Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To continue on the last point raised by Senator Moloney, this is an issue that affects many people, particularly where there are marital break-ups and financial institutions involved, or where people are applying for social housing and are deemed ineligible by councils even though they do not have a property, simply because their name is on a marriage certificate. It is something that should be looked at from a housing allocation viewpoint. Tonight's motion is very important. Like Senator Walsh, I commend the Labour Party on tabling it. It is a crisis in our time when we hear of people being unable to pay the rent bill at the end of the month and remain in their own house, particularly here in Dublin. According to CSO medium-term projections, 10,000 additional families will be living in Dublin every year, with only 2,000 additional housing units. That is a net shortfall of 8,000 units per year. Even if we do nothing, there will be a lack of supply.

I was looking through figures on Ireland's history in developing housing policy, from Independence back in 1921. The figures are interesting because it shows that when we broke from Britain in 1921, Irish housing policy focused predominantly on providing social housing based on the British model, but the difference was that we provided our social housing on an asset welfare basis. In other words, while the house was provided, the objective was that it would ultimately lead to home ownership. In addition, the majority of those houses were built in rural areas and a perceived value for money was obtained. We broke from that tradition, unfortunately, four or five years ago, when the focus was on the urbanisation of social housing. There is a real need for housing in Dublin and urban areas, and I will get to that in a moment, but it was a retrograde step to break from that policy and not to allow people the opportunity of building a home in rural areas.

The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has now effectively adopted the British policy, where all of the focus for the provision of social housing is in urban areas. While this may deal with the issue of equity, it does not deal with efficiency, for example, in cases where an individual has a plot of land that could be made available for building. A house or houses could be built more cheaply on that land than in an urban area where the land must be bought by the local authority. The Department needs to look at this option. We no longer have the old council cottages as councils do not receive funding for them and applications are no longer accepted. This is an option the Minister of State should consider making available again. These cottages are, on average, approximately 50% cheaper to build than an urban or town-based house.

In the context of urban areas, one of the issues was touched on by Ronan Lyons recently, namely, the value for money for houses. The situation changed from that of perhaps 1996 when a house might have been valued at €115,000 or €120,000 to a situation where the same house was valued at €300,000 or €400,000 in the middle of the boom. Suddenly, there was no longer any concept of value for money in regard to the building of a house. An individual might have questioned costs if the house was only valued at €100,000 or €115,000, but when the valuation tripled, nobody questioned the doubling of construction costs or the issue of costs rising by 120%.

Therefore, the challenge now for the Government and taxpayers is to try to return to a level where we are building houses that represent value for money. However, the Government appears to be going against the wishes of the taxpayer through the new building regulations that have been introduced, which are pushing up the cost of building houses. Until this challenge is taken on squarely by the Government and until there is a row back on the increased costs associated with building houses, individuals will not build houses. I know many young couples who are now questioning whether they will build and they are continuing to rent because of the additional costs introduced by the former Minister, Phil Hogan, through the new building regulations. There are other challenges also and issues about the unionisation of the construction sector and the cost of materials. These issues all add to the cost of building, whether private or social housing. These challenges need to be discussed along with the other issues under discussion.

In regard to the objective of building 10,000 units over the next three years, I do not believe this is an ambitious objective. Between the years 2000 and 2007, some 46,926 social houses were built. Now we have a national crisis, but the plan is only to build 10,000 over three years, while there are 90,000 people on the waiting list. The waiting list is up by one third since the Government came into office. There are money issues and it is great that the Government has announced it will build 10,000 units over the next three years, but it is not dealing with the cost issue of building those houses.

I agree with Senator Walsh and hope this debate will be extended. It is important we have this debate and discuss the issues calmly and rationally. We must try to come up with solutions, instead of taking political shots at each other here. That will not achieve anything. We must have a calm and rational debate on the issue and must support the Minister of State. He will get support from this side of the House, but we need to delve into the issues further. For that reason, I believe we need a longer debate on the issue so as to deal with crisis facing us.

I did not discuss the issue of the homeless. I was listening to Fr. McVerry today and was very interested in what he had to say.