Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. We all wish him every success in bringing his talents and energies to dealing with this problem. I am delighted he is tackling the slow turnover of local authority houses when they become vacant. A former Minister of State with responsibility for housing, Deputy Penrose, was examining derelict sites.

I do not know whether he is any help in getting sites for housing. We heard earlier that the refusal rate of ghost estate houses by local authorities was something like 90%. Those houses are there and it would take very little to bring many of them up to a habitable standard. As Senator Hayden has said, it will take a long time to bring other new accommodation on stream.
One must admit that we have housing that is not affordable in the full sense. The construction industry must be confronted about that. We had the worst price performance in the boom. The Economistmonitored house prices across all the OECD countries and Ireland had by far the highest price increase. Last week, the Governor of the Central Bank noted a 42% increase in house prices. What is wrong with the Irish construction industry? Why are its costs excessive compared to Germany, even, as people like Ronan Lyons in TCD has documented? Why has it generated no productivity performance like the rest of us, including the public sector, have in the Irish economy in the past few years? We have houses that cost far too much to build. Brendan Burgess gave evidence to the finance committee last week that taxes, VAT, levies and planning laws add €67,000 to the price of a €200,000 house. That is worth exploring.
Why have we pushed housing out of the reach of so many people? It was a bonanza that local authorities all cashed in on with development levies and so on, but it is time to stop that because we will have a serious social problem and a serious economic problem as well. High house prices push up our costs as an economy. This has become a serious issue. We need reforms on social housing. As the Minister knows, Dr. Garret FitzGerald chaired the Lord Mayor's commission on housing in Dublin in 1992 and again he pointed out that the houses were expensive to build, expensive to maintain, both on the cost side and regarding the demands of the tenants, and the rents were low. It was extremely difficult and they had to be given away virtually as gifts to the tenants. Rents should be linked to the incomes of the people in those houses. We gave away the social housing stock we had to tackle these problems in the 1990s. Those problems must be addressed - the high administration costs and also certain social aspects. We cannot see headlines describing the Minister's proposals as "a bonanza for the construction industry" any longer. We must look at people who flip houses and earn massive capital gains. The housing market is for shelter, not for capital gains acquisition and not for tax reduction purposes. That nexus between banking and building must also be examined.
In these grim times, there may be a social bonus that is not expected when the Minister tackles the housing problem. We have tended to stress the social aspect, perhaps because of the tragic events across the street, but much US research shows that keys can solve social problems. Nan Roman, president and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said: "If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better. It is intuitive, in a way. People do better when they have stability." Another study from Georgia showed that a person who stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing was five times as likely as someone who received a rapid rehousing to become homeless again. Perhaps our ambassador in Washington could help the Minister on the Housing First programme, which, like the Minister's speech tonight, enjoys bipartisan support in the United States. Social problems can be solved by giving people the stability. A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state $43,000 a year, while housing that person would cost just $17,000. If the Minister can solve the other problems by giving people keys, a property and a whole door for themselves, he is entitled to ask some of the other Ministers around the Cabinet table for assistance in his housing programme.
The success of the Housing First programme, on a bipartisan basis, in New York and other parts of the United States indicates that it is a model to follow. We must, however, confront what happened social housing the last time we tried it and it was so expensive that we virtually gave it away, and tackle the question of why the building industry in general in Ireland is so non-cost-competitive by international standards. I would add to that the short-term solutions I mentioned, along with looking at how many social problems we could solve if the Minister had enough money in his housing budget. The keys could solve those problems. The Minister's attendance in the House is deeply appreciated.