Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's attention to this issue and the amount of work she has put into it. Well done to her and I wish her every success. Senator Bradford's comment on the need to have a senior Cabinet Minister with responsibility for housing makes a great deal of sense. Senator Healy Eames supported that as well.

There has been much talk about using National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, owned buildings for social housing and a number of people have been calling for a new social housing construction programme. Perhaps we should discuss some other ideas in this area. Why can we not consider other ways to meet the massive demand for housing, such as timber framed houses that can be constructed in one or two months compared to a year or two to construct a traditional house? This is obviously much faster and such houses are the norm in Scandinavia and are common in countries such as Germany. For obvious reasons, some people in the building industry have opposed such houses or criticised them as unsuited for Irish weather, even though Scandinavia has much harsher weather. We certainly cannot complain about the weather at present. Timber framed houses can be extremely eco-friendly. Some would argue that we could construct thousands of timber framed houses far quicker than constructing regular houses. We could thus make inroads on the problem of ensuring people are adequately housed.

The Simon Community has called for the Bill to establish a national social rental agency which would rent properties from the private rented sector at market rates and sub-let them to long-term homeless people who have significant support needs. It says that this model has the advantage of providing homeless people with complex needs with a social landlord and removes perceived risks for the superior landlord relating to fears of non-payment of rent, anti-social behaviour and so forth. The Minister should consider this as I believe the proposal has merit.

I welcome the Bill's provisions, but more is required to address the wider housing problem. As a first step, the Government must examine the international options in this area as part of the solution, for example, by examining housing in Europe and how European local authorities manage property to ensure that the maximum amount of housing is available.

A number of other suggestions I wish to make have been made by others so, rather than delay the passage of the Bill, I will come to a conclusion. The Bill is certainly worthy of consideration. The Minister of State deserves support on it because of the work she has done on it. It will benefit the community as a whole. I wish her well with it.