Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank the Sinn Féin Senators for bringing forward this very important motion. I brought up this issue under the Order of Business last week when the report of the commission was published and I asked for a debate on it. The Labour Party is very glad to speak on it tonight. There can be no doubt, as has been said already by people on this side of the House, that the Housing Commission's report is a damning indictment of the Government's failure to address the housing crisis. It highlights what I and Labour Party candidates throughout the State have been hearing on the doorsteps in recent weeks and months. Rents are rising, homelessness is at a record high and increasing every month and house prices are soaring. The Government has failed to manage and tackle this crisis. The commission's estimate of a housing deficit ranging from 212,500 to 265,000 homes, based on the 2022 census figures, sets out the scale of the problem the country currently faces. The report confirms that the supply of housing is far too slow. The biggest failure of the Government is that it has continued to rely almost exclusively on the private market, while implementing other policies that merely tinker around the edges of the housing crisis we are facing.

Recent years of economic prosperity have been wasted by failing to tackle what is undoubtedly the civil rights issue of our time. The Labour Party is calling for immediate and radical change. We would take decisive action to end the overreliance on private investors in the housing market and adopt a State-led approach to building more affordable homes, dealing with the rent crisis and tackling the homelessness crisis.

The Labour Party proposes to allocate an additional €1.45 billion in capital for the delivery of housing. We will protect renters and end speculative land hoarding. We are committed to doubling State delivery of cost rental and affordable housing, increasing income limits for social housing eligibility to €40,000 per person and moving towards doubling State investment in direct social builds.

I wanted to raise a number of specific issues as part of this debate. The Croí Cónaithe grant has been mentioned on both sides of the House at this stage. I am on record as welcoming this grant and the thinking behind it. We had a Commencement matter on dereliction and vacancy which resulted in a good debate some months ago. I continue to hear about issues regarding the drawdown for this grant. That is why I want to highlight it with the Minister of State. There seems to be an overreliance on solicitors as part of the process. This is causing a lot of difficulty for people I deal with. The problem I am increasingly coming across is that the applicant simply does not have the money to pay the builder in advance. Mention has been made of the €50,000 and €70,000, which is great because we need to tackle dereliction and vacancy, but none of the people I am dealing with can afford €50,000 or €70,000 to pay the builder in advance. Given that the last figure I saw, which was for 2023, showed that only 100 of those grants were drawn down, has the Government any plans to change the system and perhaps introduce stage payments? This has been mentioned previously by colleagues on both sides of the House in the context of Croí Cónaithe. I ask for this to be considered because of the high rate of dereliction in many areas.

The Minister of State will not be surprised by the second issue I want to raise, which is the housing adaptation grant. This is a good grant and I have welcomed the investment by Government in this area. The Minister of State will be very familiar with the Commencement matters I have raised on a continuous basis. As far as I know, the report is still with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform or the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. However, I have people who cannot live in their own homes and, unfortunately, have to go to nursing homes or to live with relatives because they cannot get more than the €30,000 limit which is on the housing adaptation grant at present. It is simply not good enough that we are now talking about this.I have spoken to the Minister of State on a Commencement matter three times. I spoke twice with him and once with a previous Minister of State for housing and we still do not have an answer to this. That is something that would make a difference to so many people. I know the Minister of State said in our last debate that something comes through his office on a regular basis. I would appreciate him again using this opportunity to comment on that.

In conclusion, like other members of this House, not a day goes by that I am not contacted by a family or, indeed, multiple families, who have received a notice to quit or who continue to live in their family home, which has been mentioned, given the overcrowding that exists in the market at the moment. Not a week goes by that I am not contacted by a number of couples seeking affordable housing as their wages are not enough to cover the rising house prices.

We urge the Government to listen to the Housing Commission. It has been stated here that it is doing that. We need decisive, radical action. We need a reset of housing policy. The time for half measures is over. Ireland needs a comprehensive housing strategy that truly addresses the housing disaster and crisis we have at the moment. Housing is the number one issue for so many of our citizens and it needs Government policy to reflect that. Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit.