Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Penrose, to the House. He has a challenging and interesting portfolio, one in which he will succeed. I suspect his experience of many years as a member of a county council gives him the types of insight that are important in terms of addressing the current problem.

The Irish have had an extraordinary relationship with housing and house ownership. Perhaps this stems somewhat from our colonial past but, apart from our neighbours in Great Britain, the Irish people's relationship with house ownership is unique. For generations, the auctioneer's maxim has been "location, location, location". Often, this has resulted in one's entire education, career and life options being dominated by one's address. It has put a premium on housing and the value of a house, resulting in the extraordinary economic crisis we are facing. During the past ten or 15 years, we built an entire economy around the housing industry. When one considers the number of houses built in the Republic compared with similar sized countries, we should not wonder why we are where we are. To the Minister of State and the Government falls the challenge of addressing this difficult dilemma.

Some years ago, we would have expected unfinished housing estates to be a problem in large urban centres, but it is a problem across the entire country, including in some small villages. Given the number of unfinished houses and how many people desperate for housing are on our housing lists, one must ask whether it is possible to marry these problems into a productive and worthwhile solution.

In one sense, the most important part of the Minister of State's contribution was when he outlined clearly that he was pursuing a multi-strand approach while recognising that any mechanism must be introduced in a manner that ensures a good mixture of housing. Many of our housing and social difficulties stem from a bad housing mix. In a rush to solve the housing problem, previous Governments devised a system that has not worked and has caused many social difficulties in some of our major urban towns. We must try to avoid a recurrence of this problem. What will we do with the tens of thousands of vacant houses and the many ghost estates when so many people are desperately looking for accommodation?

Most of the Members present have been members of local authorities. Almost every local authority has a significant housing list. When constituents ask us why vacant houses cannot be allocated to them, it is difficult to respond and we must try to suggest various reasons and excuses. I hope the Minister of State will be able to put some of the jigsaw together.

Regarding more immediate problems, I am not 100% sure of my facts but it may have been suggested that legislation allowing certain extensions to planning permission might cause a difficulty in terms of drawing down of bonds. The Minister of State might address this issue. I do not have experience of a large number of cases but, in many instances, local authorities are not inclined to draw down bonds because the value of those bonds are not sufficient to carry out the required works. This leads to negotiations between the developer and the local authority because the authority frequently tries to procure a better solution.

Senator Hayden referred to the need for a type of NAMA for the people. Many of the estates in question are owned by NAMA, the workings of which we have debated and will continue to debate. It is too early to assess NAMA's potential for success, but the fact that it owns so many houses gives the State a significant role in putting a new housing policy in place. The recent census figures were interesting, in that they showed surprising growth trends in certain areas. Given the vast number of unoccupied houses, a case can be made for the future occupation of the majority of them.

On the basis of a visual examination, virtually every county appears to have estates that were commenced four or five years ago and are now in such a state of disrepair that one wonders whether completing them is possible. Sadly, the only outcome in some areas may be for housing estates to be demolished. Several years ago, one would not have envisaged houses being built, not being lived in and then being knocked down. I would not advocate demolition, but it may be the only solution from a health and safety perspective in a small minority of cases. I do not want to name estates, towns or villages, but I know of a few places in County Cork where this would appear to be the only option.

I concede that the money available to the Minister of State is limited. We all know the economic times in which we live. It is ironic that we are trying to solve a housing crisis in the midst of an economic crisis caused in the main by that housing crisis. This is the interesting challenge lying ahead of the Minister of State. We have a moral obligation to remember the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been blighted by not having homes. We must proclaim them as having a higher priority of need than those living in unfinished estates. Our first priority must be to try to house them. Since unfinished and some finished estates contain vacant houses, we must try to tackle the two problems together.

I wish the Minister of State well in his deliberations. His work will require a hands on approach and the full weight of his Department must be brought to bear. Unfinished and ghost housing estates are symptomatic of our economic tragedy. During the coming years, we must try to reverse the trend in this regard.

I thank the Minister of State for being with us and offering us his initial thoughts on this issue. It will be a rolling process. There will not be a "one size fits all" solution to this. Different regions, counties and towns will have different requirements and there needs to be flexibility in the approach taken. We obviously need finance but we must politically prioritise the people currently who do not have a house of their own in which to live and who are paying hugely inflated rental prices every week. Taxpayers' money is being poured down the drain with the subsidisation of rent under the rent allowance scheme while there are many vacant houses available. Finding a single solution to those myriad of problems is a huge challenge but I look forward with confidence to the Minister of State's response to it in the next few years.