Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Fine Gael has been in government for a decade and Fianna Fáil has supported it for half of that. We were always told, as we have been tonight, that solving the housing issue was going to take time. Even I believed that for a while. It takes time for anyone to build a house. The crisis has become worse as the years have gone by and a decade later, the housing crisis has become an emergency. People are not able to rent or buy. They will take to the streets in their tens and thousands at the soonest possible time to make their feelings known.

People expect the Government to make radical decisions and interventions that support working people. People see what is possible. They see decisions of a type they never expected to be taken by centre and centre-right parties and radical decisions they thought could not work or might not happen.

Renters, first-time buyers and people in mortgage distress want a break. They want a Minister who does not miss deadline after deadline for legislation and who backs up legislation with cash. Budget 2021 only allocated €35 million for cost rental and €50 million for affordable purchase housing. People want a Minister who does not break election promises. Fianna Fáil promised 10,000 affordable homes every year for ten years in its election manifesto. Why has it abandoned that promise?

Direct capital investment in public housing needs to be doubled to at least €2.8 billion annually to meet social and affordable need. We need more detail on targets and finance to be announced in the later Stages of the Bill. Will the Minister agree annual targets for the delivery of cost rental and affordable purchase homes with every local authority and approved housing bodies, co-operatives and community housing trusts?

Sinn Féin has long argued for affordable and cost rental homes. We need 8,000 affordable homes every year, of which 4,000 should be cost rental and 4,000 affordable purchase. The cost rental model also requires much more detail to give reassurance about security of tenure and tenant protections to cover all eventualities, such as a reduction in income and tenants approaching retirement.

We need to make sure the cost rental units are available for working people who fall just outside the cut-off point for social housing. It is, therefore, crucial that the entry level is set as low as possible. It has been shown that with the right model of financing, rents can be set at between €700 and €900. Instead, we have seen rents of up to €1,200 per month described as affordable, for example, in Dún Laoghaire.

There is no definition of what an affordable rent is, as Senators Moynihan and Boyhan noted. We would like to see it defined as 30% of net income, based on Central Statistics Office, CSO, annual earning indicators. Many people, especially in Dublin, and many friends of mine, would welcome any indication that affordable rent is under 50% of their income. Most of my friends spend at least 50% of their disposable income on rent. I am not against home ownership and nor is Sinn Féin. Many of my friends would happily rent if it were not cheaper to take out a mortgage.

The shared equity scheme should never have made it into this Bill. As the Bill was being drafted, officials from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the ESRI, the Central Bank and a host of economists were warning that the only certain outcome of this provision was a rise in house prices and developers' profits. The origin of this proposal lies in two documents that were developed by two industry lobby groups, Property Industry Ireland and Irish Institutional Property. These two groups are also strongly in favour of co-living and lobbied the Department not to introduce a ban.

The Minister refers to the national price ceilings as upper levels, as if we do not know that a developer will simply see these as a target for which to aim. We are likely to see many housing units costing €399,000 or €499,000 being granted public money because, technically speaking, they are affordable. When the 4% limit was introduced for rent pressure zones, RPZ, it was obvious from an early stage that this was seen as a baseline for landlords. Can the Minister honestly say that 4% functioned as a ceiling and not as a guide for landlords increasing rent?

We need to see an expansion of the serviced sites fund and greater flexibility for local authorities in the amount they can draw down for each scheme. Increasing the allocation to the fund will only make an impact if directed at areas where the need is greater.

We need to double capital investment to at least €2.8 billion annually. The National Economic and Social Council, NESC, the ESRI and the Housing Agency have all called on the Government to deliver affordable homes at scale. The ESRI has called on it to double direct capital investment on social and affordable homes. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has stated the Government can borrow more capital to address the affordable housing crisis.

Good elements of this Bill will only be effective and have impact if they are met with ambition, ambitious targets and cash. Sinn Féin has long argued for affordable and cost rental housing but we are absolutely against the shared equity scheme.