Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this important legislation. Housing legislation is always very interesting from a policy perspective, because it is one of the few areas of Government policy where, even with limited resources, different and interesting political and economic choices can be made. A significant difference can be made to the livelihood of people if positive housing policies are put in place.

If we look back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy was beginning to take off, and we could have predicted then that there would be year-on-year significant economic growth, that Departments would have surpluses rather than deficits and that there would be unending boom, nobody could concede at the end of that era we would have as many people on the housing lists, perhaps more than in the mid 1980s, that we would have a poor housing stock in many towns and villages and that we would have no grants for disabled people or the elderly. It would not be a credible political argument, yet that is now where we find ourselves.

This legislation stems from the report, Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities, which was published in February 2007. It was a document everyone welcomed and was happy with. What has happened since then? Most local authorities have no building programme and vital schemes for the elderly and disabled, which at minimal cost can make a major difference to many people, have come to a standstill. Last week I attended the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government — I am not a member — when this matter was debated. The officials from the Department gave a fine presentation, but the bottom line of their argument seemed to indicate no additional money was available for this calendar year. Hundreds of applications to Cork County Council for urgently needed house improvement works in late 2007 and early 2008 are on hold or being filed with no attention being given to them. We were advised that the success of the scheme has resulted in an increased demand for money over the last five or six years, from €10 million per annum to €55 or €60 million. That is a lot of money.

This is a scheme we cannot afford to abandon, yet that is what has happened. Additional money provided to each local authority may help in paying grants for work already done but it will not provide for additional grants to be approved. That must be put at the top of the Minister's agenda. It is important to get these vital grants up and running because the disabled, the elderly and children are being affected on the front line by the policy decision of the Minister's Department. That trend should be reversed.

There are many aspects of the legislation to which I would like to refer but time is limited. I welcome the Bill in so far as it goes, because it brings forward some new ideas. They are all helpful, but money will be at the core of the success or otherwise of the Bill, and it is difficult to know how much money the Minister and his Department is willing to commit. The Leas-Chathaoirleach and I were both involved in politics in the local authorities in the 1980s — perhaps the Minster was also — at a time when the country was the supposed to be almost bankrupt. We still provided money for social housing and local authority programmes. It is interesting to look at the house building figures for the period 1985 to 2005. The so-called cash-pressed years of 1984 to 1986 were the years when the local authority building programme was almost at its very height, because there was the political will to look after the social housing needs of a certain sector of the community. The political will does not seem to exist at present. This needs to be looked at again and we need to give priority to those who cannot afford to house themselves.

Programmes such as the shared ownership scheme and the affordable housing scheme, both of which I welcomed, have made a positive difference. However, they are not sufficient. Insufficient financial resources have been put into the areas covered by social housing policy. To paraphrase a political slogan used by the Minister of State's former leader, a lot has been done but there is more to do. While affordable and social housing and shared ownership loans have worked to an extent, more financial input is required from the Department. I hope the Minister of State will be in a position to meet this requirement.

Several speakers referred to voluntary housing bodies. Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill, for example, referred to one such body in County Mayo. When I received correspondence from the organisation in question it rang a bell because one of the proponents of the scheme is our former colleague in the other House, Mr. Jerry Cowley. The group makes a valid case for receiving further support. I hope the Minister will look favourably on its request. Voluntary housing organisations are doing good work throughout the country and have a strong role to play in meeting the housing needs of communities.

The incremental purchase scheme provided for in the Bill is a welcome and positive step forward. Without wishing to give a history lecture, in 1987 the then Minister for the Environment, Mr. Padraig Flynn, who has since vanished from the radar screen as people pretend he never existed——