Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in again to debate the issue of housing. I want to start by recognising the positives in Housing for All and the Government response. My colleague, Senator Warfield, alluded to this. In particular, I refer to responding to the need for a winter eviction ban, which was likely to overwhelm homeless services. Almost certainly, there are people and families who will not be entering homelessness over this winter period as a result of the winter eviction ban. Measures such as revising the tenant in situscheme from the beginning of the year regarding limits on local authorities are also welcome. However, the Government needs to be much more proactive in sitting on some local authorities in respect of the tenant in situscheme. Some local authorities are very good in the application of the scheme and others are not. The introduction of Part 4 tenancies and the increase in some renters' rights are welcome, as is the introduction of rent limits, albeit in a hyperinflationary environment. We have spent the last two years increasing, in a piecemeal way, security of tenure for renters, but it does not go far enough.

While we sit here and Members on the Government side laud Housing for All and say it is working, by any measure and yardstick people feel that Government housing policy is failing. Why is that? It is because house prices are up 14%. While house prices are collapsing elsewhere, because of our lack of supply, our prices might slow down but they will not fall. People who cannot afford to get onto the housing ladder will not be able to get onto it. Renters are the most vulnerable group that we have in the housing puzzle. Rents are up 9.2% year-on-year since 2016. That equates an average rent of €1,600 per month nationally, and of over €2,000 per month in Dublin. We are seeing rental increases of over 13% in some parts of Dublin. Evictions have now passed not 10,000 but 11,000. There are 3,000 children living in homeless services. Today, on "Morning Ireland", I listened to a mother who talked about how she was evicted from a house in Ballyfermot. Anybody who knows Ballyfermot knows that it was built by the State. This mother was evicted by a private landlord from a house in Ballyfermot and she is living in a homeless hub in Harold's Cross that is funded by the State. She was standing outside the Springvale development site in Chapelizod which is two minutes walk from where I live. We now know that that rapid-build development, which was promised in 2018, is not going to be delivered until 2023 to 2024. Rapid-build modular houses that have a lifespan of 60 years were meant to be delivered. There are problems on the Springvale site which means that the development will not be delivered until 2024. People should be sitting in those houses this winter. It is the same with the rapid-build developments on Bonham Street and Cork Street, which is right beside where I am from. In Dolphin's Barn we saw the first phase of the regeneration redevelopment in 2018, but by 2028 only 44 houses will be delivered. The plans for the first cost-rental development, on Emmet Road in Inchicore, have just been submitted. Potentially, we are looking at the first phase of people moving in in 2026-28 - we just do not know. It has taken six years for the plans to be submitted.

While the Government might laud Housing for All and say commencements and building are up, there is fundamentally a mismatch at the heart of the policy. That is because Housing for All is relying on the private sector to deliver what is a fundamental social need. We would not have the numbers of people entering homeless accommodation if we had not outsourced our social housing need to the private sector and small landlords. It should not matter whether or not landlords are selling up regarding our homeless figures. The reason it matters is because the tenants are people who should be housed long term in the social housing system, and instead they are being housed by the private sector. The reason that we have delays in house building is because everything is in the private sector. We are trying to put together and look at the pieces of the puzzle for the private sector to respond or not respond. We do not rely on the private sector for health or education. We should not do the same for housing either.

The fundamental mismatch at the heart of Government housing policy is that we need to move the private sector along, and we need it to respond in order to deliver what should be a fundamental human need for citizens in our country. I welcome the progress made in Housing for All and I want Government housing policy to work because I do not like living in the midst of a housing crisis. I do not like living with people who have to survive in housing insecurity. As we can see, local authorities are not stepping up to the plate and increasing their involvement in delivery. Fundamentally, unless the State puts up not just the money but also increases its involvement in it, we will always move in and out of housing crises. While the introduction of cost rental is most welcome, countries that do not limp from housing crisis to housing crisis, such as Austria, for example, have always funded the state sector, whether it is through limited profit associations or local authorities. In Ireland, we tend to rely on the private sector. Unless we address that mismatch and treat it as a public service the same way we treat health and education, we will always be reliant on these shocks to the private sector.