Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We must find every way we can to fast-track the process by a combination of public spending and private spending. It is not just a question of social housing, we need more private housing as well. There is a considerable under-supply of housing and that is what we must address. The housing action plan will do that. For those who are new to the House, we used the same process to address the jobs situation and we created an Action Plan for Jobs. When it was first published in 2012 everyone laughed at it and said it could not possible achieve what it set out to do. The target was to create 100,000 jobs. The Action Plan for Jobs exceeded the target and when the private sector is included more than 135,000 jobs were created. I was nervous about the plan when it was first put together but it did work so I have every confidence that a similar process and action plan for housing will address the problem with the lack of housing.

All debates such as the one we are having now will feed into the process. Seanad Members did not get a chance to become part of the housing committee because the Seanad was not constituted at the time but now Members have a chance to discuss the matter in the Seanad, other meetings and through the Department. We will engage with all. Plenty of good ideas have been mooted today. I cannot answer all the questions asked but I will get the information Members need and we will work together on the issues. We will tease out all the good ideas that have been made.

I told the House the Leader could run fast so I invite him to do his business. The motion gives us an opportunity to put on record the Government's commitment to robustly tackling the significant challenges. I pledge that housing is the No. 1 priority for the Government. Housing is the first item on the agenda. We must address the issue as the current situation is not acceptable. We will address the issue and fix it. As the Minister of State working with the senior Minister, Deputy Coveney, it is No. 1 on our agenda. The Department is now called the housing and planning Department and that is what we are about. That is what we will try to fix with the help of the ideas suggested by Members. We will work closely with Members.

We are preparing an action plan for housing that will be published in July at the latest. It should be ready before July. The action plan will build on the considerable work already carried out and under way in this area. It will also draw on the important work carried out by the special Committee on Housing and Homelessness, which is due to submit its report to the Dáil shortly. I hope many of the recommendations following the work that was carried out will feed into the action plan as we move forward.

The plan will include actions to expedite and boost the supply of all types of housing, including social housing, rental accommodation, student accommodation, transient accommodation and all other types of accommodation we need to tackle the issue both in the immediate short term, medium term and long term. The plan will focus in particular on those experiencing most difficulty in accessing the housing and rental market at the moment. Many such people are in emergency accommodation, which is not acceptable. Emergency accommodation is not suitable for the long term and that is one issue we are trying to address.

Both the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and I have initiated early engagement with those who have been working in the housing and homelessness area for many years to discuss the broad approach to the action plan. The Minister is on the record as describing the situation as an "emergency", particularly in urban centres. I agree with him in that regard. We must and will tackle the emergency. The housing of families and children in unsuitable emergency accommodation is not right. It is not sustainable and it is certainly not a solution. The Government is therefore firm in its determination to take action and to take it urgently.

In Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, the Government set out a child-specific poverty target to reduce consistent child poverty by at least two thirds by 2020. It is clear that only by adopting a whole-of-government approach can we hope to address the serious challenges posed in meeting that target. My Department, for its part, is working with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to deliver on the commitment that every child should be safe and protected from harm with a place to call home. We could all agree that is a target we must achieve and as quickly as we possibly can.

The fact of the matter is that the house building sector is struggling to get back on its feet. With the downturn in the economy the sector came to a virtual standstill and that lasted for the best part of a decade both in private housing supply and also in the provision of local authority housing. We are trying to ramp up capacity again through local authorities in order to build houses so that local authorities can have their own housing stock and not just lease or rent them. The capacity to do that was completely and utterly done away with in local authorities. We must rebuild the capacity as quickly as we possibly can. It has taken longer than we would like but it is happening and we must expedite the process as quickly as possible.

There is also under capacity in the private sector and it is not delivering either. When I addressed the conference this morning I said that everybody has to play his or her part in order to increase the amount of housing stock. We must build at least 25,000 houses a year. In the next couple of years we will probably need 30,000 houses per year. Last year we built 12,500 houses. More than half of them were one-off houses outside Dublin. They were no addition to solving the current crisis in Dublin. The target we must reach is at least 25,000 houses per year, and we must reach it as quickly as we possibly can. After we deal with the emergency situation in housing we must then have a sustainable construction sector that will always be in the range of 12% to 14% of GNP, which is what it should be, not at in excess of 26% which is where it was previously or at 6% where it is today, but in the middle.

I addressed the issue of the availability of land for house building. Affordability must also be tackled. We must try to develop houses at a price people can afford because there is no point in developing houses such as some of the 4,000 houses currently in construction that are way out of the price range for most people and will not help us solve our problem so they are not much addition to us.If people are spending most of their income on mortgages they have a lot less money to meet the many other demands of life. This affects the real economy and people's quality of life and ability to raise families. It also puts many working families in more precarious financial positions and at risk of homelessness, which we cannot allow to continue. The housing situation is, therefore, affecting every sector of Irish society and it is putting at risk our hard-won gains in terms of employment, recovery of competitiveness and the attractiveness of Ireland as a place to work, live and grow a business.

It is important to recognise that we have made a start in terms of addressing the situation. A €3.8 billion social housing strategy has been put in place. The problem is not an availability of funding but our inability to spend that funding quick enough to address the situation. While additional funding will be required into the future, for now money is being made available to address the situation. We are also reforming Part V to make delivery of social housing possible and viable, many of which changes Senator Coffey when Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government was involved in making.

We are implementing a range of actions on homelessness and putting in place rent certainty measures, thereby giving hard-pressed tenants greater stability pending increased supply coming on-stream. We are lowering development contributions and putting in place a rebate scheme for housing at more affordable prices, from which Dublin and Cork will benefit. A vacant site levy is being introduced, although for legal reasons this cannot kick-in until 2019. However, the threat of its application will progress site development at a quicker pace. Revision of the departmental guidelines will also help in terms of the Department's work with NAMA and its plan to provide 20,000 new homes. These are all useful efforts to try to stimulate the housing market. The Government accepts that this is not enough and that it has not thus far helped to solve the problem. Simply providing money is not sufficient. We must drive the spend of that money, work with the local authorities and reform the planning system. The Part VIII system has been reformed but it needs to be driven further with, perhaps, more changes required.