Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The issues dealt with in the Bill are extremely important. Reading the explanatory memorandum I note the tenancy warning as an alternative to evictions. FLAC has made the point to the Minister that evictions should be the last resort, particularly in a country with a strong attachment to history and what happened when people were evicted in large numbers.

One of the reports on Irish housing that has stood the test of time was prepared by Mr. Gay Mitchell when he was on the Lord Mayor's Commission on Housing. Garret FitzGerald, the former Taoiseach, was the chairman. It also included the current city manager and Professor Yvonne Scannell.

The context at the time is interesting. Local authority housing was found to be extremely expensive to maintain compared to what was on the open market and it was felt that some of the monopolistic practices of the trade unions that were maintaining local authority housing deserved scrutiny. I was quite surprised to see somebody like Garrett FitzGerald say that so strongly. He compared the maintenance charges in Dublin Corporation with those in the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and they were substantially higher here.

Recent research by Ronan Lyons at TCD also confirms that our construction costs are still higher than those in Germany, although we have been in a recession for five or six years. The required adjustment has not taken place, which makes the job of the Minister of State extremely difficult. Reference is also made to a dependency culture among tenants, who keep calling for extra maintenance expenditure, which again places a burden on the Exchequer, because not much is received in rent in comparison to the cost of these houses. Therefore, we face a major problem.

I would like to see housing treated solely as a place to live. I abhor the property supplements, which announce as good news the fact that prices are up 22%. Perhaps interest rates in Europe have been kept too low, but I would prefer if people invested in paper assets rather than buying houses for their pensions. Housing is an inelastic supply. As the great American economist Anthony Downs from the Brookings Institution said, we can have too much capital for housing, thereby inflating the prices of the existing houses and not inducing much extra supply into the market. We need more renting, with security of tenure for tenants. This is much more the custom in mainland Europe, as we have, perhaps for historical reasons, become much more attached to owner occupancy. We are also very attached to the rate of return, despite the slump in recent years. The rate of return on housing substantially exceeded anything else. Therefore, we wrecked the banking system and did not invest in small and medium enterprises, but instead bought and sold each other's houses. This was a contributory factor to the bubble. I believe the banking inquiry will address this issue.

From our current perspective, a house should just be some place in which to live, not a means by which to get tax-free capital gains or tax breaks. We on these benches were worried when real estate investment trusts were given favourable tax treatment. The problem previously was that we kept favourable tax treatment going long after it was needed. I hope the Minister from Limerick, Deputy Noonan, will look at this when he is preparing the budget. He should consider whether that stimulus was needed at all and whether it is needed now. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has set new rules for banks there in regard to the loan-to-income ratio and the required deposit relative to the value of a house. This sector is prone to bubbles, which can have disastrous effects, such as we have seen in Dublin in the past year. It is now 22% more expensive for the Minister of State to look after homeless people on the housing list because of what has happened to house prices. Nobody's income has risen by that much, and certainly Exchequer income has not increased to that extent.

On the issue of anti-social behaviour, I note the new chief constable of the PSNI went to a restorative justice seminar in west Belfast yesterday. This issue must be a priority for community policing. We must strengthen communities so that people can live in their communities and not become involved in spending their time annoying their neighbours and giving their neighbourhoods a bad name. The Garrett FitzGerald solution to this was to confine the maximum size of local authority estates to approximately 30. If all those on the housing lists live in the one place, some of those elements engaging in anti-social behaviour can give the place a bad name, which affects everybody else in the neighbourhood and makes life miserable for people.

Trying to make houses affordable is probably the major problem following the bust of the economy. Senator Cummins, our Leader, got figures from NAMA suggesting that it had offered 5,000 houses in the past six months but that local authorities had accepted only 1,000 of them. What is the blockage in that regard? We have a housing problem, yet local authorities are turning down offers made by NAMA. Another issue in regard to housing is that there is an incredibly long turnover period for local authority houses. The Minister of State said in her speech that she is trying to deal with this. However, Senators have referred to houses which have been boarded up for months on end after a tenant leaves and before the next tenant takes over.

The issue is either urgent or not. It is urgent, so let us go and do this. I commend the Minister of State on getting the extra money for this, if she can bring in rules for county managers so that they do not leave properties idle. We do not do that in any other accommodation areas. They should get the new people in as quickly as possible. This would help. Perhaps the Minister of State can also address the NAMA situation in her response. What is the problem and why has four-fifths of what was offered by NAMA to local authorities not been taken up? I wish the Minister of State well in her endeavour, because we will have a major problem if we do not tackle the issues now.