Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh míle maith agat, a Chathaoirligh Ghníomhaigh. Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I welcome the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and wish him well with this Bill and in the important work that he has before him.

The Minister stated at the close of his speech that he would use every weapon in his arsenal. I might paraphrase and adjust that slightly by saying that the Government needs to get up off its arsenal and use every weapon that it finds there. It is not only a matter of social justice. It is not only a matter of addressing the extraordinary pain and hurt that is felt by young to early middle-aged people who are working hard, who have tough and stressful lives in many cases, and who are completely locked out of the housing market, as they see it. It is not only about addressing the pain and the hurt of their parents as they contemplate an upcoming generation that will be less well off and enjoy fewer life opportunities in many ways than they will. It is, perhaps, also about securing the future of centrist politics in this country and that is no small matter when one considers the consequences of letting extremes come to the fore in politics. To be centrist is not to be bland. To be centrist is to keep an eye on the common good at all times and not to set one person against the other or one class against the other but to seek to look out for the vulnerable and to create the maximum opportunity for human flourishing for all of those who want to participate in society.

I was asked in a radio interview recently whether we as a nation were hung up on home ownership and whether we should think more like they do on the Continent where people are happy to rent for their lifetime.As I have said before, however, that is, and remains, the wrong question for as long as people cannot get access to homes at a fair and reasonable rent and cannot be sure of their ability to stay in such homes into their old age.

We must also bear in mind that Ireland is a relatively low-density country. It should be possible for us to continue with the aspiration most of us have to own our place, even if it is only the size of a postage stamp, a place that is ours and ours to consider leaving to our loved ones and so on. I think it was Senator Garvey who mentioned fixity of tenure and the historical roots of that phrase. It goes all the way back to the 1850s, to the tenants' rights association who sought the three Fs, namely, free sale, fair rent and fixity of tenure. We might say that the three Fs today are fair rent, fixity of tenure and feasibility of home ownership. I mean fixity of tenure not in the old sense of being able to hold on to one's property as long as one pays the rent but, rather, to be able to hold onto it at a rent one will always be able to pay, including when one retires and has a lower income. That is the future which must be budgeted for if people are going to be able to have confidence in rental. These days, the third F is feasibility of home ownership and that is all down to supply. We know the figures; we have 65,000 on housing waiting lists and 33,000 houses per year are what we need to building. Let us say that between 12,000 and 20,000 were built last year, depending on how one calculates it, so we have a growing problem.

I agree with Senator Higgins in this respect and paraphrase her in saying that the State must not be afraid to be active in the housing market and to be a major player in the market, be that as a developer, lender or landlord, until this problem is solved. In that context, the Affordable Housing Bill is an important and necessary start. The Land Development Agency legislation is vital but this is only the beginning of our attempts to solve the problem. I thank it was Labour's Deputy Nash I heard during the week paying the compliment to the British Conservative Party that it always understood the value of homeownership. Going right back to Thatcher, that was understood. The stakeholder society is what we must aim for. We will have major social problems if we do not create and maintain a stakeholder society where people aspire, where they can own their own homes and where they can have incomes. If, however, we are talking about affordable houses being capped at €500,000, then two people would each need to be earning €65,000 per year and this would have to be by 3,500 in order to get near that sum. There is no future in a society where both parents have to be working to the pin of their collars in order to be able to afford something described as affordable.

There are two cohorts we have not mentioned in this debate. The first is the homeless, who continue to be a category of people not directly addressed by this legislation and who must be at the top of our agenda. The second group is children, whose future depends on being able to have access to parents who are not going to have to work every hour God sends in order to pay a mortgage. To quote the prophet Isaiah, our people should "live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest."