John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

A Senator mentioned the housing crisis, but there are many forms of housing crisis here. This morning I had intended to raise homelessness in Dublin city on the Order of Business. My route to work took me along Talbot Street, O'Connell Street, Westmoreland Street, Grafton Street and Molesworth Street. Along my way I counted seven homeless people lying in doorways with rucksacks, which is unacceptable in this day and age. I empathised with their situation because they had to sleep in sub-zero temperatures last night. As far as I can see, the same problem does not exist in rural areas, but it is a trend in cities.

It is something few people are talking about it but the leaders of our country are not talking about it either. The Taoiseach is committed to the abolition of the Seanad but I do not believe he is committed to dealing with homelessness. We had an example of that this week in regard to the Magdalen laundries report. In a few years from now will we look back and say that we were guilty of a crime against our citizens for not dealing with the problem of homelessness? With the number of empty houses in the country I cannot believe so many people are lying in empty doorways, and we are unable to do anything about it.

Senator Hayden raised the bedsit issue. In the 1980s I shared a bedsit with a friend of mine in Dublin which consisted of two single beds, a wardrobe and a cooker. Today, most people have an en suitethat is much bigger. When I moved to Ballaghaderreen in the mid-1980s I could not get accommodation because there was no rental property in the town. One person rented a place to me. It had shutters on the windows, the floorboards were sagging and mushrooms were growing from the ceiling and on the floor. In fairness, in the 1990s the builders began to provide housing which took a great deal of pressure off the county councils at the time. More builds then came on stream which took even more pressure off the county councils but in the Celtic tiger era we provided the country with far too many houses. My town is an example of that because over 200 houses in the town are empty. I do not know whether to call a housing estate a ghost housing estate if ten out of 90 houses are occupied but 80 of those 90 houses are boarded up. I do not know whether that was done by the banks or NAMA but the estate is an eyesore. We need to know what will happen with those houses. I am aware that in some cases they have been stripped of all the copper and the wiring and are fit for nothing other than to be knocked down.

I agree with what Senator Power said. Landlords got sucked into this system in the Celtic tiger era and nobody could see what would happen in terms of a crash. Landlords bought properties that were over-valued. Some of them are friends of mine and they have five and six houses but they are not worth one third of the mortgage they have on them. Most of them are unoccupied because they cannot rent them, and now they are being hit with a second home property tax which is to be replaced by the new property tax to be introduced in the middle of the year. I know in my heart that some of those landlords are on the point of being driven over the edge, and I have to sympathise with them to a large degree because they were the people who provided accommodation for us when we needed it for our people.

I had reason to discuss an issue regarding anti-social behaviour with my council some weeks ago and I found that the rules and regulations, if they are accurate in terms of what I was told, are wrong and unfair. If a family is engaging in anti-social behaviour not in their own estate but in another estate or another town, and if they have been arrested numerous times for everything and anything, they can be housed in an adjacent estate and wreck it. If they did not engage in the anti-social behaviour in their own estate the council said it cannot do anything about it. That is staggering. I think I have about a minute left, a Chathaoirligh.