Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 6 Jul 2017

Vol. 957 No. 2

Quarterly Report on Housing: Statements

Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government (Deputy Eoghan Murphy)

I thank Deputies and committee members for scheduling time to discuss the homeless emergency and housing crisis we are currently facing. I have already had the opportunity to appear in front of the committee to discuss the latest quarterly report on Rebuilding Ireland. It was a good engagement and I want to thank individual members of the committee who were very generous with their ideas and time outside of the committee. This opportunity for statements on the latest report is very welcome. To those Deputies not on the committee, I would like to direct them to my opening statement at the committee.

I would like to use this opportunity to discuss the report, as well as some broader issues relating to Rebuilding Ireland. Rebuilding Ireland is an excellent plan, and I commend the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Simon Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy Damien English, for the time and effort they have put in to it, together with officials in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. A lot of work and detail has gone in to designing the framework for providing new homes and it is already showing progress, be it in rent pressure zones, where the latest data shows us a stabilisation in these zones on rents that were quickly escalating, or the new build activity that is underway.

There has been an increase of almost 40% in planning permission applications year-on-year to March 2017 and an increase of almost 40% in commencement notices year-on-year to March 2017. There has been an increase of roughly one-third in the connections to the ESB grid in Dublin year-on-year to March 2017. There has been an increase in the number of homeless families and individuals who have been given homes since the plan was launched. More than 3,000 homeless individuals found sustainable solutions in 2016 and roughly 1,200 families prevented from having to stay in hotels or were moved out of hotels to better and longer-term accommodation in the past 12 months. Rebuilding Ireland is working. In respect of any new policies or any new direction that a Government might take, it is good practice to review those policies and plans from time to time. That is what I have been asked to do by the Taoiseach. He has asked me to review Rebuilding Ireland within three months, to identify additional measures, to assess the need for greater quantum of social housing build, to consider a vacant homes tax and to examine new measures to support and-or encourage landlords. I do not claim to be an expert on housing, neither am I coming at this review cold. I have had a particular perspective from my time in the Department of Finance this past year as new initiatives on the housing and homelessness front have come through that Department. I have also dealt with the issue in regard to the wider mortgage and investment market that were part of my brief.

From my time on the banking inquiry with the Minister of State, Deputy John Paul Phelan, I also have a good store of knowledge of how we got things wrong in the past as we sought to meet the housing needs of our growing population, the different incentives that were brought in to the market, the different arguments that were made at the time by the different lobbyists and interests, which had very easy access to Government, and the difficulty there was in removing these incentives when they were well past their usefulness. In terms of the current review, I have already said that I am considering all ideas and not taking any off the table until they have been thoroughly stress tested. I do not care whose ideas they are or what motivates them. If they work, they work. I would like to outline some of the things I hope to address or have already addressed as part of my review. It is regrettable that there are still too many families who are homeless living in hotels. Living is probably not the best way to describe what they are going through and the difficult circumstances they face. While it is much better than these families having to sleep rough, in no way is it an answer. The target for this year was ambitious but necessary. It drove a major effort to help families. As I said, 1,200 families or more were assisted in the past 12 months. My first target is to prevent families from entering hotels and find them other accommodation, including hubs. While hubs are not a long-term answer, they are better than hotels and are only a first response.

An extra €10 million has been allocated to build new hubs for more than 200 families. My second target is to get those families currently in bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels out of them. Last week, I reported that of the 650 or so families in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation at the end of May, one third had been offered sustainable long-term homes, one third had been offered accommodation in hubs and one third had been offered HAP solutions. This is progress for these families and I would like to thank everyone who has done such important work to help them. I have met a number of these workers and volunteers at this stage and their enthusiasm and determination is to be admired. I have also visited some of the facilities and emergency accommodation where they help so many people every day of the week. Unfortunately, presentations of families continued in June, though the numbers were down in May which is welcome. Exceptional cases means that some families will continue in hotels for some time because they will need tailored solutions.

Another issue we need to address in the review is the numbers involved. I have already agreed to examine whether there is a better way of counting and publishing our homeless numbers. As I have announced, we are going to stop referring to ESB connections as completions. ESB numbers are good because they do represent new or empty homes being available, including new house completions, but the data is not accurate enough. My Department is engaging with the ESB to see if we can get better information from it, and two groups, one in the CSO and another in my Department, are examining how we can improve our numbers and more adequately capture the completion of new homes.

This work may not be completed within three months. Getting a true picture of completions is not as simple as looking at BER certificates or BCMS. If we are going to develop a new way of counting the method has to stand up and be robust. We have to know our numbers, and we all have to trust those numbers, in order to know where we need to go. I am also examining how we report our numbers in the quarterly reports, because it can be confusing, as Deputies pointed out to me at a committee meeting, and our reporting mechanisms could be streamlined and simplified.

As for the wider numbers and targets, I am looking at these as part of the review. If a Deputy tells me he or she does not trust the pipeline or does not think it is accurate, then I have to look at this. It would be irresponsible not to. It is also important to recognise that the 90,000 people on the housing list will not all have social housing homes by 2021. We will need to take a longer-term approach in addressing some of the aspects of the housing problems we face. We also have to be mindful of building in a sustainable way. We have to take care that, in moving quickly to address a crisis, we do not build in crises of the future, be they economic or social.

As we build we have to think of more than just the numbers. We have to think of the material, environment, location and social mix, as well as the wider and community needs and the needs of the elderly and the less abled. We also have to think of the responsibility of the State, and we have to ask ourselves whether we should be building more. That does not mean we are dropping our 2021 targets - they are targets, not deadlines - nor are we dropping our ambitions within Rebuilding Ireland. It is important to have targets to drive policy and action, and in Rebuilding Ireland we have a significant and ring-fenced capital commitment of €5.35 billion to providing social housing homes up until 2021. I am certainly not dropping that; in fact, I want to increase it. I have reviewed the first draft of the vacant homes strategy. It is very good, but it is not ambitious enough. I will be using the current review of Rebuilding Ireland to see what new ideas we can bring to bear. This will require engagement with the Minister for Finance. As I have already stated to the committee, if budgetary measures are needed to reinforce the ambition, this may delay the publication of the strategy but this will not delay the commencement of work. There is a lot of information to be gathered in order to have a targeted, effective approach but existing property interests should note that changes are coming. I am also waiting for the completion of a number of other sub-reviews, dealing with the input costs for construction, the Help to buy scheme and the tax treatment of landlords. These are all expected to be completed prior to the budget, but may also delay publication of the outcome of the review of Rebuilding Ireland. Again, if that is the case, the delay will only be in publication and not the commencement of the work.

Deputies will note that I will fast-track a provision of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill next week. Having consulted the Ministers of State, Deputies Damien English and John Paul Phelan, it was apparent that the Bill, which is before the Dáil, would not pass all Stages before the end of July. The Fianna Fáil Party made a number of good proposals which we want to introduce as amendments. As a result, I decided that it would be prudent to take the specific provision in the Bill that pertained to the extension of planning permission and have it implemented by the recess. What this means, if the House agrees, is that on building sites on which homes are being built but for which planning permission is at risk of expiry, it will not be necessary to down tools and work will be able to continue. This is a welcome step which I hope will be supported.

Deputies will also note that since my appearance at the committee, I have signed the order that will enable planning applications to be made directly to An Bord Pleanála for large-scale housing developments of 100 units or more and large-scale student accommodation projects. This is another welcome measure which will help to quickly increase the supply of new homes to particular demographics. The order came into effect on Monday of this week and yesterday An Bord Pleanála held an information seminar for interested stakeholders which was well attended and, I gather, well received. It is now over to developers to start their pre-planning discussions with both local authorities and An Bord Pleanála to get these large-scale proposals into the system and approved as efficiently as possible.

New homes are being built and opened to new tenants every week. Since taking office, I have had the privilege of visiting Annamore in Ballyfermot where 70 new homes have been provided for older persons and an additional 16 family homes have been freed up in the community. I have also visited O’Devaney Gardens, a regeneration project which will yield more than 600 much needed social, affordable and private homes in the centre of Dublin; a project in Harold's Cross where 28 new homes have been provided; a rapid build project at St. Helena's Drive in Finglas with 40 new homes; and the Mater Dei family hub in Drumcondra which will accommodate 50 families who are currently being accommodated in hotels as a first response. Next week I will visit a project in Ballymun with Deputy Noel Rock. I intend to visit and monitor progress on the hundreds of social housing schemes that are advancing across the country.

New homes are being built on more than 150 sites in Dublin and there are many more active sites across the country. While this is encouraging, we need to see more activity and more homes on these sites more quickly. More than 2,400 new social housing homes are being built. Our constant focus has to be on supply and getting new homes built for people and families who are homeless, people on the housing lists, those who need homes and more affordable rents, first-time buyers, empty nesters who are seeking to trade down while remaining in their communities and less abled people who want supported independent living. We must also get these homes built in different ways from the way we built them before such as using the rapid precast method which is already being employed or the so-called plug and play approach used abroad to provide homes for first-time buyers. We need new financing arrangements to bring homes on line that will meet people's needs and also be affordable. It was for this reason that I recently met the European Investment Bank and I will meet other finance houses in the coming weeks.

In addition to our focus on supply to catch up for the lost years of construction, we must also focus on how we manage existing stock and make more efficient use of land and the homes and buildings we already own. It was for this reason that I recently met the Office of Public Works and I am examining above-the-shop living. This is also the reason I am not ruling out former models of shared accommodation, provided we can get the standards right. We also have to be ambitious and determined in making sure vacant homes that are truly vacant will be lived in as homes. This may require a carrot and stick approach.

I thank Deputies again for their engagement at the committee and look forward to hearing their ideas.

Deputy Pat Casey

Housing and homelessness, as the Members and officials present know, is the most critical domestic problem facing people at this time. Children are spending years of their childhood in hotel rooms as a result of the lack of social and affordable housing. This is a terrible indictment of Government policy, particularly when there are more than 2,000 voids, the term used for empty and locked up local authority homes which are waiting to be refurbished.

The housing crisis is the most serious issue facing the country and a sea change in attitude is required to enable it to be addressed. It is no longer acceptable for the Government to make announcement after announcement when the change delivered is minuscule and the number of homeless families continues to rise. The housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme is allowing the problem to appear less dire than it is. Rents are soaring and the introduction of the help-to-buy scheme has resulted in rising house prices, making it more difficult for hard pressed families to afford even a modest home. The lack of supply has also caused a substantial increase in rents, yet the Government has refused to state it will change the VAT rate for construction. It is hard to understand this logic when the previous Fine Gael-led Government reduced the VAT rate to stimulate activity in the tourism sector when it was needed.

Housing policy failure as a political issue was a significant contributory factor to the devastating recession we have come through. The housing sector was left abandoned by the previous Government in a dereliction of duty. While the housing crisis has been recognised by this Dáil as the number one issue facing the country, the problem has continued to spiral out of control. The housing issue was first described as a humanitarian crisis by Peter McVerry in 2014 and the new Dáil started well by prioritising housing. A cross-party committee on housing chaired my party colleague, Deputy John Curran, produced an excellent report while the Government formation process was under way. This was a clear indication of the seriousness of the homelessness and housing crisis by a new Parliament. At the time, the incoming Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney, and his Government colleagues pledged their total commitment to work to solve this problem in an inclusive and open-minded way. We took the then Minister at his word. However, when the Rebuilding Ireland report was launched with much public relations spin and fancy websites, we found that it was already a watered down version of the committee's report. However, Fianna Fáil decided to give the Minister the benefit of doubt because we were convinced that the magnitude of the crisis would dictate a radical Government response.

I repeat a point I made one year ago because it strikes at the heart of the current housing difficulties. According to the opening statement in Rebuilding Ireland, "Housing is a basic human and social requirement". The House should note the deliberate use of the word "requirement" to give the impression of a strong commitment. However, the use of this word falls short. The use of the word "right" instead would have given the State direct responsibility for delivering housing. If Rebuilding Ireland had opened with the line that housing was a basic human and social right, the role of the State would have been clearly and correctly defined. The use of a rights based view can be open to being manipulated by ideologies on both the extreme left and right.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Let us not forget the extreme centre.

Deputy Pat Casey

My approach is one of common decency and compassion. I firmly believe the State has the responsibility to provide housing for those in our communities who cannot access it on their own. The more housing the State provides, the less it must depend on private landlords to provide stop gap solutions. We all have to accept that there is a social right to a home. I am more convinced than ever that this is the essential starting point.

By last Christmas, our doubts and concerns about the commitment of the Government to solve the homelessness and housing crisis which was escalating month on month were further increased when it engaged in showmanship by refusing to compromise on rent caps and brought the planning Bill and the Government to the edge. I decided that, with a leadership contest imminent in Fine Gael, we would have to put up with the showmanship on the basis that the commitment to solve the housing crisis remained. The Government even committed to specific deadlines for achieving the many great actions it promised that Rebuilding Ireland would deliver in its five pillars that contained a grand total of 84 separate actions. While the report's statistics are great for the communications gurus to throw around, they make little difference to the children and parents who have spent more than two years in hotel rooms. During this Fine Gael-lndependent Alliance Government, with its five pillars and 84 actions, 11 people, including children, have presented as homeless every day. Fianna Fáil took the Government at its word and we have worked in a non-party political way, as many Members have, not only to point out flaws in Rebuilding Ireland but also to suggest solutions. We have done so because it is what people expect us to do and it is the right thing for responsible politicians to do.

One of the major deadlines the Government had set with regard to homeless families and the use of hotel accommodation has failed. The Minister who spoke to the nation and the Dáil about his total commitment to address housing and homelessness and his personal determination to complete this task has swanned off to another Department after one year. Since housebuilding ground to a halt in 2011, we have had three Ministers with responsibility for housing, namely, Mr. Phil Hogan, Deputy Alan Kelly and the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Simon Coveney. It seems all of them had more conviction about themselves than they had about providing housing solutions.

This is the wrong thing for politicians to indulge in and it totally corrodes the people's trust in our parliamentary system. Ministers must deliver solutions, not focus on political crisis communication. It is also damaging to those in our Civil Service. While they may be used to this, even civil servants must be disillusioned at watching the same old cynical political manoeuvrings at the expense of doing the right thing.

I thought that the appointment of a new Minister would at least allow us to focus on the work at hand. We were then told, however, that the new Minister’s first task would be to review the Rebuilding Ireland report. We were told that this would be a three-month review, despite the fact the report itself is barely a year old. This review is political speak for avoiding responsibility. It is a review to cover the Government in a cloak of convenience while the spin doctors dream up more slick housing slogans to roll out. What are we doing in the Dáil Chamber and at committee if not reviewing Rebuilding Ireland? We are continuously providing honest and sincere analysis and suggestions for improvements. By the end of this debate the Minister's review should be completed. I understand that a new Government brings new dynamics but the Minister should stop treating the housing and homelessness situation as an exercise in crisis communications. While this three-month review takes place, a further 954 people will become homeless. We do not have the luxury to make this review.

Three years after it was first announced, we are still awaiting the special purpose vehicle which will allow up to €2 billion of credit union funds to be used to deliver social and affordable housing. The promise to end the use of hotels for homeless families by the end of June has failed. Today there are 695 families still living in hotels in Dublin alone. The promise to build 1,000 rapid build homes by the end of 2017 is also going to fail. The Government has only delivered 22 of these so far and has only identified the possibility of delivering another 177 by the end of the year. The Government's housing construction programme consists of over 600 projects, 75% of which are for 20 houses or fewer. Only two projects nationwide are for more than 100 units: one 100-unit project in Dublin and one for 106 units in Louth, the largest housing development on this construction programme. Out of the more than 190,000 vacant properties identified by the Department only 800, or 0.4%, are being targeted to be converted back to homes.

This is the reality of this Government's performance. We need to get real and radical and we need to do so quickly. There is no more time for review and there is definitely no more time for spin.

Deputy Dessie Ellis

We have had an undeclared crisis in housing for the last number of years. The Government refuses to call it for what it is. What the Government is doing is clearly not working. The homeless figures are increasing and the waiting list for housing has remained high, with 91,600 households currently on local authority waiting lists. There are also 4,922 homeless adults and 2,777 children currently in emergency accommodation, an all-time high.

Once again the Government has failed to meet its target date for ending reliance on emergency accommodation. The Government needs to do more as it is clearly not doing enough. It is pandering to the private sector and its reliance on the market is a cause of grave concern. At the moment average house prices across the country are almost 12% higher than this time last year. Rents in Dublin are at an average of €1,400 per month, making it impossible for people to buy or rent a house. The answer to this is to ratchet up the delivery of social and affordable housing. The Minister has acknowledged that we need to build more houses but what we need to concentrate on is social and affordable housing. It is time for the Government to be more ambitious and radical in its approach.

The answer to the lack of social and affordable housing is straightforward. Local authorities should be given the lead here. Rather than relying on the private sector, the Government should provide local authorities with the funding to build these houses. They can, in turn, sell as well as rent the properties at an affordable rate, with any moneys earned put directly back into the local authorities for housing. Co-op housing bodies, such as Ó Cualann Housing in Ballymun, were mentioned earlier; Ó Cualann is delivering affordable housing in the €150,000 bracket and next week five of these houses will be handed over to their new owners. I know that the Minister will be in attendance and I hope I will be too. This is an example of how affordable housing can be delivered using local authority lands and infrastructural funds. We need more of these, however, and there is scope for more.

I call for an inquiry into the price of housing and into what appears to be a cartel of price-fixing builders and setting the pace of price rises. By any stretch of the imagination, it is clear that huge profits are being made and that some builders are sitting on lands waiting for prices to further rise. Recent figures from the construction industry show the construction of a three-bed 113 sq. m. house, with the land and acquisition costs, is €57,500. Finance costs for the builder coming in at €20,002. This gives the builder a minimum profit margin of €37,980. These are highly inflated figures when we consider the land acquisition figures and the fact that some of this land has been sat on for many years. Much of this land had previously been bought at knockdown prices so it is excessive to use today’s figures for land acquisition costings. This gives a false and inflated view of the actual cost of the land. There are also thousands of shops lying idle around the country, in some cases for 20 years or more. We see this in my own constituency of Dublin North West. We see shops left idle across the country. I cannot understand why we allow this to happen as these could all be converted into liveable accommodation. Having done an audit on vacant houses, let us now do one on idle shops and see how many there are. I suspect that they are well into five figures.

In his opening address, the Minister mentioned the 200,000 or so vacant houses. There is scope to examine some of these to see if they could be taken over by the local authorities for housing. The latest figures also show that there are approximately 80,000 families currently in mortgage arrears and every day five families lose their homes. This is unacceptable. The much-discussed mortgage-to-rent scheme has delivered very little. This is another issue that needs to be looked at more carefully as this scheme needs to deliver more than it has.

NAMA's remit should have been changed a long time ago to prevent the selling-off of large portfolios of properties. This has, no doubt, contributed to the homeless crisis and to the housing waiting lists. The Minister also mentioned fast build houses and I know that 39 of these units will be delivered in Finglas shortly. The timescale for this, however, has increased dramatically. The Minister also mentioned that he planned to build another 500 or so of these units by 2018. It is very obvious that this figure will not be met.

Private public partnerships have failed to deliver in the past.

The Minister's targets and ambition are not very good. While the use of homeless hubs is a hell of a sight better than people being in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, such hubs certainly should not be used for long-term housing. They should be used for the short term and we should ensure that they are only used for the short term. It would be unacceptable for people to end up in hubs for long periods.

Greater use of compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, by local authorities would also help. Many houses and places are lying idle. They are boarded up for years and years. In my own area alone, there are literally dozens upon dozens of them. There is no sign of anything being done with them. They are overgrown. The councils are ending up with the nightmare of dealing with these properties. We need to put pressure on the local authorities to make more use of CPOs.

The senior citizens financial contributions scheme, which has not been reintroduced, should be reintroduced at local authority level. There should be more concentration on building accommodation for senior citizens. That would free up large amounts of housing for local authorities.

Since I was elected to the Dáil in 2011, five different Ministers have been responsible for housing. That does not say to me that we are taking this as seriously as we should. This is the worst crisis to hit this country in many years. I am not saying that the Minister will not do his job but the previous Minister was only in his position for a year. I hope the Minister will be here for a lot longer than that and will see this through. It is not good enough for us to change Ministers when they are only settling in: they are only getting to know the problem when all of a sudden they are gone.

The impact of the housing crisis on men, women and children the length and breadth of this country has been enormous. Young children are living in hotels. The issues that presents in terms of the welfare of children and families are massive. I have met many families who have gone through the mill. They have been dragged from one end of the city to the other with their children. The impact this has had on them personally has been enormous.

I praise the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, the different agencies and the Minister's officials who have put together the outline of a good plan. It is a good plan, but the delivery of it and the timescale involved is key. We are not meeting the targets and it is very obvious that we will not. We need to build at least 10,000 social housing units a year to get us anywhere near where we need to be. I have identified some of the problems but let us get the local authorities building housing. The voluntary housing bodies are doing a certain amount and that is welcome but the local authorities need to deliver more social and affordable housing.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan

I welcome the Minister and Minister of State. While I think reviewing Rebuilding Ireland is a good idea now that we have a new Minister, and I know that process is ongoing, I would be very concerned about any delays that might cause in terms of implementing the various actions which are in the programme. Clearly there has been delay already in respect of a number of the actions, such as the rapid build programme for example. This programme was meant to have delivered a considerable number of houses by now but it has only delivered 22, which were delivered quite early on and which were in train before the Government even came into office. I am very concerned and I hope the Minister will not allow the various elements of the reviews which are taking place to delay in any way the necessary actions.

In that regard I would particularly like to talk about the vacant homes strategy, which the Minister has just told us will be delayed. We have been expecting that on an ongoing basis. It was due to be delivered in the first quarter of this year and still has not been published. That is a real opportunity to provide homes for people more quickly than by constructing them. The fact that we have nearly 200,000 vacant houses in the country, excluding holiday homes, and that a large number of those are in our urban centres and in our cities in particular, is a real opportunity and there is not the sense of urgency which there should be with regard to bringing a reasonable percentage of those homes back into use, to be used by people who are currently homeless or on housing waiting lists.

If one looks at the average number of empty houses per head of population in other comparable countries, our percentage is much higher. There are examples from which we can learn. For example, the Peter McVerry Trust has suggested many times that there should be vacant homes officers in every local authority. Their job would be to find out proactively why houses, homes and apartments in their area of responsibility are vacant and to produce practical proposals for bringing them back into use. I support Deputy Ellis's comment that these proposals may well have to involve compulsory purchase orders, but there are other ways.

I know we have schemes, such as the repair and leasing scheme and the buy and renew scheme but, when talking to those involved in the sector, I am being told that these schemes are not delivering as quickly as they should be and that elements of these schemes are causing delay and difficulty and are unnecessarily bureaucratic. One would think that it would be relatively simple for the voluntary housing sector or the public housing sector, the local authorities, to go out and either buy and renovate these houses or to get involved in the repair and leasing scheme, but apparently there are difficulties. Surely it should not be too difficult to iron out those problems because they are the low-hanging fruit and they are opportunities which are there. I have seen examples of houses being bought by the local authority - in the centre of towns in particular - then being renovated by local builders and given to people who are on the housing waiting lists. These are very practical ways in which we can provide homes for people.

I would support the Minister if he were to bring in a tax on vacant homes. If that is one of the reasons he is saying that he will have to delay until after the budget, let us by all means move on some of the other measures and then bring this tax in at that time. I would certainly support it because we need the stick as well as the carrot.

I also support what Deputy Ellis said on those interesting statistics about the cost of building. The construction industry is telling us all the time that it cannot afford to build because there is not enough of a return and that it has to factor in the cost of building, the cost of the site, the cost of borrowing money and so on. The fact that the Minister has a background in finance should enable him to figure out whether these arguments are true and to challenge the construction sector. The Minister has said that he will fast-track the legislation on existing permissions. There is existing permission for more than 20,000 homes in the Dublin area. Why are they not being built? There is a demand, particularly in the greater Dublin area. I hope the Minister will challenge the construction sector in that regard.

On some of the other issues, it is a huge disappointment that the target for families in hotels has not been reached, particularly for people who are living in hotels with their children and who have been telling their children that they will get a home. Even if it is a hub, it is better than a hotel. They are now realising that will not happen. I will be introducing a Bill next week in respect of the rights of children of families who are homeless. This Bill will ensure that what happened recently, where families were sent to Garda stations and one family slept in a park, will not happen again. I hope to introduce that Bill next week. The rapid delivery has clearly also been delayed.

I would like to refer to the fact that my colleague in the Seanad, Senator Kevin Humphreys, is introducing a Bill in respect of Airbnb. While Airbnb is clearly a positive for short-term rentals in some cases, it is causing displacement. Homes are being used on a full-time basis where they could be available to families. That needs to be addressed as well.

I am particularly anxious to stress the opportunity that exists for the construction of mixed tenure estates, including significant numbers of social housing units, in the more than 700 publicly owned sites. Public funds are being spent on infrastructure for those sites. I strongly urge that the private building sector not be allowed to profit from those publicly owned sites. There is a real opportunity to have a mixed tenure of social housing, affordable rental and affordable purchase on the sites. I was disappointed with an interaction we had with the previous Minister about these sites during the last Question Time with him. It appears that each local authority will have to devise its own plan for each site and bring it to the Department for approval. That could drag on for years. I strongly urge the establishment of a national affordable housing scheme or a national approach to these sites. The control would be in the public sector and builders could tender to build the houses in those areas. There should be a requirement for a certain percentage for each of the different sectors of social, affordable, affordable rental and so forth.

This is a great opportunity. The State owns these sites, rather than them being privately owned, so it can drive the process. Given the crisis that exists, the State must drive this, not sit back and rely on the private sector which clearly does not wish to build until a significant profit can be made. It is understandable that it has to make some profit-----

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

The Deputy's party is supporting it on the councils.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan

We are not. The glass bottle site is a good example, and I have heard people from the local community speak about it. In that case Labour Party councillors worked with the local community and 25% of that site is allocated for social and affordable housing. We must use that opportunity.

I also ask the Minister to examine the scheme introduced by Deputy Alan Kelly. Under that scheme, if a council was building 15 or fewer social houses and it was costing no more than €2 million, the council only had to get one permission from the Department. It did not have to go back and forth repeatedly. As far as I know, there have been only two developments under that scheme. The scheme has real potential because local authorities own many small sites. The Minister should also re-examine the length of time it takes to get permissions for social housing in terms of the interaction between the Department and local authorities. Again, there are opportunities in that regard.

I welcome the fact the Minister is re-examining the way units are counted. There is something significantly wrong when we do not know how many houses are being built. Using ESB connections clearly does not work. I have seen data from Dr. Lorcan Sirr, who has analysed the data and appears to have an accurate picture of the number of houses. The Minister said he is listening to people on all sides. Dr. Sirr and other experts have relevant information.

When will the Minister review the rent pressure zones? Limerick is still not included despite large increases in the cost of rent. That is also the case in Waterford and other areas. Will the Minister also extend homeless HAP outside the Dublin area? There are many homeless people in other cities throughout the country. They cannot get homeless HAP, although there might be some exceptions. That would be an opportunity to ensure that homeless people can access accommodation. We need that to work and to enable people to access it.

Housing First is a fantastic scheme but it is limited in its application at present. We need more of it because it works well for the long-term homeless with complex problems.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

The reason we are having this debate is that I pressed for six weeks at the Business Committee to schedule a discussion on the progress or lack of it on Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. That follows six years of Fine Gael Government since 2011, during which time I and others, week in, week out, told five different Ministers that the Government's policies were creating and accelerating a housing and homelessness crisis. Now, the Minister tells us it will take decades to resolve. He is right. With the current policies and Rebuilding Ireland, which is not working, it will take decades. In fact, it will never be solved.

I will speak in simple terms because I do not have much time. The answer to the housing and homelessness crisis is to break from the fantasy that the private market will provide social housing to the extent that it is required. Private developers, property speculators and landlords do not do social housing, full stop. Rebuilding Ireland is dependent on private developers, speculators and landlords for approximately 75% of its targets. It is not working, and cannot and will not work. That fantasy must be abandoned.

The Minister must also abandon the fantasy of HAP. I have a letter with me which I will send to the Minister, as I do not have time to read it. It relates to somebody in my office who is well resourced trying to locate the Dublin Place Finder Service. In a reply to a parliamentary question in 2015 the Minister's office told us it existed in Dún Laoghaire. When the person called the office on the number provided and asked for the Dublin Place Finder Service the person at the other end of the telephone asked what that was. That is what is happening. The Minister must abandon the fantasy of the HAP and the fantasy that the private market will deal with homelessness and social housing.

He must immediately freeze all further sales of National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, property. It has sold €38.1 billion worth of assets in the last five years, assets that could have solved the housing crisis. He must immediately stop the handover through public private partnerships, PPPs, of 800 publicly owned sites to private developers for unaffordable housing. I hate to inform Deputy Jan O'Sullivan that this week in Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party opposed a motion proposing that the Shanganagh site, which is publicly owned, be retained for social and affordable housing. They voted against it because it is one of the sites they wish to hand over to private developers under PPPs. Those developers will not deliver affordable housing. They will deliver unaffordable housing, because they do it for money. The market prices or even slight discounts on them will not be affordable under any circumstances in Dublin, Cork or anywhere else.

The Minister must immediately start the compulsory purchase of vacant land and property as well as some of the property that was bought by vulture funds, REITs and so forth which is empty and which they are sitting on as they wait for its value to rise. Indeed, they are evicting people as we speak. He must immediately start an emergency local authority housing programme with a State housing and construction company to drive it. That is the only way it will happen. He must stop the economic evictions by vulture funds, REITs and profit driven landlords, and introduce rent controls that bring rents to affordable levels. A constitutional amendment must be passed to establish a right to housing and to rebalance the right to housing over the rights to private property, which are being used to make people homeless.

These are positive, serious proposals and the only ones that will solve the crisis, because the market has failed. Two sites in my area could solve the housing crisis in Dún Laoghaire - Cherrywood, which has 800 units, and Shanganagh, with 600 units. Currently, under the Minister's policies 90% of Cherrywood and 50% of Shanganagh will be unaffordable and the crisis will be worse. If the Minister would build public housing on the Shanganagh site and a far higher proportion of public housing on the Cherrywood site, Dún Laoghaire's housing crisis would be solved. That could be replicated across the country.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

One would not know from looking at this Chamber that there is a housing emergency. Our group demanded a discussion on this issue in the Dáil, but it is a pedestrian enough affair. As I look around there is no sign of any urgency on the government benches. We have been joined by only one other Member from the Government side. I have seen depressing times in here but this takes the biscuit.

The media would obviously prefer to focus on the Taoiseach jogging through the Phoenix Park, and his socks. That is absolutely of no consequence to the people who are affected by homelessness.

Rebuilding Ireland is working. That will be joyous news to the people on the housing lists. I am not aware of how many homeless people the Minister meets in his clinics every week. He is probably more likely to bump into developers and landlords in Fine Gael than people affected by homelessness. If he was, he would have intervened to stop homelessness happening with the kind of measures that even Threshold has called for this week, which have been voted down when introduced in Bills by the Opposition.

We have now reached intergenerational homelessness. I had a mother who was homeless in my office last week. She is in a B&B with two children, one with special needs and they are all in a room. Her daughter is also homeless with her child in another location. That is how bad the situation is.

The Minister indicated there had been a failure in reaching the target set by his predecessor to move families out of hotels and B&Bs. He is allocating €10 million to move 200 families from hotels to so-called hubs at a cost of €50,000 per family, which is a third of the construction cost of a house. The money would be better spent building social and affordable housing. Instead of hubs, why does the Minister not acquire vacant housing at a cost of €200,000 according to the previous census? It is never possible until it is possible, as we saw with the Tories in relation to Grenfell Tower. Suddenly, after massive pressure, they were able to find 68 luxury apartments. I expect the Minister could do the same if he really tried.

There has been talk of a vacant home tax and a doubling of the property tax. Investors who leave property lying idle for six months or more should have them CPO'd or requisitioned. Those are measures a left-wing Government would certainly take but it seems that the notion of building public housing on a major scale is ideologically unacceptable to a right-wing Government. Instead, we have priority given to incentives for private developers to provide trickle-down social or affordable housing.

The taxpayer has ponied up €200 million in the local infrastructure fund. How many affordable houses has it produced? Is there a maximum price a developer can charge for such houses if they have benefitted from the scheme, or does affordable mean different things in different places? An investigation showed no agreement was signed between the Government and developers before they availed of the scheme in terms of how much affordable housing would be provided. The Government continues to misidentify the planning process as the reason for a lack of homes.

An independent think-tank, TASC, has said it will take 40 years to house people on the Dublin City Council waiting list at the current rate of building. It seems that is the best capitalism can now offer people.

One of the key reasons for the positive response to Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto in Britain was the fact that he promised to build 500,000 council houses to deal with the housing emergency the Government’s like-minded neoliberal friends have created in Britain. If one adds in those who are facing what is academically called, severe housing unaffordability and insecurity, there are an extra 211,600 households, which is double the number on the waiting list. I assume they will have to wait 80 years to get a permanent home at the rate the Government is going.

The Government throws around figures for what it is spending. The important figure in the entire debate is that 652 new social units were provided last year either by local authorities or voluntary housing agencies. That is a total of 652 units in the throes of an emergency that has been raging for more than three years at its highest point. In spite of that, the Minister tells us Rebuilding Ireland is working. We were told 19,000 had their housing needs met because the Minister thinks somebody getting temporary private accommodation meets their housing needs. People who need housing, health care and SNAs are a burden to the Government. They really should not want what would have been considered acceptable 20 years ago.

There is no way out of the situation other than by funding local authorities to use public lands and preferably, directly building houses themselves, as that would ensure the work would be done more cheaply. They must build at least 100,000 public homes in the next five years and acquire at least 60,000 vacant units for public housing. The Government can finance that by raising taxation on big business and the wealthy but also by using three funds we have, namely, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, NAMA, and the fund the Government got from the windfall from the sale of shares in AIB, which it is using to pay down debt so as not to upset its EU friends but could be used to build housing with no charge.

Deputy Joan Collins

I wish to share time with Deputy Mick Wallace.

Acting Chairman (Deputy John Lahart)

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Joan Collins

I welcome this debate on the quarterly report on housing and Rebuilding Ireland. Unfortunately, all we have seen recently is targets with nothing happening on the ground. The housing crisis is a social emergency and poses a major risk to the economy. However, the Government policy response has not been adequate and, as far as I can see, has worsened the crisis. The core failing is the over-reliance on a private market approach to housing provision. Only 15% of the 134,000 new social housing outlined in Rebuilding Ireland will be built by local authorities and housing associations. The vast majority is meant to come from the private sector. However, the private housing market in Ireland is broken and it defies logic to expect the private rental sector to deliver such a vast number of housing units given the insufficient supply and the lack of long-term security for tenants. It is also not cost effective as State subsidies have to chase ever-rising rents. The over reliance worsens the wider housing crisis by increasing demand and reducing supply in the private rental sector. Rebuilding Ireland failed to reach its own target of 2,200 new social builds with only just 650 units built in 2016. Only 175 of 1,000 rapid-build social housing, which was supposed to provide housing to families in emergency accommodation, will be completed by the end of this year. In order for public private partnerships to deliver social and private housing the sale of up to 730 State-owned sites to developers is proposed. A total of 30 ha of State-owned land is currently being advertised to the market by Dublin City Council in three new developments, namely, St. Michael’s estate, Oscar Traynor Road and O'Devaney Gardens. Of the 1,300 housing units planned for that land, just 30% or 390 units will be social housing and the rest will be unaffordable housing. This approach is more expensive than public provision and has a major downside risk visible in the collapse of PPPs in 2008. Private finance will dictate the delivery timescales and the mix of unaffordable private housing will inevitably entail a large transfer of public wealth to private investors.

I previously tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister on the Neary report and the cost-rental recovery model used in Europe. I received a number of responses. The first was from the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, who said the Neary report links very well into the proposals in Rebuilding Ireland – it does not. The Neary report, in effect, said that by setting up a new housing agency and using funding from Europe we could build up to 10,000 affordable cost-rental recovery housing on those lands. That is what needs to be done. Radical efforts must be made. We cannot wait 40 years. The hubs will take a certain amount of people out of hotels but the amount of people coming into homelessness will increase so we will never see the end of hotel and B&B accommodation for homeless people.

I wish to ask one question before I finish. AIB has been in discussions with David Hall from the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation about the distressed loans in AIB. Will the Minister support that approach rather than giving the loans over to vulture funds?

Deputy Mick Wallace

I wish both Ministers good luck. They will probably need it. It is not an easy job.

Someone from Gorey contacted me recently to explain their situation. The maximum rent supplement for a couple or one-parent family is €530 and it is €565 for a parent with two children. The cheapest available accommodation on daft.ie is €760 and the next cheapest is €825. I realise that if the rent supplement in increased the landlord will probably raise his price as well. I am the first to admit that it is not an easy problem to solve. A number of challenges face the Minister in the long term, and partly in the short term.

These include homelessness, high rents and lack of affordable housing. In the long term, the Government will have to change its philosophy if it is to work for it. In the report the Minister states that last year 5,724 social housing units were built, refurbished, leased or acquired. In 2016, 200 were built and 37 were delivered through Part V. This will not solve things.

Many of the Minister's problems today around homelessness, lack of affordable housing and high rents are linked to the fact that since 2011 we have allowed things to continue to get worse. Real estate investment trusts, REITs, and the vulture funds have availed of a wonderful scenario. Prices were discounted for them, there was no credit available for the Irish to buy, home ownership was dropping and rent demand was going up. It was a perfect scenario that has brought us to a point where Irish Residential Properties REIT plc, I·RES REIT, is now advertising one-bedroom apartments to be launched soon at €1,900 a month. The system is broken. High rents lead to evictions which lead to homelessness which leads to an extra cost to the State. It is not rocket science.

NAMA is talking about supplying 20,000 units. Some 18,000 of them are to be supplied at approximately €360,000 each, with 2,000 available for the social end. Last year Dublin City Council claimed that it could supply houses for €205,000 each. With inflation and other rises, let us call it €230,000 today. A house can be supplied for €230,000 in Dublin. It is State land, but so is NAMA's. It belongs to the people. However, NAMA's price is €360,000. The difference is €130,000. NAMA is not building houses at an affordable price, and often there is a developer involved and the price is not dissociated from the market price which involves a land banker. In that case of the land banker and the take from the investor-developer, we are looking at a difference of approximately €130,000. Where is the logic in that? Why would we allow this private sector to make an extra €130,000 on 18,000 units? If the Minister did nothing else in his time in the Department but change NAMA's remit and get it to supply 50% social housing and 50% affordable housing, it would make some impact. It can be done. If the Minister asked me to build those 18,000 houses on State land and told me that he would give me €230,000 for every one of them when they are ready to be moved into, I would take the hand off him because I would make lovely money. I guarantee it. There is no logic or rationale in NAMA selling 18,000 houses on State land for €360,000 each when we have a housing crisis. It does not make any sense.

From the day I came in here in 2011, the State has been depending on the private sector to solve its housing problems. Right now Cairn Homes and Hines control more than 20,000 units with permission that are ready to go in the Dublin region but they will not even build 1,000 of them this year because it will not pay them. I would not shoot them. Their job is to make money. The people that disappoint me are those who do not address the problem, that is, the State. The Government must play a different role. Tax them for banking the land. The Government cannot force them to build, but the Government is not taxing them for banking the land. At the moment, when the price of a house goes up 10%, the price of the land that they are banking is going up a minimum of 30%. From an economic point of view, they would be foolish to build at the moment.

Principle number one is that the State should stop depending on the private sector to solve its housing crisis. We have a serious problem in how we supply housing. The answer lies with the State playing a hands-on, active role in ensuring that housing is supplied on its land at affordable prices.

Acting Chairman (Deputy John Lahart)

I call Deputy Mattie McGrath, who is sharing time. Is it being shared equally?

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Yes. We are all equal in our group.

Acting Chairman (Deputy John Lahart)

Excellent.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

The quarterly report speaks of increasing housing supply and 23 major urban housing development sites with capacity to deliver 30,000 new homes in the medium term in the greater Dublin area, Cork, Limerick and Galway being identified by the Department, in close collaboration with local authorities, in terms of the Department's new housing delivery objectives. Ar an gcéad dul síos, I compliment the Minister, and his Minister of State, and wish him well, but he has to do better than the last man. What about County Tipperary? Do we have any crisis in County Tipperary? We have. More than 3,100 people have been approved for housing, never mind the 10,000 or 12,000 applicants. The report also mentions that there was keen interest in local infrastructure housing activity funding with applications from 21 local authorities covering 74 separate infrastructure projects. The problem is that expressing interest is all they seem to be doing. What is actually being done by the local authorities? It is just not acceptable. Nothing is happening. I also see that the report acknowledges that the assessment and approval decisions have taken a little longer than anticipated. Given the scale and complexity of some of the proposals, this is extremely frustrating. What has gone wrong in the system?

For decades, when we had nothing, local authorities were able to build houses and provide social housing. We had no equipment or cranes like we have now and none of the modern technology but now they cannot build anything. Is it all too complex? It requires endless consultations, reports and reviews. A report goes up to the Department, we wait six months, and it goes back down to the council, and then it goes back up six months later. It is a game that is being played and it is not delivering houses. Those involved should be ashamed of themselves. Local authorities, nationwide, including Tipperary County Council, have completely lost their way in terms of the provision of social and affordable housing and the Government should come out, put its hands up and accept that. The Government and the State have lost their way completely. I take responsibility as a Member of this Dáil, but it is just not good enough. The Minister can laugh all he likes but I do not know what is so funny. It is not funny for those who are waiting on houses and are sleeping on the streets. The ineptitude is frightening.

Deputy Wallace referred to it not being profitable. We cannot expect smaller builders, in particular, to build at a loss. Deputy Michael Noonan is no longer Minister for Finance but the new Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, could make a decision in the morning to reduce the VAT. We brought that up in the talks on forming a Government. There had to be two rates of VAT and this, that and the other. Do something that will stimulate the industry in the upcoming budget. I beg it of the Minister. It is that simple. Then talk to the county councils and tell them to cut down their development charges. Development charges, VAT and tax make up 50% of the cost of the houses. It is not rocket science. Any second class national school student would know that this is a huge blockage. We have a huge problem staring at us and we are talking around it. We are holding conferences and delivering quarterly reports but it is all poppycock and pie in the sky. Get out and get the houses built. The capacity is there and they should be built. Cut out half the red tape.

The voluntary sector was mentioned by many people. I am a big supporter of it. It can do it too but it was too successful and the mandarins in the Department did not like it. We had one office - a one stop shop - but now we have seven different official areas to go through and we have to go to buildings in different parts of the country. It is a game that is being played by the Civil Service and it is exposed now in all its nakedness. It is time that they got off their backsides. Otherwise they should get out of the job and let someone in who can do it do it. I am sick and tired of saying it, and I do not say it lightly, but we have lost our way completely.

I am 58 years of age. I remember as a young fellow houses being built. They had only picks and shovels and the councils could build them. We did not build a house in County Tipperary last year. We are codding the people and everyone else as well. We are spending money on reports, commissions and this, that and the other and leaving it all to NAMA. Deputy Wallace quoted figures on what NAMA is charging for the houses. It is a State-owned, rotting, stinking cesspit which did not provide either and when it did provide houses, Tipperary County Council refused them. I questioned it back and forth for nearly two months to know what was wrong but all I got were long replies and no answers.

It probably cost the former Minister, Deputy Coveney, his leadership ambitions because it was another failure. He worked very hard but all the others would just talk and talk and talk, at meetings and to the housing committee, until they were blue in the face, while doing absolutely nothing.

We will have to scratch our heads and ask if we are really representing the people or just an abject failure in this matter. Are we going to allow the mandarins and all the bodies and agencies to do this? At the housing committee yesterday, the Construction Industry Federation decided it would put an emphasis on people building their own houses and would get the job of overseeing it all, without even a procurement tender. There are cosy cartels in all this that need to be shattered.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

There are a number of small things that could be done to help sort out much of the homelessness problem. Some genius decided that bedsits could not be used anymore, while fortunes are being paid to hotels to house people and people are still lying on the ground close to the hotel where I stay for two or three days every week. I am sure they would be much happier in a bedsit. I am not saying that all bedsits were perfect but some were fine and they would give shelter to people. The rule preventing bedsits must be reviewed.

There are big grants for the repair and lease scheme, which is a fine scheme but the councils tell us it will only be available where there is a demand for social housing. It should be extended to towns and villages where there is no pressure for social housing. The home improvement grant suits some people, notably PAYE workers, but not others such as sole traders or private operators. It should be expanded to include more people if we are serious about addressing homelessness. Yesterday I asked about reducing the age for grant aid for the elderly to 50, to help the people of whom I spoke.

As regards social housing, in Kerry there are 5,000 on the list. I do not agree with Deputy Mattie McGrath's assertion that local authorities have lost their way when it comes to building houses. There are too many hoops to jump through and stipulations by the Department for people to get planning permission for even a rural cottage. That is wrong. As I said to the former Taoiseach, when one goes too far east around the globe, one comes back again to the west. That is what has happened.

Some 82% of people who apply for the tenant purchase scheme are not successful. This deprives people on pensions from buying out the house in which they have lived for 40 or 50 years. They may come into a bit of money, perhaps by way of a lump sum, and they would like to buy out their house and stay there for their remaining days but they are being denied that opportunity in the new tenant purchase scheme. This must be looked at.

The former Minister, Deputy Coveney, said in Tralee that pensioners who went back to live with their offspring and left a vacant house could lease that house, but if they do that their pension will be taken off them. They do not want to sell the house to someone else as they may want to go back to live there so something needs to be done in this regard. There are many such houses lying around.

For private builders, €80,000 of the total cost of €210,000 for building a house goes in VAT and levies to the local authority. Something needs to be done about that to kickstart private builders into building more. At the moment they cannot make a profit with all the regulations and red tape. It would get more builders building and more people working. The Minister should look at these suggestions if he is serious about reducing housing lists. They are small but they will help a lot.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I will share time, four minutes, four minutes and two minutes, with Deputies Eamon Ryan and Seamus Healy. There is no doubt that this is the biggest emergency facing this country yet all we are doing is having a three-month review. Some of us flagged this issue several years ago. We said we should have been almost on a war footing then. The fact that we are still talking about this in 2017, with a deepening crisis, is unacceptable. We were constantly told there was no money but some of us pointed out that the European Investment Bank had available funding even when we were in the programme, though requiring us to be co-guarantor. We have been far too slow to leverage that funding. Had we taken up the option four or five years ago we would have some supply now.

We were told for years that this was a supply-side issue and that it would take time to resolve it. We will continue talking if we follow the mighty market, which so spectacularly failed and caused the crash. There is far too much emphasis on the market resolving the housing problem. We have to directly build social housing using the tier 3 housing associations, co-operative housing, etc.

I recently discovered that there were only four staff in the delivery unit of the Department. How do we expect to become effective in delivering houses with such a complement? Two years ago the Social Democrats called for the establishment of a national housing delivery agency, to tie in with the Housing Agency and the Housing Finance Agency to perform the function of project-managing large sites to give economies of scale and mixed tenure. I still believe that such a body is necessary because it will drive down the cost of building houses.

It is frustrating that the scale of the housing emergency continues to be denied. We are told there are 90,000 people on the waiting list but that is nonsense. There are 90,000 applications but they must be multiplied by three as they are not all single people. That gives 270,000 men, women and children on the waiting list. It is equal to the total population of five counties, Carlow, Longford, Sligo, Roscommon and Monaghan combined. We do not even count some people, such as those who could move out of direct provision but are stuck because they have nowhere to go.

The rental situation is still out of control. A three-bedroom semi-detached house in Lucan costs €2,200 per month. Why would it not drive wage inflation? When people argue with their landlords, even in a rent pressure zone, there is only one winner. Many are ignoring the 4% cap. We should have a fuller debate on this issue where we focus on solutions that are very obvious.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

I call Deputy Eamon Ryan. After yesterday’s performance, I hope he does not introduce a Lego set today.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I have nothing at all. My hands are clean.

I have not had a chance to congratulate my constituency colleague, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, on his appointment and to wish him the very best of luck in his new job. I look forward to working with him, in particular on sites in our constituency such as the Irish Glass Bottle site, RTE and the docklands, where the State has an influence. I echo the words of Councillor Patrick Costello of Dublin City Council who said it is a sad state of affairs when tourists are staying in homes and the people who should be in homes are staying in hotels, hostels and emergency accommodation. There is something very wrong given our homelessness crisis. We are going back to the land hoarding that got us into our housing difficulties. We have to break the landowners' control to solve our housing crisis. There are three measures the Minister should advance which would help us in this regard, first, as we set out in proposed legislation, advance a vacant sites levy to tackle the supply issue. In the last Government's original programme for Government a form of site value tax was proposed but was ditched. It would act as a signal that all land be used efficiently.

I agree with what Deputy O'Sullivan said about needing a mechanism to stop the incentive to hoard land through a rise in profits on land ownership. We introduced that mechanism in 2010 with a supernormal tax of 80% on any profits from rezoning of land. The last Government got rid of it because it was not raising revenue. It was an important signal to the market not to keep investing in hoarding land, that it would not turn a quick buck when it was rezoned. I do not know why that measure was removed. It was a sensible lesson and it applied the Kenny report, going back 40 years but for no reason that I can see the last Government withdrew it. It is legal. It was in operation and while it did not raise revenue it was a signal that landowners could not make money out of hoarding land. We need to go back to that.

Last week, the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight heard from Andrew McDowell the new vice president of lending in the European Investment Bank. We asked him what more we could do about social housing. He gave a very clear signal that if the Government only did what it says it wants to do, the cost rental model, there is a quantity of money available for lending for that. Unfortunately, he said we do not seem to have a system whereby one can borrow against a future rental income stream, which is sufficiently high to cover that borrowing cost. The beauty of the cost-rental model is that it allows one to raise money on a 20 or 30 year return from what is effectively a market rental system that funds that lending. For those who are unable to afford that rental rate we would have a rent supplement scheme which, instead of going to the private rental sector, would go to that sector, provided for by local authorities or housing associations. I cannot understand why the Government is not doing cost rental. Going for that is my one big recommendation to the Minister as he sets out to develop the Irish Glass Bottle site and other sites because it makes economic sense.

Deputy Seamus Healy

The policy of reliance on the market has created a housing emergency. A total of 91,000 families are on local authority housing lists, a number that has doubled since 2005. There are 21,000 families on housing assistance payment, HAP. There is a homelessness crisis, including 2,700 children in homeless accommodation and many thousands more are couch-surfing and doubling up with relatives and friends. The policy of reliance on the market has failed disastrously.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach told us that approximately 2,000 social houses are at various stages of construction or planning, as if that was going to solve the crisis. The Taoiseach knows that the current Government policy guarantees increasing homelessness as shown by the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC, in a recent research paper and that it is totally and pathetically inadequate.

I welcome the points made recently by Patricia King, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, who said that the market system has failed and is entirely dysfunctional in housing. She said hundreds of thousands of our citizens are affected and large numbers of children are being damaged. She said Europe must wait, and be told to wait, for payment of debt, that local authorities must be immediately funded to build social houses and local authority land should be used for social houses only. She also said vacant houses should be brought into use with compulsory purchase powers where necessary and that the €3.5 billion raised from the sale of AIB shares should be used to build social houses and not to pay down debt.

More needs to be done. A formal national housing emergency must be declared in legislation. Evictions and repossessions generally must be stopped and the Government must instruct the banks it owns, AIB and PTSB, to stop repossessions and evictions. We must repeal the law which allows vulture funds their right to evict sitting tenants. Yesterday's statement by the Taoiseach confirms that this Government will persist with its disastrous housing policy. It is now obvious that a one-day general strike will be necessary to bring this Government to its senses.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd

This is a very important debate and I regret that the time is very short. It is not acceptable that some speakers have only six minutes and others three. This House must change, as our policies must change.

I welcome the new Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and his initiatives. I hope he will be able to support the views I express.

We must be practical. It is all very well having a national strike but that brings no sympathy or support to the people who want to get into-----

Deputy Seamus Healy

It brings pressure.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd

I did not interrupt the Deputy. It does not support those people who need to get into the empty homes around the country.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

Nobody interrupted Deputy Healy. He should allow Deputy O'Dowd-----

Deputy Seamus Healy

The Deputy addressed me.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

Please allow him speak.

Deputy Seamus Healy

I am entitled to respond to him. He is talking nonsense as usual.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd

I am making it absolutely crystal clear that we need action on the empty homes. In Dublin alone there are over 30,000 empty homes. I know hundreds of them. I see them every day. They are empty, boarded up and families are camping outside local authority housing offices waiting to get in. Families living in cars is a shame and a disgrace. What do we do? What is the practical solution? There is one that is working in County Louth where the council has set up a unit that is tackling boarded-up, empty homes. It has been doing this for some months. Over 50 houses which were empty and boarded up are back in commission.

The council used compulsory purchase orders, CPO, which cost less than €1,000 in each case to do the legal work. The average compensation paid was €55,000. The average compensation paid post-CPO was €15,000. The average refurbishment cost of these homes was €48,382 and the valuation of the properties before they went in was approximately €40,000. Those are the facts and families are now in homes that were boarded up. Let us tackle this around the country and bring the example of County Louth to every constituency and into the heart of Dublin city. Louth did it and the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government supported it. Let us consider what we can do in Dublin city. To tackle the empty homes, the council must first appoint empty homes officers. This was done in Bolton in England, which has a population of 250,000. In the past year, over a six month period, it put 625 empty homes back into commission.

That means people living in houses, not protesting or living in tents but moving in. That is what we need to do. We need to change the planning laws. We also need to make change-of-use arrangements for business areas that are derelict.

There has been nobody living in the centres of our cities and towns for yonks. Houses are empty and properties are almost demolished. Let us get in there and do it. It has been done in County Louth and I believe the Minister has the capacity to do it. There are incentives. I agree with incentives to have people live over shops. According to the censuses of 1901 and 1911, every single town centre was populated by large numbers of families, but there is nobody in those homes now. I agree with having a new living city initiative for towns such as Drogheda and Dundalk. Let us incentivise the reconstruction and refurbishment of town centre properties. Provided they meet fire and sanitary regulations, we should work within the existing physical structures of the buildings, many of which are old, but we should be able to put families, single persons, childless couples or whoever else into them. We can do it and it can be done if we have the will. I believe the Minister has it.

The Peter McVerry Trust is doing a fantastic job and we should hold up its work to national examination and support. There are lots of agencies doing excellent work and the Minister is the person to bring them together to get the action we so badly need. There has been a huge failure on the part of local authorities and the Environment Department has failed miserably in the past. The Housing Agency has also failed. NAMA offered over 6,200 homes to local authorities around the country, but not more than 2,500 were taken up, which is both a shame and a disgrace. The agencies must be put to the pin of their collar to ensure change.

We have the carrot of incentivisation for landlords who are doing very well in most cases. Never have they had more money for less value. Families are being absolutely crucified by increases in rents. Some places are not within the system of rent control, including Drogheda, which is wrong and needs to change. Alongside the tax incentives for landlords, we must tackle the empty homes crisis by putting a tax on empty homes that fit into specific categories such as being in rent pressure zones such as Dublin city or areas such as Drogheda which are not rent pressure zones but which have seen very significant additional increases in the last six quarters. If we were to tax empty homes, particularly those that are not principal private residences and not subject to legislation or other issues such as family legal disputes, it could result in thousands of homes being put back on the market. I believe the Minister and the new Taoiseach have the will to do so. I ask them to make use of our initiative and the ideas we bring to them.

A lot of this Dáil stuff makes it a talking shop. The housing committee is also a talking shop, if one can get in to talk at it. I was not able to do so the last day when the Chairman very kindly left me out, although he had allowed everybody else in. The Minister was present, but I did not have the opportunity to share my wisdom with him. That left me very cross, but now I have made my protest and my six minutes are nearly up. We need to be listened to. We have damn good ideas and know the way forward. We can help the Minister to achieve what all families and the nation want, namely, a country in which families' needs will be treated adequately, fairly and objectively. The Minister has the vision and we can provide him with the way to implement it. Let us do it together.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

I do not believe for one minute that the Deputy is a cross man.

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan

I am allegedly not a cross guy either, but I am amused sometimes. I listened with interest to Deputy Ruth Coppinger. She really is a nice person when one gets to know her, but she has some of those crazy Trotskyite ideas that are old-fashioned and do not work, although they have been tried. Poor old Trotsky came to a very sticky end, if anyone wants to dig into the matter.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd

He got an ice axe to the head.

Deputy Seamus Healy

There is nothing old-fashioned about that.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan to continue, without interruption.

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan

All the Deputies who have spoken have peculiar ways to solve a problem which really requires a simple response. We have to go back to the genesis of the problem about 15 years ago when the Government of the day decided to shift responsibility away from the local authorities and handed it to special housing bodies and the Department of Social Protection. I remember speaking on the issue in this House at the time when I made myself quite unpopular in certain areas by saying it was crazy stuff and would not work. They told me that it would, that they had tested it. They had not and it did not. Now we are reaping the whirlwind from the seeds sown at the time.

We have to put the onus back on the local authorities to set themselves in motion rapidly. I cannot understand why it takes up to four years to draw up plans to build a housing scheme to provide affordable housing or serviced or serviceable sites on lands already zoned or which are capable of being zoned. One way or another, that combination of efforts would result in two things. It would help to reduce the cost of housing generally. Whether we like it, the cost of housing for the average buyer, let alone those on local authority housing lists, is way too high. It is not possible for a family or an individual to pay €400,000 for a house, the cost in some of the pressured places in this city and adjoining counties. They also have childminding and educational costs to meet. One would need an income of €150,000 to fund such a loan. There is no use playing around on the matter; that is the way it is.

I suggest we have an emergency plan to deliver serviced sites. The local authorities could do this, as they have sites available. Some of us have done this and availed of them in the past. Incidentally, at the peak of the boom I was involved in the development of a number of serviced sites in my constituency, comprising about 100 houses built for those on the local authority housing list. When they were finished, they were exactly twice the value of what they had cost to build. The local committee had to pay €25,000 for each of the sites, while the approved housing bodies received them for €1. That was the difference. I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot do more of that to deliver houses quickly. By the way, the houses were built before the paperwork was finished in the local authority. That is a sad reflection, but that is the way it was.

There are multiple facets to the housing issue with which we could deal quickly. However, we have to put the onus back on the local authorities. We must ask them how quickly they could produce the goods. In a constituency such as Kildare North, for example, we need nothing less than 1,000 houses at this stage to stabilise the market, provide the urgently required housing and stem the flow of homeless persons. The problem is in the here and now, not two years down the road. Some claim that it is recent. Some of us were dealing with these issues at the peak of the boom. There were people homeless then.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Absolutely.

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan

They were camped in tents on roundabouts. It was both strange and extraordinary, but they had no place to go and there were no homes available for them. They could not afford what was available. That is a sad reflection on society.

We are in a situation where young people are not in a position and do not have the confidence to aspire to do what their parents did and own a home of their own. In theory, it is a human right to have a home and there are many ways by which one can have it. We have to provide the means for the young generation to get into the housing market and I have no doubt that the Minister has the ability to do so. I know that he understands the problem. We need to do what we have to do quickly. I do not want to hear from local authorities the notion that it will take three or four years. That is a very simple answer.

If there is one thing that really riles me, it is when a person is knocked off the local authority housing list for ridiculous reasons. Their income is, say, €38,000 and the presumption is that they can buy a house - like hell they can.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Yes, that has to change.

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan

They cannot buy any house on that income. Writing people off and technically knocking them off the housing list drives them up the wall. What is worse is that it drives me up the wall also.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Well said. I agree with the Deputy, except for the jibe about Trotsky.

Deputy John Curran

This is the first opportunity I have had to address the Minister on this issue as I am not a member of the housing committee. I genuinely wish him well in the task that lies in front of him which affects all of us and those in our communities. It is a serious responsibility. I express a little disappointment that the previous Minister who had developed the programme is no longer presiding over its implementation.

However, that is as it is.

When Rebuilding Ireland was published, I told the Minister that while it was not exactly what we would have done and there were things we would have done differently, it had the potential to impact very positively on those it was intended to help if it was implemented in a timely fashion. I reiterate that. I pointed out a number of differences our all-party committee had on our housing proposals. I acknowledge that Rebuilding Ireland adopted many of the proposals from the all-party Committee on Housing and Homelessness, but the real challenge is implementation. I reiterate that. The Minister said today that there will be a review within three months. While I am all for a review, it must run in parallel with the implementation of what is there. It is not a matter of "either, or". The plan must be driven forward forcefully. One of my initial concerns was the capacity of the Department. I still have that concern. Our committee felt an independent entity should be established to drive housing policy but a decision was made that it would remain within the Department. I have concerns about implementation which I will set out as I go through my contribution.

The Minister and others have spoken today about people becoming homeless and that is the first challenge. How do we address those issues? One group still presenting in my office is people who are tenants of private landlords who are placing their properties for sale. I am sure it is the same for many Members. The Minister must revisit that issue to strengthen tenants' rights. If someone has a tenancy with a single landlord with only one property which is a commercial buy-to-let property, the tenant should have the right to remain for the duration of the tenancy even where the property is sold. The property should be sold with the tenant in situ. That is what happens with commercial properties. If a shop or office is being sold and the tenant has a lease for five or ten years, the transaction takes place but the tenant remains. One sees the signs up all around Dublin which state "Tenant not affected". We must look at considering strengthening protections for tenants because they are presenting.

I have told the Minister that I have concerns about capacity within the Department. I am not here to knock the Minister, give him a kicking or play political games. My real interest is in seeing delivery. For us to be effective and meaningful, the Minister must play ball with us. I sometimes feel there is a cloak and dagger approach. One asks a question but the transparency and in-depth reply which is necessary for us to be able to offer meaningful solutions is not always forthcoming. I say that with my hand on my heart. I am not here to get a reply which I will throw back, stating it is rubbish and that the Minister is doing nothing. I know the Minister is trying. However, when delivery is not being met within the specified time limits, we want to know why. Where are the blockages? Is it at local government level or in the Department? Is it funding? We honestly do not know.

The first issue to which I will refer specifically is the rapid build programme. When Rebuilding Ireland was published last summer, the target was that there would be 200 units provided in the fourth quarter of 2016 and 800 during 2017. Those are to be in place by the end of the year. It is something I have been keeping an eye on. While I am not on the housing committee, I was on the original all-party committee and, like previous speakers, have a very keen interest in and, like Deputy Durkan, a very good knowledge of the area. As such, I have pursued this matter. However, the answers I receive refer me first of all to what is in the pipeline and what is being planned. They are regurgitated and provided to us time and again. Eventually, having rephrased my questions, I start to get specific answers as to the various projects that will be delivered and when. This is an issue that predates the Minister's time in office. No matter what way one looks at it, instead of the 1,000 units anticipated in Rebuilding Ireland, somewhere under 200 units will have been provided by the end of 2017. These are the figures from the Minister's own Department. However, that does not help us because we really do not know what the underlying issue is. We do not know where the blockages are in delivering those units. The Minister has identified sites and what is on the input side, but we cannot fully understand where the blockages are. In the absence of that information, it is very hard for us to provide meaningful solutions to aid the process. That is what everyone in the House wants to do. There are issues there but we cannot see them from the answers the Minister is providing.

The same is true of social housing building albeit I acknowledge that a progress report is published on a regular basis. As Deputy Casey stated earlier, there are some 500 schemes with 8,500 houses, two of which schemes have over 100 units, many of which are small. The information the Minister provides shows the different stages houses are at, but what we really want to see is another column which states when they are due to be completed. It is not great to tell us a house has moved from stage two to stage three or that workers are on site when we want to know is the anticipated completion date. That transparency would help the Minister as well as us because there is nothing more important for people than to meet the deadlines they have set for themselves and to deliver programmes, including local authorities. That information is sadly missing, however. The Minister has an opportunity as he refines the programme to put that information into the quarterly reports on the construction side. The Minister has shown the 8,500 houses, the inputs and the early stages, but we want indicative dates as to when the units will be ready for occupation or at least completed on site. That would be a useful step which the Minister might consider taking as part of his review.

I acknowledge that the repair and leasing initiative has taken a quantum leap from where it was on budget day when some 150 units were anticipated to be delivered in 2017. We are now up to 800. In replies, the Minister indicates where the 800 are to be, local authority by local authority. We are halfway through 2017 but we do not have a measurement of what has been secured to date, what is being negotiated and what we are likely to hit on a local authority by local authority basis. In some of his replies, the Minister indicated that if local authorities can go further, he is open to that as well. It is an important first step. The Minister has heard the figures on vacant properties before. We have seen a figure of 40,000, not all of which, I realise, are in the greater Dublin area. We know they are not all suitable, but a few thousand would eradicate the use of hotels overnight. We are ten months into Rebuilding Ireland and I am disappointed there has not been greater progress to address the issue of vacant properties.

A great deal has been made of the supply side issue, which we all acknowledge. I spoke to the Minister previously about the local authority needing to spell out its delivery programme and timelines. The private sector is not engaging actively in the market and there is an ideal opportunity for local authorities to build while there is some capacity there. In two or three years' time it may not be as easy to get contractors. We are missing an opportunity by not being on site at the moment. That said, I acknowledge that €225 million is being invested in local infrastructure. The concern I have with the fund is that it has been divided over four years. I would have liked to see infrastructure front-loaded. That should be revisited in the sense that it is €225 million over four years. If it were front-loaded, one would then be pushing sooner for the delivery of houses. The consequence of that is that the landowners whose land will benefit from the infrastructure may not play ball and develop the land for housing quickly. If that happens, penalties must attach.

Speaking of penalties, many people have spoken about vacant sites. Replies to parliamentary questions indicate that we will have a vacant site tax from next year to be collected in 2019. There has always been concern about a balancing act from the point of view of the constitutional right to private property and the rate to be applied. It is really important to ensure the vacant site tax is meaningful and acts as a real deterrent to the hoarding of land. We need for the foreseeable future a vibrant housing construction industry and new housing schemes coming online year after year. Land hoarding has been and certainly continues to be an issue and I am concerned the rate of the vacant site tax will not be enough to get the results we are striving for.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd stated that when NAMA appeared before the committee, it indicated that it had offered local authorities 6,700 units but only approximately 2,500 were accepted.

The local authorities had a variety of reasons such as they were in the wrong location or the wrong size, yet people ended up living in all of those units. I cannot understand why the State, either through NAMA, a housing agency or a variety of local authorities, did not take ownership and dispose of them in a variety of ways. I believe in having a mix of tenures. They could have been sold to ordinary first-time buyers or there could have been an affordable or social housing scheme. We could have had a mix of tenures, but we adopted a hands-off approach, which was a mistake. On the future of NAMA and the State, we need to be proactive. In the future, when assets are being disposed of, the State cannot say it only wants this or that bit. We need to control the process. The properties sold by NAMA which the State did not take up through the local authorities were very definitely a missed opportunity because all of them have people living in them today. The State could have managed the issue in a far better way.

As a committee, we spent a lot of time on the issue of developing an off-balance sheet special purpose vehicle to allow the likes of the Irish League of Credit Unions to invest substantial funds in social housing. I note that representatives of credit unions were here recently. For God's sake, the Minister should deal with it or bury the idea. If it is a non-runner, he should say so. It goes around and around. If it is not meaningful, cannot be done, the cost of funding is too expensive, there are technical reasons and it is not allowed as an off-balance sheet transaction, the Minister should say so, but he should not allow the process to go on and on. I urge him to deal with some of these issues and, for God's sake, be honest and direct with us. We will try to help in the delivery of meaningful solutions and not play political football with it.

Deputy Carol Nolan

I thank the Acting Chairman for giving me the opportunity to speak about this very important issue which affects tens of thousands of families across the country. The figures released by the Department in the third quarterly progress report on housing and homelessness show clearly that the Government's plans are not working which comes as no surprise to me. My party has consistently called for a range of measures to be implemented to address the issue. We have called for an increase in social housing stock to 10,000 units per year. We have called for security of tenure and rent certainty to reduce the flow of families into homelessness. We have called for a Government-led affordable housing scheme. The piecemeal approach of the Government has done absolutely nothing to address the crisis that is spiralling out of control. It is almost as if it is trying to put out an inferno by sprinkling drops of petrol on it.

Families are paying the price for the Government's failure to tackle the issue. There are now 4,922 adults and 2,777 children in emergency accommodation, an increase of over 500 since December which I am sure Members will agree is unacceptable. There are 91,600 households on local authority waiting lists across the State. Five families a day are losing their homes, while 80,000 families are in mortgage arrears. Last week in my constituency office I dealt with a lady who was in mortgage arrears. She had fallen into arrears because she needed a serious, life-saving operation in London. She has done her utmost to work with the banks and meet their demands, but she ended up in my office last week in a very distressed state with a heavy-handed letter, of which I still have a copy. It has to stop immediately. The banks should be instructed to abandon their bully-boy tactics and treat people with fairness, empathy and dignity.

In my constituency of Offaly-North Tipperary over 2,500 people are on the social housing waiting list. My office is dealing with people who are living in overcrowded accommodation, being evicted from private rented accommodation, in mortgage arrears and, increasingly, families seeking emergency accommodation. County Offaly has the highest rate of homelessness in the midlands region, with 35 adults living in emergency accommodation in May. We need to use CPOs and look at using vacant shops which should be converted into residential accommodation in towns and villages. Twelve single parent families and a total of 54 children are living in emergency accommodation in the midlands region. This fact cannot be ignored. We talk all the time about mental health and building resilience in children. These kids will end up with serious problems and we will have more problems than we currently have. We need to deal with this issue head on and to protect the most vulnerable. If this is to be a true republic, we much cherish all of the children of the nation equally and give people fair play. It is about time we stopped caving into the banks.

Homelessness is not confined to large urban areas. It has spread to every region in the State. To add insult to injury, census figures show that there are 3,000 vacant dwellings in County Offaly. These dwellings should not be lying idle at a time when families have nowhere to call home. The majority on housing lists could be housed in these dwellings. The Minister needs to provide sufficient funding to bring them into use. We need urgent action; words will not do it for us. I urge the Government to be more ambitious in its vacant homes strategy by targeting a larger proportion of vacant stock over a shorter period. This would be a pragmatic approach which would be realistic and we should be taking. A properly funded vacant homes strategy could potentially transform the situation in a relatively short timeframe and at lower cost. I urge the Government and the Minister to prioritise it.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Eugene Murphy)

It is close to 12 noon, but I propose to conclude the debate.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government (Deputy Damien English)

I will facilitate the Acting Chairman in that regard. Many questions were asked during the debate and I will not get a chance to answer all of them, but we can come back to them. We had a good discussion at the committee on the issue.

On behalf of this side of the House, I thank everybody for his or her contribution. It has been a wide-ranging and well informed debate in which many issues were raised. It is important that we take them on board and try to work with the Opposition as we have in the past. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and I recognise the work put in by the housing committee in the past year and a half. It is a constant process of engaging and trying new ideas. That is what we are here for, to try every idea to address the issue. In the House we recognise the urgency of dealing with it. It is important that the message get out that it is urgent for all stakeholders that are working with us across the system. There are plenty of ideas, schemes and actions which need to be driven with urgency. We all have a role to play in that regard. We acknowledge that we need to keep pushing.

Some Members have expressed a fear that a review of the housing action plan in Rebuilding Ireland will cause a delay. It absolutely will not because it is a review that is ongoing. The Minister has said very clearly on numerous occasions that it will not delay progress. We were very clear about this from the start. There has to be a constant review of the actions being taken and the adding of more because all Members have new ideas. We are all learning. That is what we are prepared to do and what the review is about. The Action Plan for Jobs was an annual review which involved adding new actions every year and the process worked very well which did not suit most in the Opposition because it was a success. In the first year of the Action Plan for Jobs not everyone bought into the progress made because not everyone could see it. In the past three or four years, however, it took off and smashed every target set for it. Likewise, with the housing action plan, we will be able to do what it takes to solve this problem. That will mean reviewing and adding actions as we go along. That is exactly what the Minister is doing and part of the discussion this morning will feeds into it. Members should, therefore, have no fears about it. The purpose is to push things along, as opposed to delaying anything.

I will address the issue raised by Deputy John Curran first because it is relevant to what happened at the committee meeting yesterday. With regard to tapping into the resources of the credit unions, we absolutely want it to happen. The Department has been engaging with them for many years and certainly in the past few months. We have met them umpteen times to make this happen. There are funds available. Not all of their funds should be put into housing but a certain amount should. They also want to be involved in seeking solutions locally and that is happening. The required changes are coming through the Central Bank. We are ready when it is. The credit unions are also ready. It will not suit every credit union, but it will suit their overall investments portfolio and how they invest money which we need. We are committed to making it happen and it is something we want to see happen. I want to be very clear that it will not be delayed from our side.

We all agree that not enough progress is being made on the issue of vacant properties, but we have to remember that they are private properties; they are not ours. Where properties are owned through local authorities, we have taken serious action and over 7,000 vacant social houses have been brought back into use in the past few years.

There is enough money allocated this year to end that problem. There should no longer be any voids of social houses. We have led this by example. There are enough schemes out there now, the repair and lease back scheme, the purchase and renew scheme, and other schemes that will be announced in the future to deal with vacant properties. The numbers that people keep quoting, of 190,000, are the census figures. They are not our figures. I do not fully believe that all of those are available for housing. It is probably much less, but the Deputies are absolutely right that there are at least a couple of thousand and we need to get our hands on them. We want them as well but we recognise that they are private properties. We have to engage with the owners and we have used the carrot approach, but in the reviews, we will look at all approaches, both carrot and stick, to try to make this happen, because they need to be brought back into use and that is what we are committed to.

Politicians have a role to make this happen. I still meet people on a daily basis who are not aware of the schemes and yet we have all our councillors, all the Deputies in here, and we know about the repair and lease back scheme and we know there are different versions that might suit different people better as well. Let us put the word out there. We are engaging with people who tell us that they have vacant properties. Put them in touch with the local authority and let us make it happen. We have provided the money and the money is there to make this happen, but we need to get the message out there that we want it to happen as quickly as we possibly can.

Likewise, on the matter of State-owned lands, we have identified over 800 sites. We have asked local authorities to take the lead on these. There are a number of options to make that happen, but we need to drive that urgency. I ask Deputies to ask all their councillors at a local level to drive that urgency to have those lands developed. We have resources to make it happen and we have identified the sites, but the onus is on each local authority to drive it on, and we will facilitate that as well as we possibly can. There is endless opportunity there.

On the infrastructural fund, somebody raised the question about the delay of three or four years that it takes for infrastructure to happen. We are saying that one can develop the houses in parallel with the infrastructure. It is not a case of waiting for a bridge for two years and then starting to build the houses. One can phase the developments, start the construction of the houses and have them ready when the infrastructure is ready, if it is a road or a bridge. It is a little different if it is other infrastructure. Common sense applies here. One can move on much of this activity in a planned and phased way. It certainly will not delay housing. We have already seen some local authorities coming into us and saying that they are applying for funds to start building houses on those lands. That is the proper order, because that is what the local authorities are meant to do. There are other versions of the infrastructure fund that we can use to try to open up sites as well, but again, it is to try to kick-start and develop as well.

There are other matters that we can touch on and we will do that in the weeks ahead. We are absolutely committed to making this happen. Everyone says that there are not enough programmes. We know that we cannot fix it overnight, but the quarterly reports will show that we are making steady progress here. The trends are going in the right direction. It cannot all be visible. We cannot see all the houses we want to see. However, much progress has been made, even compared to where we were last year, with projects at local authority level. We now have over 600 projects. Some are for 20 or 30 houses, and some are for many more, but they were not there a year ago. Now they are in the system and moving, and we need to push them even harder again. Likewise, we need to see the private sector coming forward. Some of the planning changes we will do, that the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced today, will be discussed here next week. We need the help of the House to make that happen, so that those sites can move on and start delivering houses as well. Progress is being made. We recognise that it is not nearly enough and we have to keep it happening, and that is what we are here to do as well.