Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome. I thank the Senators for their motion. It is very welcome and one I support. It is important to say that much work has been done by this Government that people probably do not know about. Housing problems are everywhere and they are multiple. Each individual person has a different housing need. That is certainly the experience I have had going from door to door and in the work I have been doing.

We have the owner-occupier guarantee whereby local authorities can designate up to 50% of any new housing development for individual owners. The zoned land tax was designated to penalise speculation. We will soon have the vacant homes tax and a value sharing mechanism to ensure that institutional investments cannot make undue profits from housing in Ireland anymore. The Land Development Agency, LDA, is building public houses on public land. We also have new cost-rental homes being built around the country, alongside the 90,000 social homes, between now and 2030.

None of this is enough, however. I am hopeful that over the coming years, people will see that differences are happening and will actually feel and experience them, and that the housing need of every home we go to or person we come across will be met or they have a hope it will be met soon.

I will go in different directions with this motion because there are 12 asks of the Government. On gender-responsive policies, as stated in the motion, "households headed by lone parents, the majority of whom are women, make up 53% of homeless families in the State". That is not spoken about enough. That requires gender-responsive policies. I will support that and happily work with Senators and the Minister of State to address that.

I am delighted to report that work on ending direct provision, which has been spearheaded by my colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, is advancing at pace. He has personally committed to ending direct provision and any profit element therein and introducing own-door accommodation. We have new challenges at the moment with Ukraine and that will have to come under consideration. I agree with everyone when they say we must treat every person as an individual. Everyone needs to feel the fairness of the system.

At least a minimum of developments should adhere to universal design principles. Obviously, the whole idea of universal design is that every development would have universal design principles. We must be realistic, however, and say that we cannot rebuild everything from scratch.

The points on the urgent audit of living conditions in all Traveller-specific accommodation, as well as bypassing Part 8 planning for Traveller-specific accommodation, were agreed in the Joint Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community, on which I sit and which is chaired by Senator Flynn. It was an excellent report but we all said at the time that we need to constantly come back to see what progress is being made. There has not been much progress in all the halting sites I have visited. Certainly, in my own county of Galway, we met with the council, having visited all the halting sites as a committee without the council, I might add. We were given very pretty looking designs for developments, none of which have been executed. It is constantly promise after promise. Local authorities have much to answer for. It is also a national Government issue, however. I definitely take that on board.

Another of the Senators' asks is to recognise the traumatic impact of homelessness. Budget 2022 has committed to a record €194 million for homeless services. Of course, this should be increased to provide every homeless person and family with wraparound supports. It was significant that the Housing First programme was in Housing for All. That was a really good move. That is something all the homeless and housing organisations I was in contact with were looking for. I was in the housing committee part of a public participation network and that was something we sought.

There is so much in this motion but I will also address the issue of vacancy. The motion calls on the Government to "take immediate action to bring the 4,000 vacant council houses owned by local authorities into use". I am pleased to say that we in the Green Party are passionate about this area. I recently supported my colleague, Deputy Matthews, on the vacancy, dereliction and regeneration Bill 2022. If implemented, and I hope the Minister of State will take this on board, this would see a 3% tax on all homes in Ireland that have been vacant for six months, to be collected by Revenue. All money collected would go back to the relevant local authority to address the housing need in that area. A revamped derelict sites tax would also be collected by Revenue and go back to building sites in the local authority. A one-stop-shop system would make it easier for people because two problems exist, the first of which is that homeowners find it quite difficult. It is really important that we look at Revenue doing the collection rather than local authorities because the collection rates are outrageous with regard to vacancy and dereliction.