James Bannon (Fine Gael)

Even a couple on a combined income of only €50,000 are considered too rich for the shared ownership and affordable housing schemes. In addition, we need to make it easier and fairer for people who are sharing ownership with local authorities. At the moment, we have a crazy system under which one not only pays a mortgage for the portion of the house one owns under the shared ownership scheme, but one also pays rent on that share of the house owned by the local authority. As the State will recoup the value of its share of the home when it is sold, the Minister of State knows the current system is grossly unfair.

The Housing Finance Agency says it has the borrowing capacity to provide more money than local authorities can spend on constructing new houses. The private sector is ready and willing to build them, while the National Building Agency can provide the expertise. The Centre for Housing Research is charged with identifying obstacles to housing output and longer-term trends. However, not enough affordable houses are being built. It is time to bring all these agencies together and provide one integrated, streamlined body to facilitate the construction of new social and affordable housing.

While local authorities remain best equipped to ensure that social and affordable housing is built, it is clear that we need someone to step in where they have failed. That is why Fine Gael recently proposed to merge the Housing Finance Agency, the Centre for Housing Research and the National Building Agency, empowering the new agency to step in where local authorities are not meeting social and affordable housing needs.

The new agency, to be known as Housing Ireland, will be empowered to work directly with the private sector in tandem with local authorities to get houses built. It will be permitted to provide funding not just for new housing construction but also for services such as roads, water, sewerage and communications which are vital to ensuring that new housing comes on stream. Housing Ireland would also lend directly to voluntary housing agencies and would provide funding for land purchase and seed capital, based on a value for money audit.

Fine Gael will also end the practice of selling valuable State land when it could be better used to provide social and affordable housing. We will instruct housing Ireland, in tandem with the Office of Public Works, to conduct a full audit of State-owned lands to identify whether or not that land is necessary to the further development of the Department or the agency. If not, and if it is suitable for housing development, it will be developed for a mix of social, affordable and private housing by the State or through public private partnerships. The Government would do well to listen, for once, to what the Opposition is saying on this vital matter. People need and deserve a roof over their heads and, as I said, they deserve a strong Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, not a Minister for philosophy or, perhaps more aptly, empty words. The Minister should take note and act.