Joanna Tuffy (Labour)

Senator O'Meara mentioned the hidden homeless. As a former county councillor, my experience of homelessness would be more in terms of the hidden homeless and dealing with people who have been on the housing list for years.

Another aspect is the problems to which the housing crisis is contributing. For example, some relationships never get off the ground because the couple and their child have waited for housing for many years during which time they had to live apart. In those circumstances the relationship never gets a chance to develop and all concerned are affected in a detrimental way by that.

There are also the people who lose the opportunity, because of our housing policy, to have a career because of the catch-22 situation they are in regarding the rent supplement scheme and all that involves. If they were housed in council accommodation there would not be any catches in that regard. They could get a job and improve their circumstances.

Health issues arise also. Someone may suffer from ill-health but if they become homeless it makes matters much worse. If people with drug abuse problems do not have secure accommodation, it will not help their circumstances.

I have been provided figures by Focus Ireland which indicate that a large number of children are homeless. More than 35,000 children have a housing need. Every second homeless child in Dublin is under the age of five. Those statistics are very worrying.

I have experience of dealing with people who are homeless. They are living in bed and breakfast accommodation in Dublin although they are from my constituency in Dublin Mid-West. They must travel into town each day to bring their children to school. Sometimes they do not do that and the children's education is affected. If the parents of the children have a drugs problem, for example, and are living in homeless accommodation, such as bed and breakfast premises, the children are separated from the family network that could fill the gap if their parents are unable to look after them properly. Those are the hidden problems behind the housing crisis. There have been many lost opportunities and issues created by the fact that we have not tackled the housing crisis in the past few years.

Every public representative here will have had the experience of people who have been on the housing list for years telephoning us in tears because of their circumstances. I have dealt with people who, for whatever reason, ended up living in a rundown caravan with no water or electricity. They were living in terrible deprivation.

There are many problems with the way the housing crisis is being dealt with by the Government and we need to review it. I will quote some statistics from a recent article in a Jesuit magazine by Fr. Peter McVerry. He made the point that one of the reasons so many people are on the housing list and so many are homeless is because the issue of the price of housing land has never been dealt with. The Minister of State's brother, the Taoiseach, made a big deal of the last report on property rights issued by the all-party committee on the Constitution but that report is sitting on a shelf. Nothing has been done about it and in the meantime, the average price of housing in Dublin and throughout the country has gone up by another €100,000 since the report was launched by the Taoiseach.

The Government has made much of its plans for further housing. I am in favour of affordable housing but, first, it has not been delivered to the extent people expected from the Government announcements about thousands of affordable houses coming on stream and, second, the affordable housing scheme should have operated in conjunction with the building of a substantial number of council houses. Fr. McVerry made the point that the percentage of council housing as a proportion of the overall housing output is minimal compared with what used to be the case. In the article he states:

[In summary], in the 1970s and 1980s, new social housing, as a percentage of total housing output, was between 20% and 33%. [Actually], from 1922 up to the mid-1960s, 50% of all housing output was social housing ... new social housing is well below 10%, despite the scale of need established by the local authorities assessments ...

He mentions the report of the National Economic and Social Council which recommended that over eight years, from 2005 to 2012, there would need to be an increase of 73,000 units, net of tenant purchase, of council houses to deal with our housing waiting lists but in reality we have not got anywhere near that target. From 1995 to 2004, 4,275 social housing units were provided each year, less than half the output recommended by the NESC, and when one takes into account the sale of local authority houses, the situation, according to Fr. McVerry, is much worse. He states that to meet the target set by the NESC, the number of new local authority and voluntary housing units being provided would need to more than triple over the next seven years.

This is an emergency and the Government has not tackled it in any real way, despite its claims. I have heard the Minister say in the House that 90,000 houses were built this year but the majority of that is private housing. When it comes to examining other ways of tackling social housing need, for example, through the rental supplement scheme, the onus appears to be on the private sector, which is based on profit making and is not concerned with meeting people's housing needs.

I ask the Government to go back to basics on the housing issue and deliver a certain number of council houses each year. It should ensure they are integrated but that should be the Government's focus. Affordable housing is important but there are many drawbacks with that scheme. It should not replace the need to provide council housing units. We may look back in years to come and wonder if we made a mistake with affordable housing. The Government owns the council house and if the occupants decide to buy it, they must purchase it.

The affordable housing scheme has clawback provisions but they do not apply after 20 years and the State may be left with no equity in the houses. The clawback provisions may, in themselves, generate hardship among the buyers of the dwellings because the dwellings tend to be apartments and are not supposed to be lived in for the rest of one's life. The clawback provisions are such that many will end up staying in an affordable house because they will not be able to afford to move up in the market.

It is very important to place major emphasis on getting county councils to deliver housing on the ground. If they are not delivering as they should, they should be penalised. County councils have a problem matching the funding they receive but the Government can do something about this. There needs to be much more local authority housing and it should amount to 30% of overall housing output. People should be able to purchase their local authority house if they have an opportunity to do so.