Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister.

I concur with Senator Devine. Shame on us all to be here in a great homelessness crisis the legacy of which will be with us for years to come. The 2016 census shows that in the lifetime of the previous Fine Gael-led Government homelessness increased by 81%. In September, the total number of homeless people in the country exceeded 8,000 for the first time. Some 36% of those homeless people are children. Some 36% of Fine Gael Deputies and Senators have registered their professions as landlords. According to the RTB, there has been at least a 21.5% rent increase in the areas in which some Deputies and Ministers are landlords.

Fine Gael's current solution to the housing crisis has been to provide tax incentives or reduce regulation for land hoarders, builders and landlords, often directly against the advice of experts and academics. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I do not believe the solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise those with a vested interest in a worsening crisis and yet the Government continues to do just that. I must admit that, after a year and a half in the Oireachtas, I am deeply concerned that Fine Gael, a party 36% of whose Deputies and Senators are landlords, has a vested interest in turning the current housing crisis to their particular advantage.

The biggest current threat to housing supply, as I stated this morning, is the widespread practice of land banking, also know as land hoarding. I refer to the empty shop-fronts and houses that pepper the streets of our towns right across Ireland.  Mr. Brendan McDonagh, the head of NAMA, released a statement saying that enough land to solve the housing crisis was sold by NAMA, land that would have supported 50,000 houses. However, only 3,000 houses, or 6%, have been built. He blamed land hoarding for this.

Currently, there is no penalty for hoarding land or leaving it unused. This is proven to result in land speculation and higher house prices. ESRI economist Dr. Kieran McQuinn stated that landowners currently can hoard undeveloped land at little cost other than that of keeping planning permits up to date, and are rewarded as prices rise. He recommended an aggressive "use it or lose it" tax be introduced to force land hoarders to release sites needed for housing. I, and the Civil Engagement group proposed such a tax scheme last year. In February 2017, we introduced the Derelict and Vacant Sites Bill 2017 that would have addressed the specific problem of land hoarding. The current legislation is inadequate and, in fact, exempts basketball court-sized properties, not including their gardens, from the levy. It also exempts properties in negative equity, even if owned by an investor, directly incentivising land hoarding and increases in house prices.

No levy is being applied until 2019 due to a 2012-2013 capital gains tax exemption that allows people to buy land, hold it for seven years and not pay any tax on its sale. That was brought in to incentivise the market. The tax that will be applied in 2019 is a toothless waste of time. It applies a tax of 3% when land prices are rising well above that. Land in negative equity and land the size of a basketball court are exempt, as I stated, from the levy.

The Green Party and the Civil Engagement group sought to address precisely these issue in our Derelict and Vacant Sites Bill 2017 in the Seanad in February last. The Bill was voted down by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, despite support from highly regarded constitutional lawyers, legal academics and economic experts.

The Government's tax incentive-focused housing plans are not only useless, but dangerous. The Government's repair and leasing scheme, which is a primary arm of the social housing build scheme in Rebuilding Ireland, has conclusively failed. It was supposed to provide 800 units by 2017 and so far it has secured 30. Instead, according to Dublin City Council housing manager, Mr. Tony Flynn, our towns and cities are filled with owners seeking to wait for rents to continue to climb and that they will be able to rent it out without making improvements. This lack of improvement has real knock-on costs for renters. Dublin City Council data show that 78% of private rental properties inspected under one programme between 2012 and 2016 did not meet the basic minimum legal standards for rental accommodation. My Green Party colleagues, Deputy Catherine Martin, and the barrister academic, Deirdre Ní Fhloinn, highlighted in a Dáil motion on building standards how Government encourages such substandard housing by allowing builders and landowners to regulate themselves.

Government has attempted to incentivise supply by reducing building standards. At a time when home owners are still left struggling to deal with the fallout of a complete lack of oversight in building standards over decades, from Priory Hall to the recent pyrite and mica scandals, landowners sat at their leisure on untaxed hoarded land. They lobbied for reductions in apartment sizes, tax incentives, reduced development levies, infrastructure funding to the tune of €200 million, the botched help-to-buy scheme and relaxations in much needed mortgage lending rules yet there has been no major increase in private sector housing supply. Instead, vulture and global equity funds have bought up rental properties and land and invested in speculative office building and student apartments, not housing. There were 18,878 houses bought by non-occupiers in 2015, up from just 5,194 in 2010. One in seven new homes sold between January and June 2016 was bought by non-occupiers, with investors accounting for a quarter of total house purchases. The proposed changes to the tax situation for landlords in budget 2018 are also highly questionable as they increase the potential for the rental sector to be a hub for short-term-profit investments rather than ensuring safe, sustainable long-term housing. Instead of building houses and long-term capital stock for the State, the Government directly subsidises one third of the private rental sector by at least €450 million a year in spite of its being told by all relevant experts that this will worsen the current rent and house price inflation. It has long been understood by housing economists that incentivising housing and rents through tax cuts or subsidies leads to a bubble scenario out of proportion with ordinary rates of inflation. Such subsidies drive up average rents and are a significant drain on funds that could be put to more efficient long-term use. Analyses carried out by experts such as the ESRI, the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, and our European colleagues are aligned in their conclusion that we need fewer tax incentives but rather need direct building of social and affordable housing by the State primarily; the increase of the income bracket to include higher incomes and investment in long-term cost-price rental. Good quality permanent social housing can be rapidly built within six to eight months. The building of such homes should be prioritised rather than the provision of unsuitable hub emergency accommodation that has severe detrimental impacts on children. Hubs are being placed in industrial estates or above pubs, such as the recent choice of location on Merchant's Quay.

I again refer to the twin percentages: 36% of Fine Gael Deputies and Senators in this Oireachtas are registered as landlords and 36% of homeless people are children. I wonder why expert-based action is not being taken.