John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. It is important to be clear and to continue to say to ourselves daily that housing is a public good. It does not matter whether it is a meitheal, co-operative or a private builder or the State that builds. The State has to underwrite and ensure that the environment is in place, as well as other matters discussed this afternoon. The State has to be the ultimate ward boss to make sure it happens for everyone. One cannot have any kind of a stabilised civilisation if one does not have housing, a place which people can call their own. Whether people own a place or not does not matter once they can call it their own and have a lien on it.

There is a crisis within the crisis. I am talking about people with disabilities. Prior to our national housing crisis, there was a crisis for people with disabilities. The Minister's Department was able to say, in 2003, from its own statistics, that there were just shy of 4,000 people with disabilities on the social housing list. Its information, when it updated that in 2016, shows that it has gone to 4,500. Rebuilding Ireland did not even mention the 3,919 people that the Department knew about. I am very concerned that the crisis within the crisis does not seem to be a crisis for Government and I want reassurance about that. This House unanimously passed a motion in July last year relating to disability and housing and action was to follow that. It was passed by all sides of the House, which I appreciate very much. While I will not go into details, I ask for an urgent update on what actions have been taken on what was agreed by everybody in this House at that time.

It is worth remembering that the great United States was the country that incubated the economic crisis that spread around the globe a decade ago and it is even more interesting to recall what sparked that. It was a matter of private entities giving loans to people who did not have the wherewithal to pay them back. Those who made those loans diced and sliced them into all sorts of packages and sold them on, hence the crisis was exported. Things were going in the wrong direction for us at the time but my point is that social housing is a social and public good and it has to be underpinned very strongly by the State.

We have a situation where €178 million of public funding has been garnered together from savings this year and is going to be given back to people who paid their water charges. While we could have a discussion about this, that would fund, give or take, 800 social houses for people with disabilities. I am not questioning the Government's motivation in this regard for a moment but very serious choices are being made.

I am very concerned that there is not a commitment to housing for people with disabilities in Rebuilding Ireland. There was half a page which talked about working groups and strategies and strategies within charities but there was no actual commitment. That the Department did not even mention the actual housing need that it knew of for people with disabilities is concerning. Social housing for people with disabilities has to be a significant part of the response to the crisis and, within that, there is the important element of housing support for people and the grant scheme for people to adapt their houses. I ask the Minister to please attend to these matters.