Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It was with disappointment that I heard the announcement about housing homeless people on boats. I have made a recurring speech in this House about Airbnb. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government now agrees that we would get 1,000 units back into the rental market if legislation or regulations were introduced. These 1,000 units are badly needed in the housing sector. The Minister promised action in June, July, August and September. We are now into October. The last commitment was that he would bring forward proposals in September.

When the Tánaiste was Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, he made a promise that we would see a start on the Poolbeg West site in 2017. It is now 2018. I received a letter this morning from An Bord Pleanála relating to Poolbeg West. Let me remind the House that this site will house up to 8,000 citizens. The letter informed me that due to what I would describe as incompetence, An Bord Pleanála needs further information on design, public grounds, community facilities, parking and traffic management. It goes on and on. I previously received a letter from An Bord Pleanála about this site on 2 August. It told me that because of resources and backlog, An Bord Pleanála was unable to deal with it. Let me point out the reasons for the problems with resources and the backlog. The Minister made a decision that any application for more than 100 units would go directly to An Bord Pleanála but he did not resource it to actually deal with the increased workload. The outcome was that many planning applications were withdrawn and then upscaled to more than 100 units causing more and more delays. Senator O'Mahony spoke about historical issues. This all happened within two years. The Government refused to accept that we had a problem with short-term lettings until after two years of it being constantly highlighted in this House. The Minister would not accept that there was a problem with the Poolbeg West because of lack of resources, an issue that had been raised in this House for two years. We still have no agreement on the 900 units of social and affordable houses and affordable rental. Discussions are still ongoing, which results in further delay so instead of seeing ground being broken in 2017, we will be lucky to see ground by 2022.

My last point affects the acting Leader's neighbours. There are thousands of apartments in this city and other cities that have legacy issues relating to construction during the boom. Residents are facing possible eviction because of fire issues. I can say quite honestly that there is a template in the Department for how this is dealt with. I was involved in setting up that template when I was in government. It is not acceptable to see thousands of our citizens evicted because of problems with fire certificates when there is a template for fixing this. They are not asking for charity. What they are asking for is access to funding at a reasonable rate - not the 7% or 9% that was being offered. We will see thousands of our citizens being evicted on health and safety grounds because of inaction. This issue has been raised for the past two years. There is a template down in the Custom House for how to deal with this. Ministers are actually refusing to meet with residents with this problem. The prospect of possibly thousands of citizens being made homeless is totally unacceptable in the middle of a housing crisis. We need action on this. There was a large march yesterday. We do not need history lessons. This has happened in the past two years. There is a mechanism to deal with this but the Government is refusing to use it.