Housing Policy: Motion [Private Members]

Deputy Conor Sheehan

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

recalls that:

— under Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland, the failed housing plan of the last Government, a target of 33,450 new homes were projected for 2024 but only 30,030 homes were built, a decrease of 6.7 per cent on 2023, while the construction of new apartments fell by almost a quarter;

— the former Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage told the Dáil in October 2024 "I have consistently said we will exceed that target. I still confidently predict … that it will be the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year. There will be record completions in the last quarter of this year"; and

— the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both repeatedly claimed in advance of, and throughout, the general election campaign that up to 40,000 homes would be built in 2024;

recognises that:

— there is broad agreement that at least 50,000 new homes a year must be built, but there is fundamental disagreement on the policies necessary to achieve that; and

— unless there is radical change to the existing housing plan and the commitments in the Programme for Government, nowhere near 41,000 new homes will be delivered in 2025, or higher figures in the years to follow;

notes that:

— the Housing Commission report stated a "radical strategic reset" of housing policy is required to solve the current crisis;

— Ireland currently has a shortfall of at least 250,000 homes and the Housing Commission research has outlined how Ireland may require up to 62,000 new homes per year up to 2050, while recent estimates suggest we will require more than 90,000 per year to address the housing shortfall;

— in the past year alone, house prices have risen by almost 10 per cent, while rent prices have risen by 8 per cent, and since the introduction of Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland in September 2021, both have risen by more than a quarter;

— nearly 70 per cent of 25-year-olds in Ireland are stuck living at home with their parents;

— the number of people accessing emergency accommodation exceeded 15,000 people for the first time in November 2024, including more than 4,600 children, after rising persistently over the course of the implementation of the Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland plan, and official homelessness figures do not account for the many more people sleeping rough or the hidden homeless, such as those forced to couch surf, live in hostels or adults unable to move out of their family home due to prohibitive rent and house prices; and

— the vast majority of people and families accessing emergency accommodation come from the private rental sector, and Ireland's homelessness crisis is exacerbated by weak tenancy rights;

acknowledges that:

— Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland has manifestly failed to deliver enough new housing to meet demand and tackle the housing crisis;

— the previous Government ignored warnings and advice from the Housing Commission and other industry experts with regards to both housing targets and the appropriate model of delivery;

— the private sector developer-led model of construction cannot deliver the quantity of homes necessary to meet demand; and

— demand side measures like the Help to Buy (HTB) scheme and the Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme have inflated house prices and will continue to do so, disproportionately benefiting those on higher incomes;

agrees that:

— the new Government must change course and ensure a State-led approach to solving the housing crisis; and

— public housing should be defined as high-quality sustainable housing for all citizens regardless of income that is rented from one's local authority or its nominees Approved Housing Bodies to affordably and securely provide for one's particular housing needs; and

calls on Government to:

— take a more active role in the delivery of housing by properly resourcing the Land Development Agency (LDA), expand its power to Compulsory Purchase Order private land and assemble sites, and transform it over time into a State construction company to provide a permanent State capacity to deliver direct build homes and rebalance the housing system;

— reverse the increasing centralisation of housing responsibilities by devolving more power to local authorities, introduce a single stage approval process and a single set of standardised design guidelines for low-cost energy efficient social homes, and resource the upfront delivery of community infrastructure where new homes are built;

— introduce a land price register and bring down house prices by giving effect to the recommendations of the 1973 Report of the Committee on the Price of Building Land (the "Kenny Report"), implement land value sharing, and establish a land management and acquisition section within each local authority to ensure land availability to meet future public housing demands;

— grow the construction workforce, starting with a minimum wage for craft apprentices;

— develop new financing mechanisms for private home construction and AHBs by deploying the billions invested in the Future Ireland Fund, unlock private savings through a housing solidarity bond, and provide further opportunities for Credit Unions to underwrite mortgages and invest in housing;

— phase out inflationary measures like the HTB scheme that disproportionately benefit those on higher incomes and replace them with more income-targeted supports;

— ban no fault evictions and significantly restrict the ability of landlords to evict tenants on the basis of moving a family member into the house;

— expand the Tenant-in-Situ Scheme and the Housing First scheme, with wraparound supports for those exiting homelessness; and

— move quickly to deploy the Apple windfall to build more homes through the LDA, and expand the capacity of the water and electricity networks.

I thank the Minister of State for being here, although I am quite disappointed that the housing Minister himself did not see fit to come to the House this morning-----

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan)

He is at Cabinet.

Deputy Conor Sheehan

-----throughout this debate to hear this motion. That is very disappointing and if it is a sign of things to come, it is not a way to start off this Dáil term.

Nevertheless, I am delighted to move this motion, the Labour Party’s first Private Members' motion of the Thirty-fourth Dáil. This motion calls for and sets out our vision for the radical reset in housing policy as called for in the Government’s own housing commission report, which it has, by and large and conveniently for itself, ignored.

Ireland is not just in the midst of a housing crisis but a housing crisis that is getting worse and worse, and that the Government seems intent on worsening through successive ill-thought-out interventions that we know will only serve to line the pockets of property developers and institutional investors. Meanwhile, the burden of its failed policies will continue to fall on those who simply want to have a home of their own, and in particular renters in the private rented sector whose narrow shoulders, it looks like, will be forced to bear the burden of more rent increases.

We in Labour are clear in our vision. The State must play a greater, more active and more interventionist role to solve this crisis, and when the State does intervene, it should be to increase the supply of social and affordable homes, not to turbocharge already inflated house prices and rents as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have done and appear intent and happy enough to continue doing.

The Government likes to lecture us in the Labour Party, accusing us of populism and irresponsibility when we have consistently and continually put forward constructive, evidence-based solutions to the housing crisis. I find it ironic that the Taoiseach took to the media to float the idea of ending rent pressure zones, RPZs, on the hoof and without setting out a viable alternative to protect renters. That goes beyond irresponsibility; it is reckless. We know rent pressure zones are not a panacea but they are all many thousands of renters in the private rented market have between them and homelessness.

The fact is, Housing for All has failed, and it needs more than a nip-tuck. The numbers speak for themselves. House prices are up more than 25%; rents are up by the same; homelessness is up by 70%; and worst of all, child homelessness is up by more than 75%. All of this is since Housing for All was introduced in September 2021. Fianna Fáil, to be frank, is going to need a better answer than accusing us of being disinterested at the prospect of going into Government to drive on with this failed policy.

To lay the blame for the falling number of apartments being built at the door of renters and RPZs is simplistic and disingenuous. We know that ECB interest rates increased every quarter from the last quarter of 2022 until mid-2024. If the Government’s answer is to scrap one of the few protections renters have, then frankly, it is looking in the wrong place.

The Government needs to realise that it is time for a complete reset on housing policy. We need to create a paradigm where housing becomes the bulwark of our commitment to reinforce our social pillar to allow everybody in this country to live in a secure home. I call on the Minister to meet and engage - well, I would call on him if he were here - with the new EU housing Commissioner as soon as possible and to invite him here, as this is a crisis where the EU can play a role, particularly around economic and state aid rules.

If the Government really feels that its housing strategy is working, why did the Taoiseach unceremoniously dump the previous Minister and feel the need to fluff the numbers to get through the general election? The fact is that the Government is making it up as it goes along. Its policy is not working so it has resorted to the old reliable of ill-thought-out tax cuts for property developers. It is like, "Welcome back Fianna Fáil". It is like Government, or Fianna Fáil in particular, is a mere stepping stone away from heralding the return of the Galway tent. We know where that got us before and frankly, people my age still paying the price.

I read the Government’s countermotion and it is as if it could have been generated by ChatGPT. It references the Housing Commission’s report that was published last May, the same report that this House has not even debated. It will not give one crumb of comfort to any renter in the private rented market terrified by what the Taoiseach said at the weekend on radio about rent pressure zones.

We need a radically different approach if we are to have any hope of bringing the housing crisis to an end and this motion sets out what we believe that approach should be. Our key message is that the State needs to step up. We want Government to properly resource the Land Development Agency, LDA, to give it power to acquire land and not just from other State bodies, and to assemble land. We in the Labour Party supported establishing the LDA, but it needs to be given teeth.

In my own city of Limerick, the agency has not turned, and will not turn, a single sod for many years. That is not acceptable and this is what we in the Labour Party mean when we talk about providing a permanent State capacity to deliver homes. We are not talking about some Soviet quango, as has been alluded to in the media. The LDA must be given the necessary resources to deliver zoned and serviced development land.

The Government talks about cutting the cost of building homes, yet refuses to even consider implementing the recommendations of the Kenny report, which has been idle since 1973.

Labour has been crying out for it to be implemented to bring down the cost of land and the cost of building homes. We have even done the work to produce a Bill that would implement those recommendations for the Minister of State, but the Government has stuffed its fingers in its ears. Instead, the policy is to continue transferring wealth to property developers and institutional investors without any guarantee that the savings from their proposed tax cuts will be passed onto putative homeowners. We are also calling on the Government not to leave renters in the cold grip of investors and landlords, and to bring forward a ban on no-fault evictions and introduce a rent freeze until supply improves.

The Department of Finance estimated that €11.5 billion of private financing will be required to reach a target of 50,000 homes a year. Builders cannot access affordable bank loans or only have access to expensive private equity financing. The State needs to give them alternatives to vulture funds. This can be done by developing new financing mechanisms for private home construction by deploying the billions invested in the Future Ireland Fund and unlocking private savings through a housing solidarity fund.

Housing is the single biggest issue in this country and the Government are not being honest with the people. It was wilfully misleading when it knew it would not reach its targets and now that it has completely run out of ideas, it is resorting to the same policies that germinated the seeds of this disaster, which have robbed an entire generation of young people of the dream of home ownership and will only line the pockets of big developers with taxpayers' money.

Deputy Mark Wall

Recent commentary talks about a housing crisis in this country. The term "crisis" does not describe what so many families and individuals are experiencing because what we have is a housing emergency. No other word can describe it. It is not a crisis when over 15,000 of our citizens, including over 4,500 children, are living in hotel rooms. That in itself is an emergency.

However, this emergency is not limited to that totally unacceptable figure. It also includes working families who cannot get onto the housing list or have been taken off housing lists and cannot access the housing assistance payment, HAP, because local authorities are assessing income from last year. They are also taking into account temporary payments like jobseeker's benefit which, as we all know, is temporary.

It is an emergency because 70% of 25-year-olds are stuck living at home with their parents. It is an emergency for young people like Alex, who I met at a public meeting on Monday night. He told me that housing is a major concern for him and peers. He made a 150 km round trip each day to attend college, a total of 80,000 km in travel over the four years of his study, simply because he could not find any accommodation and any that was available was overpriced. He recounted a number of similar stories from his friends, all of whom he said are worried about their housing future in this country.

It is an emergency because a joint project for assisted housing in my home town to be built on council land has not seen a sod turned in ten years, despite funding announcements. Sheltered housing in the same town, which could house ten older people, has been held up by two Government agencies, namely, the HSE and the local authority. For over two years, they have been unable to agree on a contract or lease. Why does it take two years for two Government agencies to agree on a lease? I could name other projects in other towns and I am sure my colleagues will do so.

It is a housing emergency because there are no rental properties available to rent in Kildare South. Many landlords continue to refuse HAP and a number of tenants are afraid to report poor and dire living conditions to their local authorities because if they do so, there is simply no other place to rent.

I am aware that many local authority houses are taking years to return to council stock. I am aware of houses purchased by local authorities that stand idle years after their purchase, many still at the so-called first stage of planning. Like colleagues throughout the House, I am aware of derelict houses throughout the State in many housing estates which are lying idle during the housing emergency. I am aware of the attempts of many local authorities to compulsorily purchase these houses. Unfortunately, I am too aware of the time it is taking to secure such homes as potential family homes.

This is a housing emergency because the housing list for one-bedroom units in my local authority is around 20 years long. It is taking 20 months for a warmer home scheme to be put in place. After shouting in the Seanad for a review of the housing adaptation grant for over four years, the review has not gone far enough and homeowners cannot adapt their homes. The Government's Housing Commission called for a radical strategic reset of housing policy. Recent commentary by the Taoiseach and many Ministers seemed to suggest that this radical reset is to go back again to massive tax reliefs for developers, returning us to the ghost estates of the past and rising house prices for the highest bidder. It will once again remove from young families and working people the possibility of owning their own home or even affording private rent.

I wish the Minister of State well in this housing emergency. I join with one of his party's TDs, who yesterday in this House called for a Covid-like response to housing. For me and my party, that must be State-led through a State housing agency. It is time we treated this housing crisis as the emergency that it really is.

Deputy Marie Sherlock

How is it in 21st-century Ireland, when we are into our ninth year of eye-watering budget surpluses with, of course, the exception of the pandemic, that securing an affordable and sustainable home for so many people is largely down to luck? It is down to luck in terms of the family one is born into and whether the bank of Mam and Dad will be able to help with a deposit. More than one third of people in this country are relying on their parents for help with a deposit. It is down to luck in terms of whether one has a partner or is married, because if one is single and trying to buy a home in this country, good luck. It is down to luck in terms of when one was born. Even when wages were a fraction of what they are now, it was possible to buy a home.

A Rubicon has been crossed in this country, whereby even a salary of €100,000 and savings in the bank of €40,000 are not enough to get a mortgage for a three-bedroom house in two thirds of the postcodes in Dublin. If that is the case for those who have done well and have a great salary, what hope do our young people have when they are starting out? What hope does anybody trapped in low-paid employment or those paying massive childcare costs have when trying to look for a mortgage? There is an inequality in housing in the city, in terms of who controls the land and the destiny of so many families. It is in the gift of the Government to change that. We in the Labour Party believe there is another way.

In the constituency I represent, Dublin Central, very clear actions could be taken. There could be aggressive tackling of dereliction. We know there are about 1,000 long-term vacant units between the canals which could be turned into homes if the political will was there. We have a long-term vacant homes tax that is not worth the paper it is written on. That could be changed. There could be changes to CPO laws, but we heard nothing from the Taoiseach about that over the weekend. There is a way in which newly built homes could be made available for purchase. If the private sector cannot viably build apartments for purchase, then the State must step in.

The horror of what the Taoiseach is now proposing is to condemn a generation of people to insecure renting and astronomical rents. That is the reality of what we have here. There is a great hypocrisy at work. When we had an uproar about the bulk purchase of homes in Maynooth three years ago, nobody cared about apartment dwellers. We have a set of planning constraints, tax and higher stamp duty for the bulk purchase of houses, but nothing for hubs. That is condemning a generation of people in Dublin and other area urban areas across the country to long-term insecure renting. There is a way to ensure more social and affordable homes are built. The Land Development Agency, LDA, has identified 33 acres in my constituency that lie empty. We heard nothing from the Taoiseach about that over the weekend.

In our motion, the Labour Party calls for an end to the disastrous experimentation that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have unleashed in this country since 2016. Unfortunately, the area I represent has been a microcosm of all of the experiments that have gone so badly wrong. First was the tax incentives for student accommodation, and we saw a rush of money into that. We then had co-living, which was thought to be the great new way of housing young workers. Thankfully, that ended in 2022. We then had build to rent, which was another way to reduce apartment standards and introduce thousands of apartments to the area while ensuring that nobody could ever buy. Thankfully, that experiment has ended. The latest wheeze from the Taoiseach is to try to bring in more tax incentives. It is akin to changing the goalposts.

Last year, the handwringing was all about capacity. The Labour Party has brought forward proposals with regard to a State construction company. To be frank, the Taoiseach sneered at those proposals. The culprit is now private investment. Next year there will be somebody else to blame. We all want to build more homes, but for whom? That is a critical difference between the Government side of the House and ours. We want to build homes for ordinary working people, not line the pockets of institutional funds.

Deputy Eoghan Kenny

The level of respect that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Regional Independent Group have for people on the housing waiting lists throughout the country is stark to those of us on this side of the House when the benches opposite remain empty and we have one Minister sitting here. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael should be ashamed of themselves. Cabinet meeting or no Cabinet meeting, the motion brought forward by the Labour Party is one of integrity and respect for the people we meet every single day of the week. The benches opposite speak volumes to the people we represent.

This is the issue of our time and for our generation of politicians. I am 24 years old, and one of the 70% of 25-year-olds living at home with their parents. Every single day, numerous calls, messages and e-mails come in to my office from genuine people who find themselves in difficult circumstances. I met a family in Togher, County Cork, during the recent local election campaign. There are three kids living with their parents, each with a child of their own in a three-bedroom house. There are eight people in a three-bedroom house. The woman stood at the doorstep crying to me. What would the Minister of State say to her?

An elderly couple live ten doors down from me in Mallow. They have rented their house for over 15 years. The landlord informed them that he wishes to sell the house and was more than willing to use the tenant in situ scheme. However, after months of the local authority dragging its heels and ignoring him, the landlord made the decision to sell the house privately. What would the Minister of State say to this elderly couple?

I want to put on the record of the Dáil a figure that I cannot get out of my head. In more than nine years, Cork County Council has sold 99 homes through the tenant in situ scheme. That is an unbelievable and stark figure, pathetic actually. The Government's poor delivery of and weak commitment to this scheme has resulted in landlords having little or no confidence in it. The Labour Party wants to introduce monthly reporting by each local authority on the tenant in situ scheme, with adequate reasons outlined as to why the purchase of rental property did not proceed. Accountability is neither here nor there. Nobody is taking ownership for failed action under the tenant in situ scheme.

When a person calls to my door at home or at my office who is willing and in a position to rent a home, I have to tell that person to walk through the main street and call to every local auctioneer on the main street to try to rent a property. That is unbelievable. On daft.ie this morning, there is not one single home in Mallow to rent. What does that tell me? It tells me the Government has failed on renters' rights.

A development in Kerry Pike in County Cork was promised a crèche by private developers. People paid over €500,000 for their home based on a pretence that they would be able to access early years education on their doorstep. That crèche never came. Lies, again, by the private developers. These commitments must be seen in the first phase of developments instead of the last.

In 2023, one in seven children lived in households that were below the poverty line, with over 264,000 children living in households experiencing deprivation. The homelessness figure has exceeded 15,000 people. We, in the Labour Party, have consistently brought legislation and motions to Government to meaningfully tackle these figures. The Government needs to enact radical, meaningful change. We are throwing genuine people to the dogs when it comes to housing.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

acknowledges that:

- Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland, sets out an ambitious multi-annual programme that seeks to deliver more than 300,000 new homes between 2022 and 2030;

- while the policy aim is to reach, if not exceed, the target in each successive year, the primary goal is to maintain an upward trajectory in supply and in line with or ahead of the overall target over the longer term;

- since Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland was published in September, 2021, almost 99,500 new homes have been built, with delivery of 92,500 new homes in the three years from 2022 to 2024, representing a considerable 49 percent increase on the quantum delivered in the previous three-year period;

- delivery of affordable housing supports will significantly exceed 2023 outturn, while the supply of new build social homes continues to be at a level higher than it has been for many years; and

- Government measures such as the development levy waiver and water connection refund have been a catalyst for increased construction activity in the last 12 months, establishing a robust medium-term pipeline and supporting significantly accelerated supply of new housing in the coming years;

recognises that:

- the measures introduced under Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland, have helped establish a solid platform to 'scale-up' delivery further in the short-term and secure a sustainable level of supply that will help us meet fully unmet and emerging demand over the next decade;

- the Government's revised housing targets, informed by expert, peer-reviewed research by the Economic and Social Research Institute and targeting a minimum of 300,000 or so new homes over the next six years, are an ambitious and credible pathway to achieving these objectives;

- the measures committed to in the Programme for Government, including a new housing plan building on the successes of Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland, will help us meet the enormous challenge of delivering 60,000 or more new homes per year by 2030; and

- the target of 300,000 new homes is not a ceiling, and the Government will revisit the targets again in 2027 if, reflecting demand and growing industry capacity, different targets are required for 2028 and subsequent years; and

affirms the efforts to:

- adequately resource the Land Development Agency (LDA) to deliver increased quantum of new homes required, noting the recently increased resourcing to the LDA and will look to capitalise it further as required;

- prioritise infrastructure development as a critical means for increasing housing supply, noting the commitments including, for example, investing additional capital in Uisce Éireann and establishing a new office of strategic housing and infrastructure delivery to coordinate homebuilding and investment in the servicing of zoned lands;

- expand the capacity of the construction sector as another key measure to scale up delivery to the levels necessary by 2030, and thereafter building upon ongoing measures to tackle barriers in construction careers, promote career opportunities, and make construction more attractive to women;

- establish a land price register, which work is committed to in the Programme for Government, and already underway;

- boost homeownership and help support younger people seeking autonomy in the housing market through measures like First Home Scheme, Help-to-Buy scheme, the Local Authority Home Loan, revised social housing income eligibility limits, and the introduction and expansion of the renters credit, as well as the delivery of 130,000 or so new homes over the last five years;

- diversify sources of investment, noting the level of investment required in the long term cannot be solely the responsibility of the State, it will also require a very significant level of private investment, including appropriate institutional capital investment which is essential for the delivery of critically needed private rented stock - engage with domestic lenders to ensure that the banking sector is appropriately using its lending capacity to support the development of new housing nationwide;

- develop new financing sources, especially for brownfield sites and small builders, with support from Home Building Finance Ireland, the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) and domestic banks as well as State support of equity investment;

- enhance protections for tenants, while appropriately vindicating landlords' constitutionally protected property rights, through measures introduced by successive recent Government's via the Residential Tenancies Acts;

- tackle homelessness through a suite of Cross-Government responses, acknowledging that homelessness is a complex issue requiring multifaceted responses to deal with considerably varying causal factors and family circumstances;

- build on the significant number of social and affordable homes provided in 2024, expanding State investment with almost €5 billion available for the delivery of social, affordable and cost rental homes in 2025, supplemented by LDA investment and HFA lending which will bring the overall capital provision to over €6 billion; and

- deliver on the far-ranging commitments in the Programme for Government and informed by the Housing Commission's proposals for the long-term reform of the housing system, accepting this is an appropriate response to the current housing challenges which Ireland is now facing.

The Minister, Deputy Browne, is unavoidably absent as he is at Cabinet. Unfortunately, the Deputies will have to make do with me. I assure all Deputies that the Minister, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and I will work together as a team to find housing solutions and increase the supply of housing.

I thank the Labour Party for raising this very important issue. The Deputies expressed severe criticism of my party and the Government. Over the past five years, I have found the Labour Party to be constructive in its opposition and in providing solutions. I acknowledge that. In many areas, although the Deputies may disagree, we have a shared ambition of ending homelessness, reducing rents, increasing the number of affordable homes that are available and increasing housing supply in general. Where we differ is how we achieve those targets. However, we also share some goals and solutions, for example, in terms of devolving power to local authorities. That is already happening on many levels, in that councillors in local authorities have within their remit the ability to supply housing. Single stage assessments are also an area on which we share views but we differ in many other areas.

The motion calls for an end to the help-to-buy scheme, which it describes as inflationary but-----

Deputy Ged Nash

It is inflationary.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

-----I can attest to the fact that in my constituency of Cork South-West, hundreds of couples have been able to avail of this much-needed scheme. They simply would not have been able to afford their own homes without it.

That said, over the next couple of minutes I will set out the Government's countermotion and our response to the motion before us. Housing is a cross-sectoral societal challenge that has a real impact on people’s lives. I reassert this Government’s commitment to addressing the housing crisis by implementing Housing for All and the suite of measures outlined in the programme for Government. Housing for All is a multi-annual plan to accelerate and increase the delivery of new homes. Since its publication in September 2021, almost 107,000 homes have been added to the national housing stock through new builds, completion of historical unfinished housing developments and vacant properties brought back to use.

While much still needs to be done, we have also achieved a lot. The step-change in delivery in recent years has helped many households achieve autonomy in the housing market. Last year’s dip in delivery is disappointing but supply continues to grow in the longer term. From a stagnant 20,000 or so new homes per year, we are now on a firm upward trajectory. Almost 92,500 new homes were built between 2022 and 2024, up almost 50% on the three previous years, and a robust pipeline is in place to support a renewed uptick in supply this year and next year.

Some 60,000 residential commencement notices were received in 2024 on the back of the Government's water connection and development levy waivers. While it is hard to predict with certainty when these developments will be completed, there is undoubtedly more work on-site. Feedback suggests it is more a matter of when, rather than if, these notices will translate to new homes. We do not underestimate the scale of the task ahead. Building new homes remains a key priority for this Government. To this end, we have committed to delivering 300,000 new homes by 2030, rising to 60,000 homes per year by the end of that period. Our focus now is to meet both new and existing need. We believe the new targets are ambitious and credible and provide an appropriate pathway to deliver on this objective. Importantly, the target of 300,000 homes is not a ceiling. In this regard, we will adopt an agile approach to revisit the targets again in 2027 if, reflecting demand and growing industry capacity, we need different targets for 2028 and subsequent years.

Scaling up to 60,000 homes a year and building on that figure further thereafter will be an enormous challenge. We will rise to this challenge. We will do so by, among other things, prioritising investment in infrastructure development and establishing a new office of strategic housing and infrastructure delivery to co-ordinate homebuilding and investment in the servicing of zoned lands and remove barriers that stifle supply. We will continue to grow construction sector capacity, tackling barriers in construction careers, promoting career opportunities and making construction more attractive to all. The additional capacity will establish a platform from which to deliver the Housing Commission's recommendation of addressing unmet demand within ten years.

We will continue to diversify sources of investment. The level of investment required in the long term cannot be solely the responsibility of the State. We also require a considerable level of private investment, including appropriate institutional capital which is essential for the delivery of apartments and private rented homes.

We will engage with domestic lenders, ensuring the banking sector is maximising its lending capacity to support the development of new housing nationwide. We will develop new financing sources, especially for brownfield sites and small builders, supported by Home Building Finance Ireland, the Housing Finance Agency and domestic banks, as well as State support of equity investment. The Land Development Agency will provide 12,900 homes over the lifetime of Housing for All. The Government recently recapitalised the agency to ensure it is best placed to deliver the homes required and will do so again, if needed, in the coming years.

The Labour Party motion calls for a reverse in "the increasing centralisation of housing responsibilities by devolving more power to local authorities."

In reality, key decisions on delivering public housing are vested in local authorities. While my Department sets out targets in line with national strategy and provides overall design guidance for capital funding, local authorities, including elected councillors, make the decisions on specific public housing delivery in their areas.

The motion also calls for a single set of standardised design guidelines for social homes. Standard designs have been in place for all new social housing developments since 2022. I confirm they were rolled out to all local authorities several years ago and are a central part of the current social housing programme, which has resulted in the highest level of delivery of new social housing build for many decades.

The motion further calls for a "single stage assessment and approval process". The reality is that this process already applies to over 80% of new social housing delivery. We are already examining how to take this a step further. As per the commitment in the programme for Government to reduce delays and red tape, my Department is examining the scope to extend the single stage approval to all social housing projects with standardised designs.

Affordability is a key focus of Housing for All, which introduced many measures to support access to affordable housing and assist those aspiring to buy their own home to do so, including the help-to-buy scheme, the local authority affordable purchase scheme, the local authority home loan, the ready-to-build scheme and the first home shared equity scheme. We continue to deliver the first affordable homes in a generation and we are going from strength to strength, with affordable housing supports provided in 2024 likely to significantly exceed the 2023 outturn. The first home scheme in particular has proven to be a key support for first-time buyers. The Government is committed to working with the banks to expand the scheme to first-time buyers of second-hand homes, extend it to 2030 and increase the targets in keeping with the increase in starter home targets. These matters are being examined by the Department and will help boost home ownership further and support younger people seeking autonomy in the housing market.

In the rental market, we have committed to continuing support for renters and landlords, including measures to protect renters and landlords from abusive practices through enhanced enforcement powers for the Residential Tenancies Board. While we will continue to vindicate tenant protections, and successive recent Governments have significantly strengthened these rights, they must continue to be balanced with a landlord’s constitutionally protected property rights.

Supporting households experiencing homelessness remains a priority for the programme for Government and it reaffirms Ireland’s commitment to working to eradicate homelessness by 2030. Budget 2025 allocates more than €300 million to this end, up €61 million on 2024. Additionally, €12 million in capital funding is being provided for supported emergency accommodation for families and individuals experiencing homelessness. We have also committed to creating 2,000 housing first tenancies to target long-term homelessness.

My Department is working closely with local authorities and their service delivery partners to support households to exit homelessness to a tenancy, that is, tenancies in local authority and approved housing body properties or in the private rental market supported by the housing assistance payment, as well as the tenant in situ scheme. While the Government measures are having an effect, increasing the supply of social, affordable and private housing and accommodation remains the ultimate solution to addressing the challenge in the longer term.

This Government is dedicated to ensuring the continued success of Housing for All and implementing the far-ranging commitments in the programme for Government. In its countermotion, the Government highlights the substantial progress made to date and how we will build on this progress. We have achieved much since the plan was published and we will continue to work tirelessly over the Government's term to increase supply, address the affordability challenges and fix the housing system for our children, grandchildren and generations to come.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

Anois, bogaimid ar aghaidh chuig Páirtí an Lucht Oibre. An chéad cainteoir ná an Teachta Ciarán Ahern.

Deputy Ciarán Ahern

When I am out knocking on doors in Dublin South-West and speaking with constituents, housing is undoubtedly the issue that is raised with me most often. Whether it is young people stuck in a rental trap handing over extortionate amounts of their hard-earned income to a landlord and unable to save for a deposit, parents whose child is unable to move out of a childhood bedroom or older people looking to downsize in their community, I do not recall a single instance in which anyone has ever proposed more of the same as a solution to our housing catastrophe. The Taoiseach's comments in recent days will be extremely concerning to these people because not only did the Government seem to be offering more of the same, but it also seems to want to turbocharge the worst elements of its failed policies which have put home ownership even further out of reach for workers and families, caused rents to skyrocket, given us record levels of homelessness and left a generation bereft of hope and looking to emigrate.

Who exactly is the Government listening to when it comes to housing policy? Who is it loyal to? It appears that wealthy developers who view housing as an investment asset rather than a public good have the ear of the Taoiseach over the Government's own Housing Commission. The Housing Commission was clear that a radical reset of housing policy is required if we are to have any hope of fixing the issue. Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that a slew of tax cuts for wealthy developers was what the Housing Commission had in mind. None of this was included in the manifestos of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, nor did it any of it appear in the programme for Government. Coupled with the total misrepresentation of the housing completion figures for last year, voters have been sold a pup.

As my party colleagues outlined, the Labour Party is clear in its position. The State has to take the lead on housing. That is what this motion is about. It is about the State taking a more active role in the delivery of homes. Only the State can ensure the type of joined-up thinking that delivers the level and mix of housing that we need but that also allows communities to develop and flourish. The private sector, developer-led approach has failed on all these counts. The State must take a more active role in the housing market through a beefed-up Land Development Agency so that we can deliver the houses we need and bring this joined-up thinking that enables communities to grow and thrive. We must treat housing as a social good and a right rather than a commodity. That is the solution to this housing crisis, not Fianna Fáil's Bertie-era tax cuts for developers.

Deputy George Lawlor

This motion brings together many of the key elements of what we believe can form the basis of a response to the greatest social crisis this country has faced since the foundation of the State. While we have come a long way since this State was founded, the housing crisis shrouds everything we do. It is a stain on all our political characters and on those of the many who have graced this Chamber before us. The figure that 15,000 of our citizens are in emergency accommodation is a source of shame created by this Government's refusal to break from the shackles of the private market, which is being allowed to lead the way when it comes to the provision of housing. When I say the provision of housing, I speak about the provision of what this Government and the private investors see as the provision of a commodity.

In addition to 15,000 people in emergency accommodation, we have those who are languishing on our local authority housing lists. We have families, single people and elderly people on our housings lists and they invariably remain on those lists for years before being allocated a new home. They spend years and years waiting and paying high rents, which will only get higher as the Government prepares to rid these families of any protections. Yet, those on our housing lists, despite the years of waiting and paying high rents, can be deemed to be extremely lucky. Those who are unlucky, those with little or no hope of security of tenure and those who are completely abandoned are the hard-working, low-income families excluded from our housing lists with absolutely no support or assistance because of the ridiculously low income thresholds which disqualify them from getting on the housing lists. For example, in my county of Wexford, if the total household income for two adults and two children exceeds €38,500, the family is either removed from the housing list or their application refused on the basis that household earnings are too high. Their only option is the private rental market, which means paying thousands in rent with no support and no hope of change as they also have no chance of securing a mortgage to remove the rental shackles. As if their household income was not low enough, these ridiculously low thresholds are condemning hard-working families to a life of stress and penury as they battle to keep up with the rent and keep a roof over their heads.

For those with incomes just under or near the threshold, there is no incentive to improve their lot for fear that a promotion in work or a bit of overtime will push them off the housing list. There simply has to be a better way to assess people's housing needs. For God's sake, will the Minister stop penalising hard-working families and forcing them into poverty? It is clear that the active State approach proposed by the Labour Party is the only mechanism that will deliver the volume of homes required to eradicate the numerous obstacles that are sustaining this crisis. The market will do what the market does, namely, serve and protect itself.

There is of course a place for the private sector in the provision of housing, but that place is not in the driving seat. I commend this motion to the House.

Deputy Robert O'Donoghue

Go raibh maith agat. As this is my first time speaking in the Dáil, I would like to take a moment just to thank my family, my ma and my da and my three brothers, the Fingal Labour Party branches and my friends who helped me to campaign during the recent election to get here. Most importantly, I thank the good people of Dublin Fingal West who have put their trust in me for the duration of this term to advocate on their behalf for the essential services they need. Fingal is the youngest and fastest growing area in the country. As a result of this pressure, sadly, my area is not able to deliver the services needed for the people there. Again this morning, the 33 bus was stretched beyond capacity when it came to Lusk. We need to look at additional capacity for the services. However, unsurprisingly, the provision of housing is the number one issue in my constituency and for my generation. Policy is failing making homeownership unobtainable for a generation of young adults now stuck in their childhood bedrooms or pushed into exorbitant and unsustainable rents, hemmed in like boars between archers. It is a policy that has delivered record numbers of homelessness. We are aware that the figures for homelessness are significantly higher than those reported. We do not take into account women and children who are in domestic violence refuges, individuals accessing homeless services not provided by the State, people in direct provision, people couch-surfing or relying on the kindness of family and friends. Homelessness is traumatic for anybody who experiences it, but the 4,600 children in this situation will be living that trauma for the rest of their lives.

In the Labour Party, we are aware that there is no silver bullet to solve this problem. I am sure everyone has heard the same stories from builders around the country where in the sector we continue not to have enough workers. This is going to impact the delivery of numbers at the end of next year. We need to grow the construction workforce and start with a wage for craft apprentices. I urge the Government to consider this proposal seriously.

Deputy Marie Sherlock

Hear, hear.

Deputy Robert O'Donoghue

I refer to the tenant in situ scheme, which provides critical funding for the likes of Fingal County Council to purchase homes to protect people at risk of homelessness. To meet that end we need sustained Government funding and it is essential that this must remain a priority. I am surprised that the allocation of that funding and unit acquisition numbers have not, as far as I am aware to date, gone to our local authorities. I am dealing with a growing number of landlords and tenants being put at risk as a consequence of these numbers not being allocated. We know housing is the issue du jour. As an emergency measure, we should be looking at extending the tenant in situ measures and, indeed, the Housing First scheme for people exiting homelessness. I therefore urge the Government to get those numbers to the councils as soon as possible. I did listen intently last week to be Tánaiste when he stated we need a whole-of-Oireachtas approach for solving the housing crisis. I genuinely welcome that sentiment. The Labour Party has brought forward today proposals and solutions for the housing crisis and in the vein of bipartisanship we would be happy to see them implemented.

Deputy Ged Nash

Hear, hear.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

Go raibh maith agat. Well done Deputy on your first speech. Bogfaimid ar aghaidh anois go dtí Sinn Féin agus an Teachta Ó Broin.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this comprehensive motion and giving us an opportunity to discuss what is undoubtedly the most important issue facing our constituents today. We are fully supporting the motion. We have some differences of opinion on policy, particularly with respect to the future focus of the Land Development Agency, but we fully support and endorse the spirit of this motion. Obviously, we will be opposing the Government's proposed amendment.

At the outset, I will say that I appreciate the line Minister cannot always be here. There was a convention previously, however, where the line Minister would have the courtesy to contact the proposer of a motion in advance to explain an absence and I think that is a practice that should be recommenced. I will also point out that during the last Dáil not only did the previous Minister not undertake that commitment but, in fact, he had a terrible habit of coming in, speaking and then leaving before anybody else spoke. Whatever about the political differences we may have with the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Browne, I hope they will properly engage with the Opposition in a way that was entirely absent in the last Oireachtas.

I take issue with a couple of elements of the Minister of State's speech. It is simply not the case that local authorities make the decisions on specific public housing delivery in their areas. Any of us who have been in local authorities know that is just not true. The targets are set by the Department. The funding is set by the Department. The funding approvals are set by the Department. The level of micromanagement by the officials in the Custom House on everything down to where the windows and skirting boards of public housing projects go is actually one of the greatest causes of delay. Along with others, we have been calling for the last Government and the previous Government to dramatically reform the process of approval and procurement for public housing, but this is falling on deaf ears. It is also incredibly misleading to suggest that 80% of new social housing delivery is using the single stage process. That is only possible if we exclude all the Part V units, all the turnkeys and all the design and builds. The actual number of projects of the 8,000 to 9,000 social homes delivered last year that used that process is minuscule because of course it is too small, it carries too much risk for the local authorities. Therefore, I urge the Minister of State to use whatever influence is possible to remove the single biggest obstacle for the delivery of public housing projects by local authorities and approved housing bodies, which is the bureaucracy imposed by the Department.

Regarding the Government's proposed amendment to the motion, the problem is that it almost suggests everything is going fine, nothing is wrong and we are just going to continue as we were. If we are going to fix a problem, we need to know what it is. Let us look, therefore, at why the Government did not deliver on its housing target last year. Initially, it was 33,000 units, but this was of course subsequently increased to 40,000 units. There are three reasons. One is because the Government is not meeting its social housing targets. Every year under the previous Government, and last year will have been no different, its social housing targets were missed. That happened in many respects for the reasons I have just outlined, including targets that were too low to begin with. Even worse than that, though, the Government's affordable housing targets were missed by an even larger margin. Last year, the Government was meant to deliver probably about 4,300 affordable purchase and rental homes through local authorities, approved housing bodies and the LDA. It will not be anywhere close to 2,000 units and will probably be closer to 1,000 units in the end. Not only is the Government missing those targets, but the majority of those homes are not actually affordable for people buying them.

The Government is also missing its private purchase targets. The housing plan of the outgoing Government was to deliver, on average, about 11,000 homes to go onto the market for working families to buy every year. The Government has missed that figure every year. It has stagnated from 2018 through to 2023 at about 8,000 units annually. This means that if we want to have a conversation about how we increase and accelerate the delivery of homes, which all of us want to do, we do not start by asking Property Industry Ireland or Irish Institutional Property what they need to do to get more institutional investment into the private rental sector. We ask instead how much more public investment we need to get social and affordable housing to the levels it should be at and how do we support and activate small- and medium-sized building developers to keep building more homes that working people can buy in the private market, including in the constituency of the Minister of State, which will probably not see any affordable rental or purchase units delivered by the State or, if so, it will only be a minuscule number.

Thankfully, the Housing Commission has set out in a lot of detail how to address those issues. Many of us in the Opposition have set out in the same level of detail credible policies of how to do all of that. Is it not remarkable that having ignored the Housing Commission's report for half a year, the only time the Government has started to refer to it is when it wants to justify stripping renters of crucial supports, inadequate as they are. It is also significant that nowhere in the Minister of State's speech or in the programme for Government was there any mention of the recommendations of the Homeless Policy Group. It wrote to the Government earlier this year and set out ten key actions required to tackle the homelessness crisis and they are entirely absent. The big worry here, then, is that the Government is not listening to us, to the homeless sector or to the Housing Commission and this means things are going to get worse. We will continue to hold the Government to account and continue to propose alternatives. At some point in the future, we will have the opportunity to implement those alternatives, but until that happens I am afraid that based on what I heard from the Minister of State today, things are only going to get worse.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward this motion. I also take a few moments of my time to thank my colleague an Teachta Ó Broin for the honest, straightforward solutions and focused proposals he has consistently put forward. Before I came in here, I called Marian, who is my constituency manager. I got her to run through just the cases that have come in during the last couple of days. One concerns a woman I met myself. She has multiple sclerosis and has been on the housing list for 14 years. It has been seven years since she was granted medical priority. Her living conditions in her home, the place where she is living now and in receipt of HAP, are making her condition worse.

The Government's housing policy is making her sick. She cannot transition out of an inappropriate location into appropriate housing, although she is waiting years. Her family have been watching her suffer in pain for years. The Minister of State can imagine how she feels when she hears him and others say that the Government is going to build 40,000 houses. That was until we subsequently found out that he got that figure from the same place as the lads in Anglo Irish Bank got theirs. It is utterly disrespectful that the Government has not had the decency to apologise to people like my constituent who is being made sick by its policies.

I have lost count, as has Marian, of the number of cases we are dealing with of people who are out this year. When they ring us they all have the same question, which is: "Where will I go? What are the options?" It is awful to have to tell someone that, unfortunately, they may have to look at emergency accommodation, because they know what such accommodation is. In fact, for decades we have been looking at documentaries about the hell that is emergency accommodation. It is bad for a single person, very bad for a young person, awful for an older person and disgusting for a family with children. Can the Minister of State even imagine what it would be like to be raising his kids in a hotel room? We should perhaps think about that.

I fully appreciate that the senior Minister cannot always be here, but it is somewhat disrespectful that he could not find time to be here. I respect the fact that he may have had another meeting but, again, this is the very start of a new Dáil term and already we can see patterns emerging. I urge the Minister of State, Deputy Chris O'Sullivan, to take a message back to his senior colleague which is that his housing policies are making my constituents sick and that those constituents that are sick are getting sicker. We need a change of policy not more defence of the Government's nonsense figures, and most definitely not more lauding of Housing for All, which is clearly not working.

Deputy Denise Mitchell

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this very important motion. For years, the housing crisis has been the defining crisis in this State. It has left thousands of single people and families, including children, growing up in emergency accommodation. It has seen huge numbers of young people leave our shores to live in Australia, Canada and elsewhere because they feel they will never be able to own a home of their own or start a family here. It has disrupted the lives of so many people across society.

During this entire time, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have completely and utterly failed to get to grips with this crisis. The Government has made the crisis worse with its plans failing year on year. Those in opposition, housing experts and many others have been telling the Government that a radical reset of housing policy is needed. By that, we mean building more affordable homes. In other words, homes that are affordable for ordinary workers. The Government's actions have benefited the developers time and again. They have inflated already high house prices and left renters out in the cold.

My colleague Deputy Ó Broin produced the most comprehensive plan ever from an Opposition party. It sets out precisely how we can ensure that we have enough homes – private, affordable, social and cost rental - but the Government did not want to know. Instead, we have had Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael spokespersons in radio and TV studios gaslighting the public on how many homes were being built. They could not even own up to the fact that they were nowhere near the Government's already low targets.

It appears that somebody in government is listening. I refer to An Tánaiste. Who is he listening to? It is certainly not the Opposition, the housing experts or commentators. Nor is it the Housing Commission, which stated clearly that a “radical strategic reset of housing policy” is what is needed, including a large increase in social and cost-rental units. He is certainly not listening to those in homeless accommodation or those who are languishing on housing waiting lists for years. He is listening to the vulture funds who told him they want rent pressure zones scrapped. It is time the Government had a reset in order to make sure we deliver housing for people who are in crisis.

Deputy Maurice Quinlivan

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this important Private Members' motion. Housing is the number one issue that we all deal with every day. Any of us who has a constituency office knows the stress, trauma and disaster that has been forced on the people of our country. It has been an absolute nightmare.

When I was first elected in 2016, along with University Hospital Limerick, housing was the number one issue that was raised. People constantly raised the lack of affordable housing, the cost of housing, the cost of renting, the state of local authority houses and the voids that litter our cities. The Government has failed in respect of all of those issues.

Unfortunately, the Minister, Deputy Browne, is not present. I want to put on the record that he has the opportunity not to be a failure, like all the previous Ministers for housing have been. I refer to former Ministers Simon Coveney and Eoghan Murphy and Deputy Darragh O'Brien, who has turned out to be the biggest waffler and bluffer we have ever seen in this House. That is saying something.

In Limerick, my home city, house prices have increased year on year, making them unaffordable for most people. If anything is available to rent, the rent is way too high for most workers. In Limerick, house prices have increased year on year by 13%, with a typical home approaching a price of €300,000. Rents have also increased, with the average rent standing at an astronomical €2,107 a month. This represents a year-on-year increase of 21%.

As my colleague Deputy Ó Broin said yesterday, we will not fix the housing crisis by increasing rent. More and more people are entering homelessness or seeking housing support from their local councils due to being unable to afford these very high rents. What chance does a middle income family have of affording a deposit for a private house when paying these exorbitant rents?

On a daily basis, people come into my constituency telling of notices to quit. The tenant in situ scheme is in place, but it has effectively ground to a halt. It is now very difficult to draw down funding from it. That must be looked at as a matter of urgency. A significant number of people have come to us to relate stories about landlords willing to sell properties but, due to the delays and prevarications, not just on the part of the council but also in the context of getting answers from central government, those landlords are pulling out of the process. This is a cause of major concern. Like everywhere else across the State, demand for housing in Limerick is outpacing supply.

The previous Minister for housing repeatedly told us that things were working, that targets would be met and that the Housing for All plan would be a success. If the plan was working, why are we here five years later talking about the housing crisis? Why are more than 15,000 people, an increase of 47% on the figure that obtained at the start of the previous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government, listed as homeless? That is not even the true measure of homelessness. The actual figures are much higher when we consider those who couch surf, sleep rough or are in emergency accommodation. We also have an astronomical number of young people still living at home with their parents.

Deputy Johnny Mythen

I thank the Labour Party for bringing this motion before the House. I have listened attentively to the Government's claims that housing is the number one priority. Nobody seems to know when exactly this revelation appeared before them. One could argue that both Government parties have been in full control of housing for 14 years, yet they have failed to deliver both affordable and social housing on any meaningful scale, missing targets year after year.

Some 15,000 citizens and more than 4,600 children are in emergency accommodation. That is a stain on our nation. I suspect the real hidden figure, if we take the number living with relatives and friends, is at least three times that amount. A radical reset of the housing policy must replace the Government's Housing for All plan, as was recommended by the Housing Commission and the ESRI.

The recent remarks by the Taoiseach, supported by the Minister for Finance yesterday, are very worrying and are reminiscent of the good old days of the Celtic tiger. I refer to the review of rent pressure zones, once again reverting to private developers and speculative landlords and an over-reliance on the private market to solve the housing crisis.

Housing should not be viewed as a derivative or a mere commodity. This is the very reason the housing plan failed in the first place and, indeed, it is what led to the loss of our fiscal sovereignty and the visit of the troika to our shores.

Rents have increased nationally by 40% but the 2% cap in the rent pressure zones has kept the wolf from the door for many families. The introduction of a ban on no-fault evictions served as security for many families who would otherwise have ended up on the emergency housing list. Sinn Féin fully supports the Housing Commission's recommendation to create a housing delivery oversight executive to bring together public, semi-State and private bodies to better develop capital programmes and address the bureaucratic red tape that is causing stagnation in the planning system, resulting in long delays in providing critical infrastructure and much-needed homes.

I cannot overstate the need to build affordable and social housing as quickly as humanly possible. Every Deputy is fully aware of constituents, families and young couples, including in my county of Wexford, who are facing homelessness due to increasing rents, who cannot afford ever-increasing housing market prices and who will never be able to acquire mortgages due to low earnings. Housing should be a fundamental constitutional right. Every citizen should be entitled to a roof over his or her head and to shelter. I hope that in its lifetime, this Government will consider bringing a referendum to the people on the right to housing. I am glad to support his motion. I hope it will be supported by all Deputies.

Deputy Louis O'Hara

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. As a young person in my mid-20s, I know all too well the impact of the housing crisis and Government inaction and the suffering it has caused for those who are homeless or in insecure housing situations. When I look the Government's record in my own constituency, it is little wonder we are in this situation. Not one affordable home has been delivered in Galway East. We are told that affordable housing is not viable or needed in most parts of county Galway at a time of record and unaffordable house prices. We need genuinely affordable housing. We are not building enough social housing. People are struggling to pay rents that are often outside the HAP limits, if they can get HAP at all. Now the Government wants to get rid of rent pressure zones in what, I suspect, is an attempt to squeeze even more out of hard-pressed renters. We do not have enough private housing developments either. The Government missed its housing targets last year and misled the public about how many houses would be built.

People in Galway who wish to build their own homes are finding it difficult to do so because of the planning process and development fees. Many of our towns and villages do not have adequate wastewater infrastructure for housing development including Corrofin, Abbeyknockmoy, Craughwell, Ardrahan and many more across the county. There has been minimal investment and no urgency to address this deficit in our infrastructure which is holding up the delivery of housing in my constituency. This must be treated as a priority by the Government. If one walks or drives through any town or village in county Galway, one will see multiple vacant homes, some of which have been idle for years. These are buildings that would make great homes for families stuck on the housing list or in rental accommodation but there has been no serious effort to bring them back into use. These problems have existed for years and are replicated in every part of this State. They have also been pointed out to the Government for years. The bottom line is that the Governments puts the profits of those for whom housing is an investment ahead of affordable housing for people who need it and is prepared to send my generation to every corner of the world to achieve this. We need a radical reset in housing policy, as called for by the Housing Commission, to give my generation a future in this country.

Deputy Rory Hearne

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion. The empty Government benches are indicative of the Government's lack of seriousness in dealing with the housing issue and its lack of willingness to listen to new ideas. This Friday is St. Valentine's Day, and we all know who will be getting the flowers and chocolates from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Valentine's card has gone to the investor funds, with a note inside that reads: "We're getting rid of the rent caps for you. Let it rip with the rents." Of course, the share price of IRES REIT jumped on the back of the Taoiseach's recent statements while poor renters and generations stuck at home have been ghosted and gaslit by the Government's failures in housing and its plans to let rents rise again. Renters are panicking about how they will pay for further rent increases. Has the Government looked at the rents out there? One two-bedroom apartment in Dublin is €3,000 per month while another is €2,600. The entire take-home pay of a nurse would not cover those rents. The Government plans to lift the rent pressure zone caps. What will happen? Rents will rise across the board because of the lack of supply. What will we see then? Housing assistance payments. We will see the use of more public money to support renters who cannot afford the rent, more public money going to US and German pension funds rather than being invested in building affordable housing for our young people.

The housing crisis is a social disaster. Between the 500,000 adults stuck living in their childhood box rooms, the 1 million people in the private rental sector, those who are homeless and the tens of thousands in hidden homelessness, just under one third of our entire population is living the housing disaster on a daily basis. It is causing a mental health crisis of stress and anxiety as well as an employment crisis. Schools cannot get teachers, hospitals cannot get nurses, our community disability services cannot get psychologists and therapists and the very tradespeople we need to build the homes are being forced to emigrate because they do not see how they can get a home of their own in this country. It is an emergency and a disaster but not once in the last ten years have Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael treated the housing crisis like the emergency it is and why would they? It is their policies that are causing this crisis. From Rebuilding Ireland to Housing for All, their focus in housing policy has been to subsidise private developers, bring in investor funds and now they want to bring us back to the future, back to the policies that created the Celtic tiger crash. What an appalling record for Fianna Fáil, namely to have caused two housing disasters within a generation.

Last year, the Government delivered a mere 474 affordable purchase homes via local authorities. In 17 counties it did not deliver even one affordable purchase home. In the capital, in Dublin City Council's area, not one affordable purchase home was completed. It is reported today that thousands of affordable cost rental homes are ready to start but the Government will not give housing bodies the funding go-ahead. The Government hoodwinked the Irish public during the election campaign with its deception regarding how many homes would be built. Now, rather than accepting that its policies have utterly failed, it is recycling and regurgitating the very policies that caused the crisis in the first place. It is making housing policy not for young people who need a home but for the institutional investors. We rightly call them vulture funds but we should also call them vampire funds because they are feeding off our younger generations into perpetuity, extracting rents from them and locking them out of the possibility of getting a home of their own. It is shocking that we are now in a situation where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies have brought us back to the 19th century. They claim to be the parties of home ownership, yet under their watch home ownership levels among young people have seen the largest collapse since the foundation of the State. They have turned our younger generations into tenants of the big landlords once again. This time those landlords are US, German and Irish wealth funds. In truth, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are now the parties of the big corporate landlords. This is regulatory capture. They are captured by the funds. The CEO of Institutional Property Ireland, a former chairperson of Fianna Fáil, seems to have taken up residence in Government Buildings. Representing IRES REIT, Kennedy-Wilson, Urbeo and the big developers Cairn, he had, according to the lobbying register, no less than seven meetings between September and December last year with the Secretaries General of the Departments of housing and An Taoiseach, with the Taoiseach's special adviser and various Ministers, including the Minister for housing. Institutional Property Ireland is the puppet master pulling the housing policy strings.

What is needed is an emergency response from the Government, including a three-year freeze on all rents, an immediate halt to the ongoing tsunami of evictions and security for renters through a no-fault eviction ban. The Government needs to ban the funds from buying not just homes but also apartments. It needs to seriously tackle vacancy and dereliction. It needs to tackle the short-term lets and Airbnbs, a policy to which both parties committed to previously but which is not mentioned in the programme for Government.

We do not need the institutional funds. We can fund and build the homes we need by means of a new direction and new policies. There is €150 billion sitting in Irish bank accounts and billions in budget surpluses.

The question is: why is the Government restricting the funding we have available in the country to be invested into housing? We in the Social Democrats set out a clear way to deliver tens of thousands of genuinely affordable homes for sale and rent by the State and the not-for-profit housing bodies leading the development of affordable housing, through reducing the cost of land and finance, directly hiring small builders and providing funding directly, thereby removing the developer profit. We can build affordable homes for sale, like we have seen Ó Cualann do. We also need to develop public sector capacity to directly build homes, increase our construction sector capacity generally by guaranteeing quality employment and develop fast-build factories. We need a new direction. The so-called unpopular decisions the Government wants to make are the ones that will benefit investor funds and developers, rather than protecting renters.

Deputy Jen Cummins

Members spent the majority of 2024 knocking on doors, canvassing throughout their constituencies, looking for support in the local and general elections. One of the main topics of conversation every single time I went canvassing - and I am sure it was the same for others - was inappropriate, poor and unsuitable housing. All parties put forward different proposals to solve the ever increasing, complex problem but in reality, what is happening at the moment is that we are sitting here, discussing this issue ad nauseam, while people are suffering day in and day out.

I am thinking about the families and young people who contacted me in dire need of suitable accommodation. Mould is growing in sitting rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. There are rat infestations in flat complexes in Dublin South Central and I am sure throughout the country. There are leaking roofs and dangerous electrical faults. Some rents are so high that young people are paying them and have no money left to have any social life. The basic thing we can expect is to have a social life, not to just exist. There are also young people throughout the country who have hundreds of thousands of euro mortgage approval but are outbid every time they go to view a house. The inappropriate policy of this and the previous Governments is doing immeasurable damage to the children and young people of Ireland who are living in homelessness, unsuitable and inappropriate housing situations. It is a scandal that appropriate ways and policies are being put forward by day in, day out by Opposition Members, but they are being ignored.

Right now, junior and leaving certificate students are sitting their mock exams. These are standardised exams that are supposedly a great leveller. Everyone sits the same exam under the same circumstances at the same. That is all well and good for the student who is living in a warm, cosy and secure home but what about all those young people who are couch surfing with their families due to homelessness or living in a hostel or a hub? What about the young person who is living in overcrowded accommodation, with generations of their family and extended family living in the same home? They do not have any space to study. What about all those young people who are going to face homelessness right before their leaving certificate and junior certificate exams in June? How are they going to have their secure base? How are they going to be able to study from no secure base? What is wrong with this Government that it cannot accept that its political ideology is ruining the lives of children and young people? We always hear that young people having an education will be the great leveller by getting people out of poverty and bringing bright futures but what if the State is actively pursuing policies and ideologies that negate this possibility? The Government is saying to young people, "It is not for you. You have to stay where you are and you are not worth it". I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion.

Deputy Pádraig Rice

Like my colleagues, I thank the Labour Party for this debate. I have spent the past couple of years listening to the debates in this House on housing. As a younger person, I find it really hard to stomach the Government's rhetoric on housing. Rarely does it acknowledge how bad the situation is, with unaffordable rents, soaring house prices and record homelessness. There is a real catastrophe for people in their daily lives because of the Government's housing policies. Instead, time and again, the Government tells us that it is turning a corner. It has turned so many corners it is now going around in circles. When it is not going around in circles, the Government is blaming the Opposition for not supporting its Bills. We do not support the Government's housing policies because they utterly fail. They are failing people every single day and it is getting worse, not better.

It does not surprise anyone because everyone can see how bad it is. Instead of being honest about its housing policies, we get outright lies - lies about the housing completion figures, what the Government is doing and what it is not doing. Really, it is fooling no one. I have real concerns about the Government's affordable housing schemes. There is one in my constituency on Seaberry Drive in Grange, Cork. Houses in the scheme cost €389,498 plus a 5% equity stake. On what planet is a house costing more than €400,000 affordable? We need an urgent review of the Affordable Housing Act 2021, because it is not delivering affordable housing for people in my city or across the country.

Regarding rents, yesterday the Minister for public expenditure defended the plans to rip away protections for renters by removing rent pressure zones and pulling the rug from under many renters. The Government should be strengthening renters' rights, not stripping them away. Renters deserve fair rents and security of tenure, not higher rents and more insecurity. We could ban no-fault evictions and create a rent register and a deposit protection scheme. There are lots of things we could do to enhance renters' rights. We in the Social Democrats have set them out in extensive detail in our policy documents. I encourage the Minister of State to have a look at them.

On social housing, there is also a failure to deliver. In Cork, we are not building enough social housing for people. According to the National Oversight and Audit Commission, in 2023, the number of social houses in the city increased by just 180. This is despite the fact that there were 3,500 applications for social housing and more than 600 people homeless. There is huge unmet need and too many people are living in overcrowded and damp conditions, some unfortunately, in emergency accommodation and others sleeping on the streets. At the same time, there are 350 vacant council houses across the city. Over the past five years, the council has spent almost €1 million boarding up these houses. It is utter madness and it is causing huge frustration for people. We need to turn these houses around and create homes for people. Despite all of these failures, the Government seems to be doubling down on its plans. It is clear that the Government is listening to big developers, corporate landlords and speculators, instead of renters, first-time buyers and homeowners. Many things could be done to address these issues. Ultimately, we need a radical reset on housing policy, we need more State involvement in the direct provision of affordable homes and we need the Government to start listening to renters, first-time buyers and those facing homelessness. Otherwise, nothing will change.

Deputy Brian Stanley

I welcome this very important motion from the Labour Party. What we have had is the Government hoodwinking and misleading the people during the election campaign on a number of issues but spectacularly on housing. People were told that 40,000 homes would be delivered in 2024 when in fact the number was going to be 30,000. The facts were there to prove that. We have to increase supply. It must be doubled to meet demand and prices need to be brought down. The affordable home purchase scheme is in need of major reform. The terms of the scheme need to be more favourable for buyers and the supply needs to be increased. The structure of the scheme also needs to be changed because the approved housing bodies, AHBs, are not showing an interest in it. The Minister of State and his colleagues in government will find this out as the weeks and months go by. A very small number of them are coming onstream in County Laois and only a handful of cost rentals. However, this is nowhere near enough to meet the demand in towns such as Mountmellick, Portarlington, Abbeyleix, Mountrath, Portlaoise and Graiguecullen. We need to speed up deliver and reduce costs.

A lot of good proposals have been made this morning. I want to mention two briefly. The vacant site tax of 7% is not being implemented and it is not effective. It needs to be increased and acted upon. I do not support the zoned land tax on active farmland but a levy of 3% for zoned land tax is a laugh, for God's sake. It is simply not enough to incentivise people to not sit on land. This needs to be increased and enforced to have a real effect.

Regarding social and affordable housing, we need to speed up all form of delivery, including by the and private sector. That is why I mentioned the zoned land tax. For affordable and social housing we need to mass produce homes. I took this up with the senior staff in the Department of housing and local government during the previous Dáil. The Secretary General will say that standardised interior designs are being used. That is fine but if we are going to mass produce something, we need to bring down costs and speed up delivery. Anyone who has ever produced anything will tell you that what you do is mass produce. Do the people in Donegal really care if the house they are living in is going to look like one in counties Wexford or Laois or anywhere else?

That is how we delivered them in the 1930s and the 1970s. I am not arguing we should go back to 1970s- or 1930s-type housing, but what we can do is take the best examples and use them. I ask the Government to do that.

Deputy Charles Ward

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion on housing, which I will support. I am disappointed, however, that there is no mention of homes affected by defective concrete. Once again, County Donegal is forgotten. The defective concrete crisis affects thousands of people throughout this island. It is a crisis that will continue to get worse, and we do not yet even know the full extent of it. Many more homes across more counties will discover in the years to come that they too are impacted.

Many of the Government's solutions are not only temporary but doomed to fail, costing the Exchequer a second time while failing to address the root causes of the problem. What is more concerning is that the failure to enforce regulations means there is no guarantee a rebuilt home will be free of defective concrete, leaving homeowners vulnerable to enduring this trauma again in future. This crisis demands accountability, transparency and immediate action by the Government.

I am here today because the landscape and the very fabric of society in Donegal have been destroyed by the failure of Governments to implement a proper redress scheme. The current scheme lacks cohesive and standardised assessments. Homes are being treated on an individual basis, leading to inconsistent remediation options that are not fit for purpose, building on top of Weetabix blocks and knowing we will be revisiting this in the future. The current practice of demolishing and rebuilding a semi-detached home while the neighbour whose house is attached to that home remains there for years until they can afford to get onto the scheme is doomed to fail. This is the catastrophe that is going on in Donegal. It is an absolute joke. The normalisation of demolishing a semi-detached house while leaving the neighbouring house standing is unacceptable. I raised this previously and was told it was a one-off, an unfortunate incident. Unfortunate incidents are happening now in Donegal every week and every day.

Deputy Seamus Healy

This devastating housing crisis was created by the privatisation of public housing by Fianna Fáil under the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Local authorities were prevented from building social and affordable housing for more than 20 years and this policy was continued by successive Governments. The housing crisis is undermining the social fabric of Irish society. Everybody says repeatedly that housing is the single biggest issue facing the country. The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste tell us daily that it is their highest priority. We have heard that for more than ten years but the crisis has got worse year after year. More than 15,000 families are homeless, among whom 5,000 are children, while more than 120,000 families are on local authority waiting lists or housing assistance payment. There are sky-rocketing, extortionate rents and thousands of people in their 30s and 40s are living in their childhood bedrooms. A huge cohort of families on very average incomes are locked out of the property market and home ownership. Slightly over the limit for getting onto a local authority housing list but without enough income to get a mortgage, they are condemned for ever more to pay huge rents. In fact, they are condemned to poverty.

The housing crisis is simply not being taken seriously, and the only way to make sure it will be is to legally oblige the State to tackle the crisis as an emergency. A housing emergency must be declared in law. In the Thirty-second Dáil, I introduced a Private Member's Bill called Housing Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill, which I intend to reintroduce at the earliest opportunity. Of course, there is precedent for that. When the Fianna Fáil Government crashed the economy and handed over the sovereignty of the State to the International Monetary Fund, there were huge cutbacks based on the financial emergency measures in the public interest. This can be done. The emergency can be declared in law. That should and must be done immediately.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

The simple reason we have a housing disaster in this country is that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have danced to the tune of greedy, profit-driven speculators, vulture funds and corporate landlords. The response to the resulting crisis, which has left us with 100,000 families waiting for more than a decade on housing lists, unaffordable rents and unaffordable house prices, is for the Taoiseach to say we need to pivot more towards the very private investors, driven by a greed for profit, that caused the crisis in the first instance. You could not make it up.

This should not surprise us, coming from a Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government, which now includes regional Independents, that is packed full of landlords who themselves make money out of the housing crisis. This is the dirty secret of the housing crisis in this country. Some people benefit from it. The worse the crisis gets, the more that landlords and investors can charge unaffordable rents and house prices. The State needs to intervene and stop the profiteering of speculators, landlords and vulture funds, get vulture funds completely out of the housing sector, build public and affordable housing on a not-for-profit basis, develop its own capacity to do so through a State construction company and control rents in order that they will be kept at affordable levels.

I just find it unbelievable that the Government is going on about the poor landlords and the poor property investors, for whom rents in Dublin of €2,400 a month are not enough. They need a tax incentive as well as charging these shocking rents or house prices that are now at €600,000 in new developments in Cherrywood in my area. It is unbelievable. That was a publicly owned site the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, sold off to private investors, who sat on it, waited for the value of that property and asset to rise and only started building when they could charge €600,000 or €700,000, prices that are completely unaffordable.

The only people who can afford them then, of course, are institutional investors. Approximately 60% of all home purchases last year were by institutional investors, many of them these vulture funds. They have no interest in driving down rents or house prices. The higher the rents and the house prices, the more profits they make, but the Government wants to incentivise them more. It is absolutely sickening. The housing crisis is being orchestrated by people who make money out of it. We need to get these vulture funds and profit vampires out of the housing sector and get the State to build public and affordable housing on public land. If we could do that when this country was an impoverished, virtually Third World country, we can certainly do it when it is one of the richest countries in the world.

Deputy Paul Murphy

There is something profoundly undemocratic about what the Government is planning to do on housing. We have just had an election campaign during which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael told us Housing for All was working and that the evidence for that was the 40,000 homes that were going to have been built last year. The Government was deliberately misleading people. It knew and had been told that the figure would be only 30,000. During that election campaign, where was the mention of scrapping rent pressure zones, the new tax incentives for developers or the pivot to the private sector, which we are now told is the new key to resolving the crisis? Once the election is out of the way, what we see is shock and awe for a full corporate takeover of the housing market.

The previous Government, to be clear, was a Government of landlords, by landlords, for landlords, but with a veneer of concern for the needs of renters, people who want to buy a home and those who are suffering from homelessness. With this Government, that veneer is gone. The biggest landlord in this Dáil is now a Minister in the Government, as is the second biggest landlord. It is absolutely naked class rule for landlords, big corporate developers and so on. It is fundamentally ideological to be throwing money at the private sector regardless of the fact that does not deliver housing and has not done.

It is time, after more than a decade of failure to address the housing crisis, to conclude that the Government does not want to address the housing crisis; the Government wants to deepen the housing crisis so that those it represents can get even richer. That is why, when the Taoiseach said we are moving towards scrapping the rent pressure zone, IRES REIT share prices went through the roof. The Irish Property Owners Association declared itself delighted, which is no wonder, but do not worry, the Taoiseach said, they will not expire until the end of the year so we will have loads of time to talk about how we can best incentivise landlords and property developers. Talk about being completely insulated from the reality of what it is to rent for renters with the constant fear of no-fault eviction, homelessness, and then putting this on them to worry about for the next 11 months. Will the only protection for renters be taken away? Renters need to take to the streets, wipe the smile of their face and go in the opposite direction. Freezing and reducing rents to make them affordable and capping rents at a quarter of people's income are the only sort of changes we will accept.

Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty

I reiterate my support for the recommendations of the Housing Commission report and emphasise the need to act on a macro level. I will outline a few more suggestions I will bring forward in more detail at a later stage. The first is increased penalties for housing not occupied including the right of a local authority to make a compulsory purchase order faster than the current derelict sites process. Allied to this are incentives to allow for the refurbishment of derelict buildings in city centres and rural towns and villages, enhancing the existing Croí Cónaithe scheme. More focus on building in Dublin city centre to revitalise the area with incentives to encourage people to live there. We should plan 20,000 homes in the city centre for three years from now. It would make the area safer and more vibrant. People on housing lists should also be allowed to move to new or refurbished accommodation in areas that need the population in rural towns and villages without losing their place on a Dublin housing list for five years. This will encourage people to try a move and enjoy a better quality of life while also providing the critical population to keep services like post offices and shops open in rural areas. We also need special housing built or purchased for critical workers near their places of employment, with affordable rents to allow them to save for their own homes, for example teachers, nurses, doctors and gardaí. A Dublin allowance is needed. Greater flexibility is also needed to allow families in rural areas to build sustainably on family land or in back gardens in urban areas subject to conditions about renting such properties out for profit. In this way, young couples can more easily save for their own larger home while living in a starter unit that is high quality and meets planning conditions, etc.. This could also become a step-down property for older people whose children and grandchildren may move into the main home. Targeted step-down properties are needed in key locations where there is an older population. There should also be meaningful liaison with charities such as the fantastic The HomeShare to target people who need to rent an affordable room and match them with older people who want companionship and a few hours' work around the home. This is a fantastic service. I recommend the Government engage in a proactive way on this.

It is a long debate; I would love if I had two hours to talk on these issues, which I why I focused on a few suggestions to be constructive. I reiterate that mandatory tie-in of housing and construction with infrastructure and amenities is required. We need to build communities, not just housing. That has failed in areas like Clonburris. It needs to be improved.

Deputy Paul Lawless

I welcome the motion. We in Aontú support the motion on housing. It is important that we seek to hold this Government to account on housing, particularly in light of the former Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the electioneering and misinformation that went on in respect of housing by the previous Government. In October last year, one month before the election, the Minister said in this House:

I have consistently said we will exceed that target. I still confidently predict ... that it will be the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year.

This was clearly false. It is clear the Minister was using the election and targets to mislead the people. If this happened in any other parliament in Europe, it would be a resigning matter. In this country and in this Government, it is a reshuffle - you get moved on. There is no accountability. This Government is an accountability-free zone. It is no wonder there is a growing level of cynicism and lack of trust in politicians among the public when politicians clearly mislead them on such important matters. The truth on record breaking, as the Minister referenced, is that records were indeed broken last year when the number of homeless people in Ireland surpassed 15,000 and the number of homeless children surpassed 4,600. That is the only record the previous Government broke last year.

There has been zero affordable housing delivered in my constituency, Mayo, and a total of five units are still promised for Westport after years and the fights councillors in the Westport municipal area had to have to achieve a miserable number of units. In my area, the Claremorris-Swinford municipal district, the people are not even considered for affordable housing. Will the Minister of State please consider an affordable housing scheme for the Claremorris-Swinford municipal area? There is a cohort who do not quality for social housing but cannot afford property on the open market. They need an opportunity to get on the affordable housing scheme. The lack of a scheme for this are of Mayo will drive the concentration of capital and energy in the construction sector to other areas of the county, leaving the east and south of Mayo left behind.

I also wish to touch on the issue of dereliction and vacancy. There is a significant number - 160,000 homes - vacant across this State. That is 11 properties for every homeless person registered in this State. Will the Minister of State work with property owners and developers on vacancy and dereliction? In my town, a site is a listed building. It is causing immense difficulty for the developer in Claremorris to develop the site on Lower James Street. This developer wants to develop the site and should be helped. The Government should proactively engage.

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

I am disappointed I see the Government benches are so empty today but equally those who waxed lyrical not so long ago in this House, who chastised the Government in their speeches, I see their benches are also empty for what is the biggest crisis facing this country. While I agree we need to fix the housing crisis, the plan put forward by the Labour Party - I thank my colleagues in the Labour Party for bringing this motion forward - is based on what I regard as bad ideas. The Labour Party wants to remove the private investor from housing-----

Deputy Eoghan Kenny

That is not true-----

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

-----but it does not want to explain how it will be replaced. Will it increase taxes or simply borrow more? I listened to some of the Labour Party speakers. One would almost think Labour was not in the Government in the last couple of years but the Labour Party held the portfolio not so long ago.

Deputy Ivana Bacik

We were not.

Deputy Conor Sheehan

We have not been in government for ten years.

(Interruptions).

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

In my constituency of Cork North-Central-----

(Interruptions).

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

Deputies, please.

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

The truth is bitter, lads.

A Deputy

The Deputy is a windbag.

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

In my constituency of Cork North-Central, my constituents are struggling with rising rents, long waiting lists and lack of accommodation. People are talking about who we are going to blame. Ae we going to blame Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Independents but until we get together in this House and work on solving this crisis without blaming or attacking one another-----

(Interruptions).

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

-----without shouting one another down - that will do nothing for the father living in his car tonight, depending on Wi-Fi from a hotel while working 50 hours a week. It is not going to help the constituent who came to my office last week, who spoke to me about the full-time job he is doing and yet living out of a car.

It is not helping the mother in Cork city who is going into the housing department to be told, "Sorry, there is nothing for you, go into a homeless crisis centre with your children". It is not going to help those couples who lost their houses between 2008 and 2014, are now back in employment after losing their businesses, renting privately and can afford to pay the rent but are approaching the age of 65. What will happen when they retire? They will be back on the housing list. We are compounding the problem and bringing more people back onto our housing list. We are not addressing it. We are too busy. Parties in this Chamber are too busy attacking one another, looking for publicity rather than trying to fix the crisis. For God's sake lads, you are a disgrace.

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue

As someone who has been in construction all my life, I have spent the past five years in the House telling people they cannot build houses without infrastructure. We cannot build houses without having water, sewerage, electricity and an Internet service. The LDA has not built one house in Limerick. It publicly stated it would not invest 15 minutes outside any city. That takes out two thirds of Limerick county. This is what the LDA has set out to do. I was a councillor on Limerick City and County Council. A lot of the things we did and the powers we had were stripped away from us. We are the people on the front line trying to deliver for our communities. We have first-hand information on what is needed in the area that elects us. This is what is being stripped away. The local councillors need to get back the powers to make decisions for the entire county, which includes the cities, so that we build together.

When he was Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien came to Limerick and travelled around the county announcing houses here and there that were being finished. On every site I went to with him and other representatives, I asked him to ask the people who were there, including the developers and builders, how much more capacity was left on the sewerage and water systems. Every one of them came back and said zero. How do we build houses for Ireland? We invest in infrastructure for the country.

Everyone should be entitled to live where they want in the city or the county. Our planning laws have stripped away intervention from councillors and they stop people living in the county. They stop investment in our villages, where businesses can be sustainable if they get the proper infrastructure, including sewerage and water to start with. This is what is needed in this country to deliver houses.

We all know the Government made promises to exceed the housing targets. It did not do it. Now it wants agencies to get more powers so it can build houses. Again, it comes back to the basics. Where does it want to build the houses? Is it forgetting about the rest of the people in Ireland who are also entitled to have a place to live? No matter where you are from in Ireland, you should be entitled to have a place to live. The planning laws need to change so that if a site in a county is big enough, a person who wants to downsize and let the next generation of their own family move in will be allowed to build a smaller house on the same site. That is not allowed under the planning laws. It is why we have houses being put up everywhere.

When Ukrainians came here a lot of investment was made in modular housing. The money was given to an agency to provide these modular houses. The figures on Government spending show these modular houses cost twice the price of dealing directly with the modular house companies. The money went through an agency that made a 100% profit on modular houses. This is wrong. There should be accountability. Let the money go further and get value for the money we have and invest in infrastructure in the country, not just in one place.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy John Cummins)

I thank everybody for their contributions. I reassert the Government's commitment to tackling the challenges we collectively face in the housing sector. As a 37-year-old, I am acutely aware of the impact these challenges have on my generation and those younger than me. I have taken note of some of the suggestions and points made by Deputies and I will touch on a couple of them. Standardised templates were referenced. They have been in place since 2022 for all social housing projects. Reference was made to the single-stage approval process. We are committed in the programme for Government to reducing red tape and streamlining the approval process, and we want to see further take-up from local authorities. We note the comments with regard to compulsory purchase orders. It is a desire of mine to ensure we have a more streamlined approach to them. Points were made on rightsizing solutions and infrastructure provision. I agree with these, which will be known because I sat on the Oireachtas joint committee with other Members of the House for a number of years.

I will now touch on a few other points. As a Government, we understand the urgency and need to ensure that sufficient secure and affordable homes are delivered to purchasers. We will commit to working tirelessly to address these challenges and implement policies that will make a positive difference. I want to work collectively with Deputies throughout the House to bring forward solutions to the challenges we face. I do not think simplistic soundbites are helpful to the debate. They do not build houses. We need to work collectively to achieve the goal shared by all of us to increase the delivery of housing. Some of the comments made this morning do not fairly represent the efforts and progress made to date.

The motion asserts that Housing for All has failed and is not delivering. As the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, highlighted, more than 100,000 homes have been added to the national housing stock since Housing for All was published in 2021. Is it enough? Of course not but we have to acknowledge that Housing for All has helped to establish a solid platform to scale up delivery further in the short term and secure a sustainable level of supply that will help us meet unmet and emerging demand over the coming years.

The current plan is supported by a record €6 billion in capital investment in 2025, supporting initiatives already in place as well as the targeted delivery of 41,000 new homes this year. This will further increase the availability of starter homes to buy and rent through schemes such as the affordable purchase scheme, cost rental, the help-to-buy scheme, the first home scheme and the vacant property refurbishment grant. Since 2020, we have ramped up the delivery of social and affordable housing. From January 2020 to the end of 2024, the Government has overseen 146,000 houses being added to, or brought back into, the national housing stock, including more than 133,000 new builds, 1,900 units in unfinished housing developments and almost 11,000 vacant properties brought back into use.

Housing commencement notices also demonstrate encouraging trends, with 60,000 such notices issued last year. We are confident the majority of these, accelerated by targeted Government measures, will translate to new home completions in the next two years. We know there is significantly more work on site now than there was a year ago, a fact supported by yesterday's AIB PMI, that is, purchasing managers' index for construction survey, which confirmed a fifth consecutive month of expanding residential construction activity despite very poor weather in January. New home delivery will rebound this year, with a further increase expected next year.

Between the launch of Housing for All and the end of the third quarter of 2024, more than 10,000 affordable housing supports were delivered. Moreover, as the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, pointed out, the level of affordable housing supports provided in 2024 far outstrips 2023 delivery.

The momentum will continue as the pipeline is developed by local authorities, approved housing bodies and the Land Development Agency.

The supply of new-build social homes also continues to be at a level higher than it has been for many years. In the 12 months to quarter 3 last year, almost 11,400 new social homes were delivered through new build, acquisition and leasing. When the housing assistance payment and rental accommodation scheme are added in, the total level of social housing supports over the 12 months to the end of quarter 3 last year was in excess of 21,000. The strongest national delivery of social housing since 1975 was recorded in 2022 when more than 10,000 homes were delivered. This record was exceeded again in 2023 when 12,000 new social homes were delivered. The strength of the current pipeline coupled with the traditional surge in the final quarter suggests that a similar delivery output in 2024 will be achieved despite the overall dip in new home completions.

Our ambition is to deliver much more, with a commitment to deliver a further 12,000 new-build social homes on average every year between now and 2030. We will continue to do so in partnership with local authorities and our other delivery partners. While the dip in overall delivery in 2024 was disappointing, as the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, pointed out, we remain on an upward trajectory. It is important to put the 2024 figures in context. It is clear that while we saw an increase of 4.6% in delivery of scheme houses, we simultaneously saw a reduction of 24% in apartment completions, which clearly impacted our output for 2024. While many Deputies will have different viewpoints. it is clear that there has been a significant drop-off in the level of institutional investment in the apartment sector. We all want to see a vibrant, affordable private rental sector with an abundant supply and choice with protections in place for renters. However, we can no longer allow the ill-informed commentary around private investment in the sector to continue. While the State has stepped up to become the largest player in the delivery of housing, we have to be honest and say that the State cannot do it all. In order to achieve the level of housing completions that all of us in this House want to see, we need to have private sector investment as well as significant investment from the State. I do not see it as an either-or scenario but one where both work in tandem.

Homelessness remains a serious concern and is a top priority for this Government. It is a complex issue requiring varying responses to suit different circumstances. It is also interrelated with other areas of the housing system. As a Government, we will continue to deploy a whole-of-government approach to address this significant issue.

The motion calls for the Government to expand the tenant in situ acquisitions programme. Before coming to the Chamber, I listened to some of the contributions Deputies made in relation to the programme. As Members know, it was introduced in 2023 and extended into 2024. Local authorities bought 2,250 HAP and RAS homes with tenants in situ. These acquisitions were funded directly by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The Government agrees it is important that local authorities have the option to purchase a property where a social housing tenant is at risk of homelessness due to a notice of termination. In addition, given that we are now seeing the highest delivery of social housing, local authorities also have to use other options such as allocating social housing tenancies to social tenants in the private sector availing of HAP and RAS who are in receipt of a valid notice of termination. That said, we are examining the scope for a further extension of the programme. This will be notified to local authorities shortly.

The motion claims that the Government is not doing enough. However, I believe we have securely laid the foundation and built a housing pipeline that will allow us to continue to ramp up delivery in the coming years. We will continue to invest at unprecedented levels to ensure that we build a sustainable housing system where, ultimately, supply meets demand. Budget 2025 provides for continued record investment in housing with Exchequer funding of €4.85 billion. This is supplemented by funding to the LDA. The Government is committed to working with Opposition parties and Deputies to ramp up the supply and delivery of housing. I look forward to working with Deputies in the period ahead.

Deputy Ged Nash

We hear high-profile murmurings this week of new tax incentives for developers, leading me to the conclusion that this Government does not mind a bit of socialism as long as the welfare payments are paid to wealthy developers and to the benefit of corporate landlords. The Government’s message to those who are looking to put a roof over their heads is that it is going to take some of their taxes to give to private developers to encourage them to get their fingers out and finally build the homes we need. This is apparently because the profit motive just is not enough these days.

I am a pragmatist. We are a pragmatic party. We are happy to scrutinise any proposal on tax reliefs that Fianna Fáil wants to propose. However, Fianna Fáil’s history with tax cuts and developers has never ended well. The people of Ireland are still paying the price. It seems that we are destined to enter a doom spiral of never learning, of doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

Looking at Fianna Fáil’s and Fine Gael’s recent history of expensive, untargeted tax reliefs in the housing area, we see a tax credit for landlords that they never asked for, an answer to a question nobody ever asked, yet landlords are still fleeing the market. That was an absolute distraction. I am drawn to the comment made by eminent economist Barra Roantree at the time this proposal was introduced, when he said this was among the stupidest tax reliefs in recent times, amid very stiff competition. The help-to-buy scheme is a tax relief costing close to €1 billion which is pocketed by developers and only serves to inflate house prices, as we always said it would. It was repeatedly opposed by officials in the Department of Finance who are paid to advise the Minister. The Government already subsidised developers to complete apartment complexes under Croí Cónaithe yet they still have the paw out for more. This is absolutely incredible.

We in the Labour Party would take a different approach, not merely because we have a different political philosophy but because the Government’s approach has failed and will continue to fail. Tax cuts for builders will not address the escalating price of land. They will not magic up tens of thousands of skilled workers. Tax cuts will not streamline our planning system. They will not incentivise developers to use new technologies and innovate. This is why ten years ago the ESRI said “No” to tax breaks for private home builders. The exact same case remains today. The Labour Party also believes that we can and should smartly use public resources to help to create better conditions to make it more attractive for SME developers to build the private and cost-rental homes we need.

We would also establish a State investment and development bank to finance private housing development using a portion of the Future Ireland Fund. We propose that we develop a new long-term financing product for approved housing bodies underwritten by the State to provide financing at 3% or less over 50 or 60 years. This would reduce the cost of financing the cost-rental housing we need and make those rents much more affordable, bringing certainty into the system for developers and also for long-term renters. We have a plan to unlock some of the €150 billion in private savings on deposit by developing a housing solidarity bond via State Savings that would have an attractive interest rate and help to redirect private investment from vulture funds towards housing development. I believe, given the crisis we are in, that the Irish people would be up for that.

We would also provide for further opportunities for credit unions to underwrite mortgages and invest in housing using surplus savings. These measures, along with the establishment of a State construction company, which, by the way, to remind the Taoiseach, is merely the next step in the evolution of the LDA, an initiative that the Labour Party, uniquely in the Opposition, supported, are the kinds of practical ideas to address the housing crisis that the senior members of this Government thumbed their noses at when we entered exploratory talks on forming a Government.

There is time for a radical redirection in housing policy that ramps up housing delivery and brings costs down for those seeking to buy or rent a home.

It is not the Labour Party which is hostage to dogma and ideology; it is the Taoiseach.

Deputy Ivana Bacik

This Labour motion offered the first opportunity in the Thirty-fourth Dáil to address and debate the question of housing. The motion set out a constructive and ambitious set of proposals and a pathway to reform housing policy and ensure Government could provide a resolution to undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing it and all of us and the biggest civil rights issue of this generation. We set out a credible pathway. We heard seven first-time Labour TDs speak with energy, passion and ideas about tackling the housing emergency and ramping up the supply of homes. Contrast the energy, ambition and constructive proposals from the Labour benches with the tumbleweed blowing across the Government benches for the two hours of this debate. We did not have the courtesy of one senior Minister, let alone the no-show housing Minister, James Browne, who did not show. All we heard was two junior Ministers reading bland, pre-prepared scripts devoid of ambition and urgency, and utterly dismissive of the seriousness of the housing emergency.

The Taoiseach is now in the Chamber. He has spoken of the need to address the housing emergency. I think he recognises this but that recognition is not evident in the Government's response to today's housing motion. The first motion on housing before this Dáil should have been an opportunity for Government to set out its stall and set out the evidence-based policies it proposes to introduce in order to deliver for the communities we all represent. Instead, we have heard from the Government and Taoiseach over recent days a series of back-of-the-envelope, Bertie-era, back-to-the-future proposals. Apparently the Taoiseach is now thinking about abolishing, scrapping or reversing the rent pressure zones. I know he has rowed back a little on that, and that is welcome, but he has left renters across the country in a state of uncertainty and great distress. We are all hearing from them. I heard from one constituent just this morning about this. Renters who pay €2,500 per month on average in Dublin are left in uncertainty because the Taoiseach has floated the idea of doing away with rent pressure zones but given no indication of what they might be replaced with for renters who desperately need protection and security.

The other big idea the Taoiseach floated is tax breaks for developers. Yet, as my colleague Ged Nash has just pointed out, we have no evidence that they would assist in delivering greater supply. The evidence is to the contrary if we look at the ESRI's paper on tax breaks in construction, which simply, as the ESRI said, transfer State money to developers without any discernible or significant increase in the supply of homes.

The Taoiseach's Government's housing policy has failed and that failure has been particularly evident in the appalling mismatch between the actual figures and the figures he and his senior Ministers in the last Government promised would be delivered in housing last year. Time and again the previous Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for housing promised 40,000 homes. The latest figures suggest actual completion figures for last year were under 30,000, which is below Government targets and 10,000 short of what the Taoiseach said would be built last year. This really matters. It matters to the 15,000 people in homelessness and to 25-year-olds around the country. We heard from our Deputy Eoghan Kenny, who is 24 and 70% of whose generation are living in their childhood bedrooms or living in their parents' homes. We all hear stories about three generations of families living in a two- or three-bedroom house, crammed in, unable to move on or move out because there is nowhere affordable to buy or rent in this country. The average rent in Dublin is €2,500 and house prices average €600,000 in Dublin. The Taoiseach offers us nothing in the Government countermotion today, nothing in the programme for Government and certainly nothing in the bland speeches delivered by junior Ministers today to indicate any change in housing policy.

What are we in Labour offering? We offer the Government a credible pathway for change, a State-led approach to intervention in the market. Of course we believe in private sector delivery too. If the Taoiseach read our manifesto, he would see we propose that half of houses built each year would be private delivery. We want to see combined and diversified delivery across different modes: through AHBs, through the private sector and, crucially, through a Land Development Agency that must be transformed to deliver at greater capacity on State-owned and private land. It must be transformed to deliver the social and affordable homes needed. The Taoiseach's party in the 1960s instituted a national building agency that delivered homes at scale. We can do that again but, unfortunately, the Government lacks the ambition and urgency to tackle this housing emergency.

Amendment put.

An Ceann Comhairle

In accordance with Standing Order 85(2), the division is postponed until the weekly division time this evening.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 12 Feb 2025

Housing Policy: Motion [Private Members]

A Deputy

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 12 Feb 2025