Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

notes that:

- the Housing Commission’s final report was published last Wednesday;

- its findings are a damning indictment of the Governments failing housing plan;

- the report concluded that ‘ineffective decision making’, ‘reactive policy making’ and ‘risk aversion’ are ‘undermining affordability’;

- the report argues that successive Governments have failed ‘to successfully treat housing as a critical social and economic priority’;

- the report also notes that ‘Ireland has, by comparison with our European partners, one of the highest levels of public expenditure for housing, yet one of the poorest outcomes’;

- among the key findings of the report is the need to address a housing deficit of up to 256,000 homes above existing Government targets;

- among the key recommendations of the report is the need to increase the supply of social and affordable homes to 20 per cent of the national housing stock;

agrees that:

- only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will address the housing crisis created by decades of bad Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Housing Policy;

- this will require a change of Government and a new housing plan with the scale of ambition as set out in the Housing Commission’s report.

I, too, welcome the guests in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, to the House.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil like to present themselves as the parties of homeownership. The problem is that almost none of the facts support that contention. If I was to speak about systematic failures, ineffective decision making, reactive policy making and risk aversion having an impact on supply and undermining affordability, someone would think I was taking an excerpt from an Opposition speech in the other Chamber but I am not; these are in fact excerpts from the Housing Commission report. The final Housing Commission report was published last Wednesday and its findings are a damning indictment of the Government’s failed housing plan. The report concluded that "ineffective decision making", "reactive policy making” and "risk aversion" are “undermining affordability”. The report argues that successive Governments have failed "to successfully treat housing as a critical social and economic priority". Increasingly, housing is an economic priority with gardaí, nurses, factory workers and ordinary workers are unable to afford homes in our country.

The Housing Commission was established under the current Government. It has said what every family and person across our country already knows, which is that the Government’s housing policy is failing us. Not only is the Government failing to deliver on housing; it is actually making the housing crisis worse. Perhaps most damning of all, the Government is failing to treat the housing crisis as a critical social and economic priority.

After 12 years of Fine Gael in government, propped up by Fianna Fáil for seven years, homeownership is at its lowest level in 50 years. Homeownership as a percentage of housing stock, particularly for younger people, continues to fall. The Government loves to say that 500 first-time buyers are drawing down their mortgages every week, and that is true, but even with the Government’s inflationary help-to-buy and first-home schemes, the vast majority of those people are not buying new homes. They cannot afford to buy the new homes that are being built because average house prices are now in excess of €400,000. The homes they can buy are now further and further away from the places where they work and where their children go to school, and the community that supports them. That has its own cost in terms of huge commutes, a huge impact on their financial well-being, especially as the cost of petrol and diesel rises, and huge impacts on their mental health and our environment.

If all that was not bad enough, let us look at the affordable housing schemes. The Government continually states that 4,000 affordable housing solutions have been provided in the last year but solutions are not homes.That is something those looking to avail of this scheme know all too well. The fact is that a large number of these solutions were approvals for high-risk, shared equity schemes and loans that were never drawn down. In other words, people did not buy the home. How many affordable homes did the Government deliver last year? It was 1,368, so the Government missed its own target by 61%. The year before the Government only delivered 1,007 homes, again missing its own target by 52%. Even more remarkable is the price of these so-called affordable homes. In Dublin Mid-West the cost of an affordable scheme is €435,000. In Lusk, County Dublin, in the housing Minister's own constituency, it is €565,000. In what world is €565,000 affordable? That is before you look at the fine print, because if the price of one of these so-called affordable homes does increase, the volume of equity owned at the end will also increase. The purchaser may have to pay even more. If, after spending more than 30 years working hard to pay down the mortgage, they have not paid off the more than €100,000 equity, this amount will be passed on to their children as a penalty they will inherit and have to pay.

When it comes to affordable rental in Citywest, the Land Development Agency bought apartments from Cairn Homes. The average rents of these apartments in the suburbs are now €1,400 for a one-bedroom apartment, €1,600 for a two-bedroom apartment and a staggering €1,800 for a three-bedroom apartment. They are more expensive than those paid by existing renters in those areas. Again, in what world is this affordable? For years Sinn Féin has been saying we need to meet social and affordable housing need. We need to deliver affordable homes at an unprecedented scale. We need to deliver houses that teachers, gardaí, nurses, factory and retail workers can afford - houses that people can gain access to. We need to support struggling homeowners with proper mortgage interest relief. We need to take the pressure off renters and put one month's rent back in every renter's pocket through tax relief. We have to stop vulture funds buying up family homes and student housing. We have to cut the red tape to ensure the necessary resources and finance are available to people. We have to reform the planning process so we can deliver the homes needed at speed. We have to ensure we have the workers to build the homes and intervene so apprentices can complete their training on time. We have to encourage those qualified construction workers with Irish qualifications who are all across the world to come back to Ireland to help us. What is painfully clear is that the Government is neither willing nor able to take these basic steps, and so it must fall to the people to drive change. As we go to the polls on Friday, 7 June for the local and European elections, people have an opportunity to send a strong message to Government and make clear that the time for change is now. It is not only possible, but by people coming out to vote in strong numbers, Sinn Féin will fight for them at every level of government. There is a better and fairer way, but this Government is not going to deliver it.