James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The Minister mentioned the issue of central heating in local authority houses and the grants that were provided last year. While most, if not all, local authorities have provided the infrastructure in such houses, a serious problem exists with the ESB, which is probably the councils' biggest supplier in terms of connecting cental heating and electricity. I ask the Minister to investigate this matter. It is a nationwide problem and local authorities have contacted me to try to get action. The ESB is not co-operating with local authorities to make the final connection in respect of central heating.

I hope, in the interests of thousands of people on the housing waiting lists, to make my contribution in as positive a manner as possible. Members see at first hand the misery caused by the inadequate housing provision of this Government, with weekly clinics full of angry and frustrated people seeking help to get a roof over their heads. We all have an input in respect of the problems that have a significant impact on the quality of life of so many.

My party and I have not been silent on this issue in the past and have tried, as much as possible, to offer an alternative agenda and a workable plan that would help people in difficulty under the current circumstances, which have worsened since the arrival of our new-found prosperity in the mid-1990s. While the wealthy — in the context of the Celtic tiger — saw to it that their lairs were state-of-the-art residences, others were callously forgotten. Last week in the Dáil, the Minister asserted that a house is more than four walls. He stated that it is a place of shelter and comfort, a haven where one overcomes life's traumas and savours its triumphs.

Let us take this one step at a time. Most homeless people would be happy to forget the philosophy and just have the walls. It is sad that despite significant advances in terms of employment, the end of mass emigration, improvements in living standards and higher incomes, it is more difficult in 2005 to buy one's own home, get a local authority house and live close to one's family and place of work. This should not be the case. It is not inevitable that greater wealth brings greater housing difficulties. A booming economy should not mean Dublin house prices become as high as in downtown New York. This housing crisis is man made. It has been created by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, in particular, and it is up to them to solve it.

Housing has been this Government's greatest failure. In 1996, the price of a house stood at the equivalent of €88,000 in Dublin and €75,000 elsewhere in the country. Today, Permanent TSB-ESRI say the average price paid for a house nationally is €268,040. The average price paid for a house is €356,220 in Dublin and €231,425 outside Dublin. This is a national emergency. It may suit anyone who gained a place on the property ladder ten years ago, but it has resulted in a situation in which tens of thousands of people are excluded from the property market, and tens of thousands of those who manage to get onto the first rung of the ladder are paying cripplingly large mortgages. I remind everyone that the interest rate time bomb is ticking. The only way the ECB will go is up, and all it will take for the era of higher interest rates to return is an improvement in the German or French economies.

I will outline the response of this lame-duck Government to this crisis. It abolished the first-time buyer's grant, failed to meet national development plan commitments on social housing, increased VAT on houses and housing materials, and imposed high development levies that add thousands of euro to the cost of every new home.

The Government was elected on a promise to assist the voluntary housing sector so that the target of 4,000 accommodation units per annum envisaged under the national development plan could be reached and, contained within that plan, a commitment to build 10,000 social housing units every year. We know to our cost the value of a Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats promise. To defend such a record in this House would be the action of an extraordinarily arrogant Government. This Government has had nothing to do with the significant increase in the number of private houses built in the past few years. This is the result of the market's response to demand and the resulting prices are too high. The Minister and his colleagues need not tell us about the great success story of Irish construction, which is a case of private success in the face of public failure.

We have been waiting for the housing needs assessment since March. It is now November. We cannot tackle our social housing problems if we do not even know how many people need houses. I repeat my call for, and my commitment to, an annual housing needs assessment so we do not have a situation where three and a half years go by without any fresh data on the subject. The Irish Council for Social Housing has made it perfectly clear that any drop in the housing needs assessment figures will have been a result of people leaving the waiting lists and entering the private rented sector. This results in a higher burden on the State through the strain on the rent allowance scheme without the gain of an increase in the social housing stock that should come with it.

While I welcome anything that will alleviate the housing crisis and provide badly-needed affordable housing, I am sceptical that moves by the Government to swap land to provide affordable housing will work. Fianna Fáil is using it to hide its failure to meet housing targets. Swapping land is inefficient, open to abuse and may result in the State losing out financially. Instead the Government should honour its housing commitments and build on State-owned lands. Its commitment to build 10,000 affordable housing units will not be met and, at best, only 5,000 houses will have been built by 2007.

At the 2003 ICTU conference the Taoiseach announced that lands at Gormanstown and McKee Barracks would be released for social and affordable housing. Earlier this year, at the 2005 ICTU conference, he announced that these lands would be made available to be swapped. These lands should have already been built on as promised. Financially, there is nothing to indicate that the deal by which land at Harcourt Terrace has been swapped for 193 housing units will benefit the State. If the Harcourt Terrace site had been sold on the open market, it could have garnered funds that would have built more than 193 units.

The danger of exchanging a number of houses below the market value of State-owned land will always be there. While I was interested to hear the Minister refer last week and today to the praiseworthy work of South Dublin County Council, which is under the excellent chairmanship of councillor and former Senator, Therese Ridge, in providing affordable housing, the Minister's praise was a self-interested move to promote and praise land swapping.

There is also nothing new in the Government's announcement that a new affordable housing agency is being set up. This is a mechanism designed to meet the housing targets, which the Government has failed to do. The current generation of young people is the first since the foundation of the State that cannot afford to buy their own homes. These people have been let down by this Government. The Minister has been critical of my party for what he has called our lack of policies. His cough has been softened of late — and mine today by 'flu.