Paul Bradford (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. While she does not have full control over the Department's housing policy, her role as Minister of State with responsibility for rural development means the issue is very much on her agenda. We all agree there is a very serious housing problem in Dublin, which is having a knock-on effect throughout the country. While my question relates to a story which emanated in the media at the weekend as to how many units of housing it will be possible to build in the very near future in our capital city and a dispute between the Department and media outlets, I am asking the Minister of State to acknowledge that this is a crisis which requires a solution. I have repeatedly expressed the view in recent years that we do not have a housing policy in this country. We clearly have a policy for the construction industry and a policy to regenerate the role of developers. Some of those developers have been tripping in to meet the Minister for Finance in recent times, which reminds one of the politics of the Celtic tiger era. However, we do not have a clear, distinct set of proposals to house the more than 100,000 people throughout the country who are in urgent need of new accommodation.

The story in the Sunday Independentat the weekend was disturbing. It referred to an e-mail from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to the Department of Finance which contained an admission that there was a deliberate attempt being made to spin the numbers. The e-mail stated: "We have been spinning that there is sufficient land with planning permission/zoned for housing circa 46,000 housing units across four Dublin LAs but the reality is that this figure includes land not yet zoned for housing." We need clarity as to exactly how much land is available in the short term for housing units in Dublin. In addition, we need clarity as to how the Government intends not just to get the land zoned and obtain planning permission but how the houses are to be built.

The mortgage and debt crisis in this country is very profound and it feeds into the housing crisis. The latter represents the greatest crisis facing the country, with more than 100,000 families seeking housing. It is greatly remiss of us politically not to respond to it more robustly. The nation continues to face economic difficulties and will do for some time. I first entered local government politics in the mid-1980s when the country was in the midst of a profound economic depression.I can only speak for Cork County Council at the time, as can the Leas-Chathaoirleach, where hundreds of local authority houses were being built per annum and, presumably, thousands across the country, because it was part of then Government's housing strategy. We need such a strategy again. One of the aspects I want the Minister to reflect on, which my colleagues and I in the new political movement Renua have been talking about, is that as of today more than €100 billion in Irish pension funds is invested abroad. Can we attempt to devise a scheme to bring some of this money back into our country to provide housing for the people? That is an issue on which we need to reflect. We certainly need new thinking, new solutions and new ways of investing to deal with the housing crisis, as we cannot wait five, ten or 15 years to provide housing for these families. We all know the social knock-on effects arising from inadequate housing.

The Minister of State will be aware from her constituency work that rent allowance in all its formats and mortgage subsidies are still being paid, so taxpayers' money is being spent, but it is not being well spent. We need a new attempt to define a national housing strategy. I have sought this debate in the House in the past six months and I hope we can have it in the near future. However, today I am asking for clarity. When one Department official is telling another that deliberate spinning is taking place, that is not a positive starting point. Let us get a true picture of how bad the situation is, and let us plan to make it better. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's observations. I acknowledge that she cannot make up policy on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly. I watched the Minister on television last night, but he did not reveal any new information. We have to take this problem seriously because it is ruining lives, livelihoods, families and communities across the country.