately 30 sites have been identified for accelerated delivery and this involves more than 1,500 new social homes. This provision has the potential to shave months off the pre-construction process.

On 7 March the Government decided that the "winter emergency period" under the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Act 2022 would cease on 31 March 2023. There are ongoing measures to mitigate the impact of the end of the emergency period and the Government has agreed to a number of additional measures. The First Home Scheme Ireland Designated Activity Company, DAC, has agreed to expand the first home scheme’s eligibility to encompass second-hand homes where a landlord has issued a notice of termination due to an intended sale. Between its launch in July 2022 and the end of quarter 1 of 2023, 257 families have been able to secure their homes using the scheme. In addition, the Department has developed a bespoke cost-rental tenant in situscheme that will see the Housing Agency acquire a home in order that a tenant who has received a notice of termination and is at risk of homelessness, but is not in receipt of social housing payments, continues to reside in the property. A temporary scheme is operating on an administrative basis from 1 April until the legislation is brought forward and enacted.

To conclude, while clear challenges remain, the outlook is more positive than might be presented here. The Housing For All strategy is working, supply is increasing and, in particular, affordable schemes are being implemented to assist ordinary people into homeownership. In its amendment, the Government reflects these realities and makes clear its commitment to the core principle that everybody should have access to good-quality housing to purchase or rent. That is what we intend to deliver over the lifetime of this Government.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What really frustrates me is Government has heard the stories about what its housing policies mean for ordinary families across this State. It has heard of those living in emergency accommodation with no end in sight. It has heard of how humiliating, depressing and destabilising an experience this is. It has heard of the profound lifelong impact this has on children. It has heard of the young people who are well-educated, well-qualified and in good employment who are at this minute sending their CVs across the globe because they cannot afford a place to live here. It has heard of those forced to live in rented accommodation because Government systematically disengaged from building and purchasing local authority homes and it has heard of the outrage, shock, heartache and trauma its decision to lift the eviction ban has had on the families who are now forced to leave the place they live with no idea about where to go. We know the Government has heard these stories. That the Minister of State, even after those stories, has the gall to come here tonight and describe the outcome as "positive" is an absolute scandal.

The housing crisis was once an urban experience. Homelessness was once a Dublin phenomenon. That did not make it right, but thanks to the Government it now affects families in every corner of the State. That happened because of the Government's actions and it is getting worse because of its failures.

There has been a failure of capital underspending on housing to the tune of €1 billion between 2020 and 2023. There was a failure to protect vulnerable renters when the Government ended the eviction ban. Much has already been made of the fact that of the 4,100 affordable homes target for last year, the Minister of State's Government delivered just 1,000. The Government did hit one target in Monaghan, because its target for affordable homes in my county was precisely zero. That was exactly what was delivered, because according to the Government's rationale housing in Monaghan is not unaffordable enough just yet. It is these failures, and especially the Government's failure to accept it is failing, that is convincing more and more people beyond any doubt that what is needed now is not more spin and more Government policy but a change of Government. The sooner that happens the better for the thousands of families suffering as a result of the Government's failures.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputy Ó Broin, not just for this motion but for all the work he does on the housing disaster or emergency - I do not know what word is being put on it these days. I listened to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, make a fairly pitiful contribution. It could be fairly well summed up as the Minister saying the Government is doing its best and it could possibly be worse. It was shocking to sit here and listen to him throw bouquets at himself.

The Minister and I share a constituency in which I see the impact of this Government's policies. That includes the Green Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together. I see the impacts of the policies the Government supports every day. Yesterday, in my office in Balbriggan, virtually every appointment I had was housing-related. The Minister of State has heard the stories but let us keep telling him to see if we can move him. I mention a case of a single mother with a nine-year-old child with autism who will be out in September. How will a nine-year-old child do in emergency accommodation, a hostel or hub if they are lucky enough to get into a hub? Would the Minister of State like it for his kids? I would not like it but that is what the Government has done. The Minister of State has to have an answer for that woman because the Government told her it will put her out on the road. The Government voted for evictions and now she is being evicted. Where will she go? The Government has to have an answer and if it does not have one, it should reverse its decision.

I have recently come back from North America where I met young people who have recently emigrated from the constituency the Minister and I share. They left good jobs and were making decent money when they were here. They left because they do not want to live with their parents. In recent years, we have seen that the average age at which an Irish person leaves the family home has been rising at a frightening rate. If the Minister of State was approaching 30 years of age, would he want to be still living with his parents? Would he want to be stuck? No, he would not. These people are emigrating because they are being forced to. How does the Minister of State think they feel when they hear there is a €1 billion underspend by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage? How does the Minister of State think their parents feel?

I have said before that there is no compassion deficit on the Government side of the House but there is most definitely a competence deficit. If the Government is not prepared to put in place policies to fix the housing crisis it has created, it should stand aside and make way for a Government that will.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Government is in its third year and during all of that time house prices, rents and homelessness have increased. As the Government announced yesterday, it has missed its social and affordable housing targets for three years in a row. To come here and say that is evidence that the housing plan is working takes a brass neck beyond belief.

Let us remind ourselves of the figures from yesterday. If we look at the social housing figures, including both real social housing built and bought by local authorities and AHBs and the leasing through HAP and RAS, the Government missed its global targets by 25%. If we look at the new builds for social housing, the Government missed that target by almost 20%. Most shocking of all are the affordable housing targets. Again, there is a dishonesty in how they are being presented. The figures yesterday suggested that of the Government's target of 4,000 affordable homes, it delivered 1,750, when some 750 of those are not affordable homes but offers of highly risky shared equity loans for the purchase of unaffordable private homes. The number of affordable homes to rent or buy is only 1,000 and some of those cost rentals, as the Minister of State well knows, are not affordable.

If I hear another Government Minister tell us that more social housing was built last year than in any year since 1975, I will break out in laughter because social output today cannot be compared with social housing output in 1975. Why is that? It is because the population is significantly larger and the deficit of social housing in recent years is much worse than it was beforehand. To meet the social housing output of 1975 in per capita terms today would require the delivery of 14,000 or 15,000 social homes, something the Government will not do at any stage during its term of office.

I do not want to hear another Government Minister claim, as the Minister did, that the Government has brought 8,000 voids back into use since coming into power. It is such a dishonest claim. The overwhelming majority of those properties were never voids; they were casual vacancies where the Department provides some extra funding between tenants. They were never long-term vacants or voids and to claim that they were is dishonest. I do not want to hear again that the so-called help-to-buy scheme and the controversial shared equity loan are good for people. They have pushed up house prices. At best, they lock in prices at unaffordable levels, making it more difficult for ever more numbers of people to purchase.

The idea that the Government’s plan is working simply is not the case. It does not have to be this way and as we have said over and over again, there is an alternative. I would like to see a more ambitious housing programme with at least 8,000 affordable homes delivered per year. I want to speak directly to Deputy Harkin's good question. Those homes would not just be in urban areas but they would be in rural and semi-urban areas because every local authority would have a significantly increased budget to deliver more social homes and affordable rental and purchase homes. That means that in rural and semi-urban areas they will be in small clusters or single units rather than just in housing estates because, as Deputy Carthy said, the affordability crisis is as much a rural phenomenon as an urban one. How would those 8,000 homes be delivered? The red tape has to be cut. The four-stage approval, tendering and procurement process is strangling the life out of our AHBs and local authorities. That is why it is taking them so long and it is why that process needs reform.

We also need to see real action on vacant properties. Croí Cónaithe provides a tiny amount of money to deliver a tiny number of vacant units, for which, in many instances, banks are not allowing the drawdown of the mortgages because of a controversy around the treatment of the clawback. The idea that this is somehow a serious approach to vacancy beggars belief. Under our proposal, 20% of all public homes, which would be 4,000 social and affordable homes, would come from vacant and derelict stock. How would we do it? We would give the local authorities the money to buy and refurbish in advance in villages, towns and cities and then we would not just use them for social housing but for affordable rental and purchase.

I do not want to hear another Minister say the Government is looking at new methods of construction again. Governments have been telling us that for years. We do not need the Government to look at it. We have companies, public and private, developing cutting-edge and low-carbon building technology. The Minister of State knows this because it is something he supports. What these companies do not have is a pipeline of contracts with local authorities and AHBs. Until a framework agreement is put in place to deliver that, the position will not improve.

The Government has been in office for two and a half years and its plan is failing. The Government is not delivering, things are getting worse and we have not seen the worst of it yet. That is why Members should support this motion and why we ultimately need an election. We need a change of Government, a change of Minister and a housing plan that is serious about meeting the social and affordable housing needs of working people.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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In accordance with Standing Order 80(2), the division is postponed until the next weekly division time.