Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have a few minutes to address this issue, which is really important for all of us. I welcome the Minister. Knowing him as I do, I know the commitment he has and the hours he is putting in to make this work. I have every confidence he will succeed. I also compliment our colleague, Senator Fitzpatrick, who does Trojan work with this. I assure Senators that it is the top issue at all our parliamentary party meetings. There is a lot of repetition here and stuff I could go into but I will not do that. I just want to dwell on the cost-rental scheme for a few moments. It is basically aimed at people above social housing income thresholds. People might not think that this relates to rural areas but when I was a Deputy, several couples would come in to my office per week telling me they could not qualify for a local authority house as their income was too high and they could not get a mortgage because their income was too low.

For many years, politicians have neglected those people. I see a chink of light here. I have no doubt that the Minister's sincerity in this is something we should acknowledge and respect and we must give him the opportunity to do it. There are many people who have been trapped in that situation for many years. I have seen people cry in my office when we had no options for them and nowhere to go. It is an absolutely outrageous situation. That is why I am a big fan of cost-rental and why it will work. Also proposed are direct-build local authority affordable homes, priced between €160,000 to €310,000. There is already €310 million in place for 6,000 homes. Remember when all the criticism comes - and there have been some very good contributions this evening - I did not hear many people say there is a budget of in excess of €3 billion to deal with the housing crisis. Some people among will say that money is one thing and delivery another. However, I assure them, from speaking to the Minister and seeing the way he is working on this, that I have no doubt we will see delivery. Of course, I agree that it is not going to happen overnight but even in the short term we will see a more positive outlook because if people see light at the end of the tunnel, they will certainly rally to this and see it is the proper way forward.

We also have the shared equity scheme whereby up to 2,000 homes will be supported every year. Returning to what Senator Boyhan said, he is right that Rebuilding Ireland is still there but the Minister has a new housing plan to replace it. Rent stability is a massive issue. Again, in rural areas I have noticed quite a lot of people in fear. This is even with the law allowing people a certain period to be in their house before they can be pushed out of it. People nowadays have a huge fear of rent not working out for them, so they come under pressure from a landlord. Even with what is in the law they still feel threatened. Rent stability is a massive issue. If we give long-term rental security to people, it would be a massive change going forward. I would not in any way discourage people from building homes. We can talk about the Vienna model but let us have an Irish model. Let us do things the Irish way. Too many times in these Houses we say that something is done such a way in such a country. Let us adopt our own model. That is the way to do it because we can talk about the Vienna model but this is Ireland. The geography of this country might mean that model would not work out too well.

Finally, there is the expansion of Part V to 20% in order to include affordable housing. That is significant and important and I am delighted to see the Minister doing that because it will have a very positive effect. I remind the House that the Minister and the Government gave quite a lot of leeway to local authorities, so they could borrow €6 million to build houses. We need to get the local authorities building houses and that is something that can happen in the short term. We also need to ask the executives of the local authorities to get schemes up and running in every county they are needed in, that will be a plus.

I have full confidence in the Minister. To be honest, I believe he will go down as one of our best Ministers with responsibility for housing. We all know he cannot do it overnight or in a couple of weeks but in the months and years ahead we will see that his policy and that of this Government was the right one. I join with everyone here in saying that if we cannot put a roof over people's heads and give them some security in their houses, then we are not fit to be parliamentarians. It must be done in conjunction with others, with everybody agreeing on most things and not trying to bring a given proposal down because it comes from a given party or the Government. We must work together on this.