We are in the midst of a full-blown national housing crisis. It is a crisis which needs to be tackled with determination and a real sense of urgency. As the Tánaiste knows, rents are soaring. Up to 130,000 applicants are on social housing waiting lists and housing supply is minimal. The rent caps in the rent supplement scheme are so out of line with market rents that they are little more than a fantasy. The Central Bank deposit rules have made it incredibly difficult for first-time buyers in major urban areas and many of those who are looking to trade up are, in effect, trapped by the 20% deposit rule. Mortgage interest relief is gone for home buyers and banks are leaning on indebted landlords who have good tenants to force them to push rents towards market rents. Banks are repossessing homes with increasing zeal and do not even have to comply now with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears before proceeding with the repossession of a home. The cruellest face of the housing crisis is the scandal of homelessness with people sleeping rough on our streets and 1,500 children living in emergency accommodation.
With each passing day, we are treated to another leak about what the Government intends to do to tackle the crisis. Today's instalment is tax breaks for landlords if they accept tenants on rent supplement or the housing assistance payment. That proposal will simply not work, primarily because it will not add a single new unit to housing stock. Second, if a landlord has the option of accepting rent of €1,400 a month in the private market or taking €800 per month under the rent supplement or HAP scheme, he or she would want one hell of a tax break to choose the latter. Every Deputy is inundated day after day with housing related issues. The elephant in the room is the lack of housing supply. The consistent message we are all getting from the construction sector is that it is simply not viable to build. There are a number of steps the Government needs to take urgently. First, it must examine why it costs so much to build a home in Ireland today. It must examine the State controlled costs which are an important part of those input costs, including development levies and the Irish Water connection which I am told is adding €3,000 to €4,000 to the cost of building a new home. It must make finance available so that residential construction can get under way. In July, €500 million was announced through the Strategic Investment Fund, but it is not yet up and running. It will be towards the end of the year at the earliest before it is operational and I am told that the cost of borrowing from the fund will be in the region of 14%, which is absolutely mad at a time when the State is borrowing at record low interest rates of between 1% and 2%.
Within the Tánaiste's own Department, she needs to lift the rent caps immediately to bring some sense of reality to the rent supplement and HAP schemes and to introduce a level of rent certainty. This is a crisis in the here and now. It is all very fine to talk about grandiose plans for billions of euro to build thousands of houses, but the reality is that tonight 1,500 children in Ireland will sleep in emergency accommodation. There are 130,000 families on the social housing list. It is a scandal, it is not acceptable and it is not going to get any better without major intervention. There is no building and there is no supply and the problem is only going to get worse. What is the Government going to do about it?
