James Bannon (Fine Gael)

Fine Gael spelled out its housing agenda last year, prior to the local and European elections. We proposed a house deposit savings scheme, similar to the SSIA scheme, to help young people who are saving for a deposit for a new home. Under the scheme, first-time buyers will receive €1 for every €3 they save provided those savings are used for a deposit on a house. We also proposed the abolition of stamp duty on second-hand homes up to €400,000, subject to review, bought by first-time buyers. This will mean a first-time buyer purchasing a second-hand home costing €325,000 would save €14,625. The Minister went part of the way in the last budget but the average house price in Dublin remains in excess of the new €315,000 threshold.

We called for the frontloading of mortgage interest relief for first-time buyers to the first seven years of the life of a mortgage and reform of the social welfare code that currently forces young people out of the family home, adding upward pressure on house rents and prices. The income of parents should no longer be taken into account when deciding on the welfare entitlements of those who remain at home.

We also called for an investigation by the Competition Authority into reports of building land hoarding in the greater Dublin area and some towns throughout the country. Fine Gael believes it is time for a new national housing agency. We envisage that the existing Housing Finance Agency will be expanded and strengthened to take on a new role in helping local authorities meet housing targets. The new body will be accountable to the relevant Oireachtas committee. Its functions would include monitoring county development plans to ensure consistency with the strategic planning guidelines and the national development plan investment programme, liaising with State agencies so transport, educational and recreational needs can be planned in tandem with accommodation provision, and driving the servicing of lands identified for housing by local authorities.

This may involve direct management of provisions for water and drainage facilities where a lack of expertise or manpower on the part of individual local authorities inhibits the supply of housing. At the request of the local authorities concerned, the land agency could also take responsibility for co-ordinating land servicing across local authority boundaries, where joint schemes are more appropriate and cost effective. All housing authorities would give an account of actions that they had taken to implement the provisions of the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998. Where local authorities have failed, the legislation should be modified to enable the Government to enforce compliance.

We must also consider apartment dwellers. Despite a commitment in the programme for Government, they are still left without proper State protection from their management companies and agents. Fine Gael will seek to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 by widening the role of the Private Residential Tenancies Board. If the amendment were passed, the PRTB would become the regulator in this area, imposing a pro-consumer code of practice on managing agents. The management fee would not be fully payable until management agents were in place and various services could be provided. At present, many builders demand payment of the first year's management fee before keys are handed over to new owners. This is despite the fact that the new owners may be moving into what is, essentially, a building site, with few of the services for which the fee is paid — for example, cleaning — being provided. Provision for an adequate sinking fund would have to be made from the outset. It has emerged that many managing agents have been setting annual fees without any provision for the large scale refurbishment that must be carried out every few years. That leaves residents with a shortfall and a choice of paying several thousand euro at once or living in a decayed physical environment.

It is vital that immediate action be taken on the homelessness agenda. It is intolerable that, after a decade of prosperity, we still live in a society where homelessness is a daily fact of life for many people. We must all, Government and Opposition alike, work towards eliminating homelessness once and for all. I am convinced of the need for the State to invest heavily in move-on accommodation to facilitate this aim. Such housing is designed to assist homeless people to move out of homelessness and to ensure that vulnerable people do not become so. It is also vital that the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty and the twin scourges of drug abuse and alcohol dependence, be tackled. Focus Ireland's Hungry for Change report——