Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today and for facilitating an early debate on housing for this Seanad. It is the single biggest threat to far too many of our citizens' lives, young and old. I really appreciate and I believe the House really appreciates the priority the Government and the Minister, in his new Ministry, are giving to housing. I wish him well. He has our absolute support.

When I say it is the biggest challenge facing this generation I speak as a mother of three young adults. I live with their experience of it. I was first elected as a local authority member back in 2004, however, so I have more than 20 years' perspective on the housing challenge. When I was privileged enough to be nominated by the Taoiseach in 2020 as the Fianna Fáil housing spokesperson in the Seanad, I took on that task. I was proud to take it on to try to address a decade of undersupply, which the Minister himself mentioned. The challenge was to change housing policy, housing legislation and housing funding. As we begin the debate today, it can feel daunting because it is a huge challenge to get to 300,000 new homes, to make that commitment and deliver on it. It is worth acknowledging, however, the progress that was made over the past four years. That is important because the statistics do not lie. It is not a lie to say that, in the four years, the legislation, policy and funding changed. Funding increased from less than €500 million a year to more than €4 billion a year. Legislation changed so that local authorities had the power to build homes, not just social homes but affordable homes to purchase and to rent. We introduced affordable cost rental. We put the Land Development Agency on a statutory footing so that State-owned lands could be used to deliver homes for our people.

In that period, more than 130,000 new homes were built, as the Minister himself mentioned. In some of the years in the previous decade, fewer than 7,000 homes were built. That 130,000 new homes were built meant 16,000 individuals and families were either prevented from entering homelessness or exited homelessness because the supply was increasing. Importantly, the supply of social homes was increasing. More than 42,000 social homes were delivered and more than 12,000 local authority voids, that is, the vacant boarded-up flats you might see around Dublin city or in other towns, were brought back into productive use as family homes.

The vacant and derelict property grants which were introduced had more than 11,000 applications. They have been a huge success. They give funding to individuals to take a vacant property and turn it into their home. Last year a record number of first-time buyers drew down a mortgage. More than 26,000 individuals and families drew down a mortgage for the first time. That equated to more than 500 first-time buyers every week drawing down a mortgage.

Renters' protections were strengthened. Rent caps were enforced. A €1,000 renter's tax credit was introduced for 400,000 renters for the first time. Affordable cost rental as a model of housing was introduced.

The Minister is right: the output last year was disappointing in the end. The last quarter did not perform in the way we all wanted it to. The pipeline is strong, however, and we should be encouraged by the fact that, in the year to February, more than 64,000 homes commenced. That is a good, important and strong pipeline. Housing construction in Ireland is at the highest levels in Europe. We can take encouragement from that.I do not think any of us can get comfortable or start sitting on our laurels but we need to acknowledge that in the past four years, we had Covid, Brexit and war in Europe, which we had not experienced in decades. Our population increased and our economy came back stronger after Covid. We are at full employment and purchasing power is at its highest. The way we live has changed. We no longer live four to six people in a household but one to three people in a household, so there is a doubling of the housing requirement. This State stepped up to the plate, increased supply and innovated by introducing affordable cost rental housing, giving powers to local authorities and the Land Development Agency, and using modern methods of construction.

We have a bigger challenge in this term - I do not envy the Minister's task - because we have to get to over 300,000 new homes by 2030. We have a commitment as a State to eliminate homelessness by 2030. That is a commitment made by the State and it is a big challenge. The only way we can do that is by increasing supply.

In the few minutes of speaking time I have left, I would like to mention some areas we would like the Minister and the Government to focus on. We need to massively scale up to the next level in order to get to the 60,000 homes a year that are needed. This necessitates an all-of-government approach. The Minister has my admiration and support but he and his Department cannot do this on their own; they need the support of all of the Government. When we wanted to solve Covid, we treated it like an emergency. The State made choices that were, at times, unpopular and uncomfortable for people. This was necessary because we all wanted to defeat Covid and get to a safe place. I believe that everybody in this Government wants to get to a safe place where every one of our citizens has access to a home that is adequate and meets their needs. This is why I speak of an all-of-government approach. Such an approach involves the Department of Finance. I mention that Department first because it knows that it will cost somewhere in the region of €24 billion a year to fix the housing crisis. We need the Department of Finance because it has the finance experts and we need it to come forward with proposals to help us to fix this. We can do a certain amount but the Department of Finance will have to play a very significant role.

The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has to come to the table with the legislation, the regulations and the controls on short-term lets. I am not talking about letting a room in one's home on Airbnb; I am talking about full family homes, particularly in this city. At a time when families are living in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, there are tourists living or staying in family homes. It is wrong and has to be stopped.

I fully support and I would like to hear more about the Minister's strategic housing delivery office. It is really important and a great initiative on the part of the Minister. That office, along with the all-of-government approach I have mentioned,, should help us to meet our objective of achieving our commitments in the Lisbon Declaration on the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness.

It is very important to recognise that last year alone, the financial cost of emergency homeless accommodation was somewhere in the region of €360 million. While that is a very large figure, it does not reflect the human cost of emergency accommodation, and the instability and insecurity of it. Everything must be done to achieve our commitments under the Lisbon declaration by 2030. That includes the declustering of emergency accommodation in the inner city. It is not sustainable for the individuals who are being accommodated there or for the community.

On the one-size-fits-all housing approach to the country, I believe that a specific intervention is needed for the capital and the inner city. Nurses working in the Rotunda, Mater and Temple Street hospitals, gardaí working in Store Street, the Bridewell and Mountjoy, and teachers working in St. Peter's National School and all across the city are travelling from Louth, Wicklow, Meath and Wexford, which is not sustainable. My constituency of Dublin Central has a population of 120,000 people. Every single working day, that population increases to over half a million people. That means that there are 400,000 people coming in every day, many of them to work. Why is that? It is because there is not a sufficient supply of homes. That brings me to my next point. The vacant and derelict homes grants which were introduced for €50,000 and €70,000 have been a great success. There have been over 11,000 applicants already. Those grants need to be continued. The over-the-shop grant also needs to be introduced and increased. When someone is refitting an over-the-shop property, there are building regulations and fire regulations that have to be complied with, and there are additional costs. It would open up spaces in cities, towns and villages throughout the country.

On the topic of apartments, as the Minister mentioned, those in the Opposition who campaigned and drove out investment in the building of apartments in our country should hang their heads in shame. There are 55,000 planning applications for apartments that have not progressed because of the agitation by those in the Opposition who basically undermined and destabilised the environment for any investment in the provision of homes. We have to have apartments building for our urban areas. There is a place for them. It is not for every community setting, but in the city we need it.

I look forward to the rest of the debate and thank the Minister for his time today.