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

I can bring Senator Murnane O'Connor to see 300 different sites to show her where we are building houses.They are real houses, not made up or just drawn onto paper. They are real and it is happening. Yet, people try to say they are not happening, which is a pity. I have no problem saying it is not enough but do not tell me nothing is happening, because that is not true. I have listened to that quite a lot from people. I believe it was Senator Gavan who said that it was time to have a social housing building programme brought in, as if there was no building programme already. People are not that stupid. Do not try to fool them. I absolutely admit that it is not enough; we do the housing count every month to show and declare honestly that families are still without a home. Nobody is hiding that fact. We also have a plan in place to try to deal with that but one should not try to claim that nothing is happening. That is not believable and is not going to get us very far in future plans.

Senator Coffey's point was mainly in that space also. Evidence of payment of rent should be considered when a person applies for a mortgage. We tried to allow for that in our Rebuilding Ireland mortgage. In Deputy Noonan's time as Minister for Finance and after Deputy Donohoe took office as Minister, they communicated the request to allow for that to the Central Bank. We have asked for that to be done. I understand the point made by the Senator, which is that if people can prove they can pay €1,600 in rent, they can certainly afford a mortgage of €1,200. We are trying to get that clear and work is being done on that.

Senator Gavan is not in the Chamber but he referred earlier to tenancy rights. A lot of progress has been made on that. I did not go into it today because the Seanad was the last House to discuss that Bill in July and I assumed that Senators are up to date. I accept that it is not enough change for everybody. A further rent Bill will come through the Houses in the months ahead, sponsored by the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, with more changes. We are looking at the longer-term issue on how to encourage more long-term leases and rents. We are working on that. We have not covered the issue of preventing a person from selling their home because I do not believe it is constitutional. We have discussed this with NGOs and many others. We believe a lot of the changes we made in recent months will give tenants a lot more protection, will give them some extra security of tenure and will make a difference. We will build on that and will constantly monitor it.

It is not a case that we are not making any changes. Every time I come to this House I hear that my party, Fine Gael, is ideologically opposed to social housing or to intervening in the rental market but we are not. We have done that. Even though they are in opposition and can write all the stuff they wish, even Sinn Féin Members' commitment to social housing is less than ours in government. We put the plan together and put the money behind it. In opposition, Members are calling for less and yet they come into this House and tell me that I am ideologically opposed to social housing. That is absolutely not true and I am really getting fed up with that. It does not stack up and it is not factually true. If one really wanted to say the Government is doing less, then I suggest Opposition Members should produce plans that would produce more houses than we are doing, and should commit to it. I have repeatedly asked other parties to commit to long-term funding on social housing and I have not heard them coming out with realistic budgets behind that. That is commitment.