In the absence of the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, I hoped the Minister for Finance would remain in the House to hear my case for a housing commission. However, I welcome the Minister of State.
I was deeply concerned by the response I received during Environment questions from the Minister of State with responsibility for housing, Deputy Molloy. He refused to accept that there was a housing crisis, despite the growing evidence clear to every Member. There is the empirical data of 40,000 families and individuals on local authority housing waiting lists at the last count. It is clear that buying a house is beyond the reach of even double income young couples. More and more of these people are turning to local authorities to address social housing needs.
The attitude of the Minister of State and the Government to this crisis is complacent. There is daily evidence of extraordinary practices in the housing market. This was underscored today when Annette and Stephen Butler were forced to go to court to seek to retain a house whose price had risen by an amazing £20,000, putting it well beyond their reach. They were gazumped. Unfortunately, the Government rejected a Fine Gael proposal to deal with this issue without proposing any other measure to deal with the problem which is affecting individuals and couples daily.
There is a crisis in the supply of houses. There is also a new crisis in the rental sector. The impact of the measures implemented on foot of the Bacon report have put pressure on the rental sector. People are being forced to look for rent subsidies. An extraordinary amount of money is being paid out as we try to deal with a scarce resource being sought by an ever-increasing number of people.
In last Saturday's The Irish Times, Dr. Murphy, one of the authors of the Bacon report, stated:
The Government is being amazingly silent on the long-term issues raised in this report. It has not given any convincing or credible reason for not implementing policy quickly. In fact, we do not know what is going on at all.
That is the response of people charged with mapping out a course of action for the Government on housing. The Government and the Minister of State must acknowledge that a housing crisis exists. The Government must establish the housing commission which I and many voluntary housing groups working at the front edge of housing provision are calling for. It must also bring together all interested parties to address the various issues in social housing, not just the supply side.
The Government should instruct local authorities to establish social housing land banks and provide funding for them to do so. It must also require each authority to develop a social housing plan. The Government should provide immediate funding for the provision of infrastructure such as sewage, water and roads into these social housing land banks.
The £15 million provided to augment the sums to date is totally inadequate and will go nowhere to address the scale of the housing crisis. This is one of the main social problems which the Government must address. I hope the Minister of State will provide a concrete response to these issues.
