I move:
That Seanad Éireann takes note of the Report of the Drudy Commission on housing; welcomes the Commission's radical approach to the housing crisis and urges the Government to implement the major recommendations contained in the report as a matter of urgency.
This is the second occasion this session at which the Labour group has raised the issue of housing, which reflects public concern about the difficulties in all sectors of housing at present. Our previous motion called on the Government to set up a housing commission but the Minister of State, Deputy Molloy, said that would be a waste of time and would do nothing to alleviate the problem. When we look at the detail of Professor Drudy's report we see what a voluntary effort can do and this could have been built on if the Government had supported it.
The housing crisis is our most important social problem. It faces thousands of families and its features are well known to Members. The measures introduced to date by the Government have failed significantly to address the problem. Local authority housing lists continue to rise rapidly each quarter. New house prices are rocketing to such an extent that even professional couples, such as nurses and gardaí, cannot hope to purchase a new house. The current discontent in those professions has much to do with the lack of affordable housing for people who would previously have been regarded as having relatively good incomes. Our social housing sector remains significantly under-resourced. The private rented sector is in crisis as rents shoot through the roof and tenants are offered little or no legal protection against avaricious landlords. As a public representative from a rural town, I know that the position is even worse in such towns than in our cities, because of the lack of supply and the control of supply at local level by what can only be described as cartels.
To date, the Government has relied upon the advice of one economic consultant to devise its housing strategy. This decision, based on the premise that the housing problem can be solved by an economic analysis alone, is fundamentally flawed. It comes as no surprise that a Progressive Democrat Minister would happen upon this policy. It is a short-sighted, partial and ultimately ineffective way to view housing. It eliminates from the debate concepts such as rights, citizenship and community. It is an analysis of the housing market that finds it origins in Lady Thatcher's dictum that there is no such thing as society. It has failed utterly to improve the housing conditions of thousands of people.
The Government has refused time and time again to agree to the request, not alone from the Labour Party but from groups like the Consumers' Association of Ireland, to establish a housing commission. No explanation, convincing or otherwise, was offered other than the Minister's contention which I quoted earlier, that it was a waste of time and would do nothing to solve the problem.
In the face of this obduracy and evasion the Labour Party decided to take the matter into its own hands and establish its own housing commission. In February of this year my colleague, Deputy Gilmore, announced that Professor P. J. Drudy of Trinity College would chair the commission. The Labour Party and the entire political establishment owe a debt of gratitude to the work achieved by Professor Drudy and his colleagues on the commission. They were not highly paid consultants to the Government; they gave of their time because of their concern for Irish citizens and I warmly commend them for their work.
Labour's housing commission held a large number of public hearings throughout the country. We argued for this because the problem could not be addressed by listening to what one consultant had to say – we had to listen to the people. Professor Drudy's commission travelled to six centres and invited written submissions. I am delighted that 45 individuals and groups gave comprehensive and detailed responses, and that 28 of them attended the public hearings. This was a profitable listening exercise and the Government would do well to heed it. The submissions and the number of meetings held are outlined in the commission's report, which represents the most comprehensive national survey of attitudes to housing policy carried out in this country for many years.
The report places the housing crisis in the proper context. It is not solely an economic problem to be solved by tinkering with the market. Housing is first and foremost a social concern. People have a fundamental right to a secure and comfortable house or other accommodation within which to raise their families. This is the primary departure point for any analysis of housing matters. Economic measures are important but they must be based on and designed to achieve social goals and objectives. This is the fundamental, ideological error the Government has made and is the main reason its approach to date has proved so ineffective. On the last occasion I said the Government was like the captain of the Titanic, admitting that we were sinking, but at a slow rate. We are still hearing that.
By placing the housing crisis within a social context Professor Drudy and his team were able to put forward a radical and comprehensive set of recommendations, which would significantly transform the approach to housing in this country and make a difference to thousands of people. I will mention some of the report's 38 recommendations. The first is that the right to good quality, affordable housing should be enshrined in the Constitution. We spoke earlier today about giving constitutional recognition to local government and it would be equally valid to give constitutional recognition to the right to housing, as is the case in other European countries. We need a national strategy for affordable housing, backed up by comprehensive inspection and monitoring and an independent audit committee. A minimum of 20 per cent of social housing should be provided in all residential development, and existing powers under the planning Acts could be used to put that into effect. Fair price certificates should be introduced to ensure that fair prices are charged for new houses and fair rents are charged to tenants. There should be compulsory purchase of land for affordable housing purposes and 10,000 social housing units per annum should be provided to tackle the current waiting lists and other unmet housing needs. A quality control system should be put in place for all housing for sale or rent, which would include a requirement on developers properly to finish housing estates. Bodies such as building societies, pension funds, insurance companies and trade unions should be encouraged to invest in housing.
The Drudy commission also recommended that encouragement should be given to bodies such as building societies, pension funds, insurance companies and trade unions to invest in housing. I support strongly support this because I was recently approached by a credit union which wanted to use the new provisions for social responsibility in the Credit Union Act, 1997, to invest in local social housing projects. Despite consultation with the local authority, however, no mechanism could be found to enable that to happen quickly and effectively.
The commission went on to recommend that universities and colleges be provided with capital grants to develop student accommodation; that an alternative form of rental accommodation such as the cost-rental accommodation available in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria should be introduced; that consumer protection measures should be improved to protect borrowers; and that a strategy to encourage the sale, rent of redesign of dwellings which are currently under-occupied should be put forward.
The Drudy commission indicated that legislation is required to provide security of tenure. Over a century after the Land League took action to secure rights for tenant farmers, similar rights are required for tenants in the rented sector. The commission advocated the introduction of a new licensing system for the private rented sector to replace the current system of registration which has not worked and in respect of which a small number of local authorities took legal action but were not successful. The commission also recommended the introduction of new measures to assist tenants in the private rented sector, including the establishment of a rental deposits board, a mediation system for disputes between landlords and tenants and an independent housing and advice service. It also advocated that the recommendations of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities on housing and accommodation should be put in place and stated that a range of new measures are needed to assist and encourage the non-profit sector, including finance from the Housing Finance Agency, reform of the subsidised sites scheme and the establishment of a dedicated unit in the Department to develop the voluntary housing sector.
Anyone who examines the commission's recommendations will agree that they are radical proposals which go to the heart of the housing problem in Irish society. Unfortunately, the Kenny report has lain unimplemented for a number of decades. However, on revisiting it we may discover that its recommendations are more relevant now than they were at the time of its publication. For example, the Kenny report on land prices, advocated a new deal for tenants, namely, control of house prices which would give both developers and purchasers a fair deal. These are just some of its recommendations and I am surprised the Government has not considered taking action on this front in the two years since it took office.
Let us examine one of the report's recommendations, namely, the introduction of fair price certificates. This certificate would be granted to housing developments where a builder is allowed, and rightly so, to charge a healthy profit on the construction price of the house, for example, 20 per cent instead of the current mark ups of 80 per cent and 100 per cent which are causing so much havoc in the housing market. Only houses granted a fair price certificate would then qualify for the array of tax reliefs and grants available. This system would put a cap on house inflation, ensure that purchasers get a fair deal and ensure that the developers get a fair reward for their work and investment. It is a fine proposal for State intervention to ensure that the social policy needs of the community are meet by the market. I hope the Minister and the Government will have the political will to grasp this proposal and bring a degree of humanity and rationality into the housing market.
Time constraints prevent me from expanding in detail on Professor Drudy's report, but my colleagues will do so. Suffice it to state that it is the most in-depth analysis of the housing problem to emerge this decade. My party fully supports its recommendations and we are determined to see them implemented. At this stage, it is the responsibility of the Government to accept the logic behind these proposals and review its approach to the housing crisis so that people will have the opportunity to own a home of their own or rent a property at a reasonable cost without fear of eviction. As the end of the century approaches, is it too much to ask the Government to treat citizens with the respect and dignity they deserve and ensure they are not walked into the ground by the march of market forces? I do not believe so, but it is now up to the Government to prove it.
