The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is very welcome to the House to discuss this all-important issue.
Housing: Statements
I am sorry that we were slightly delayed; there was a vote in the Lower House. I am sure the Senators will forgive me.
(Interruptions).
There were no pairings, whatever is happening today.
I welcome the opportunity to update Members on the progress the Government has made on housing, particularly since the publication of Housing for All in September 2021. It has been 19 months since the plan was published. Although we are operating in an ever-changing landscape, which most people appreciate, real progress has been made. It is important to take time to reflect on this and today provides an opportunity to do so.
Housing for All represents the most ambitious housing plan in the history of the State. The Government is committed to building at least 300,000 homes by the end of 2030. To achieve this we will continue to require an enormous effort from all involved. As I said, however, the start we have made is encouraging. We have secured the funding required. The guaranteed State investment of over €4 billion per year to support the largest State-led building programme ever will provide the assurances and certainty the sector needs to deliver on the ambition of Housing for All. Budget 2023 will support the delivery of a record 11,830 social homes, of which 9,100 will be new-build homes and 5,500 affordable homes this year. Over €1 billion alone will be spent on affordable measures in 2023.
In 2022, the first year of Housing for All, almost 30,000 homes were completed. This was an increase of 45% compared with 2021 but, importantly, it was an increase of 41% on 2019 completions, which was prior to the pandemic. In 2022, almost 57,000 homes were either commenced or completed. Commencement notices for approximately 2,000 homes were received in February 2023 and a total of 4,105 new homes were commenced in the first two months of this year. January 2023 and December 2022 saw record numbers since the collection of the data series began in 2011. I am not being complacent about this at all. We are keeping the commencement notices under constant review and taking action where we can to ensure developments are activated and homes unlocked for delivery. Last year was the first year of affordable housing delivery in a generation and verified figures, which I will publish in the coming weeks, will show that more social housing new-builds were delivered in 2022 than in the almost half century since 1975.
Numerous schemes have been introduced, extended or expanded to help buyers realise their dream of owning their own home. A measure we debated in this House, the first home scheme, which I launched last July, has had nearly 3,500 registrations and, most important, over 1,200 approvals issued to date. These real households and families, many of whom were renting, are now able to buy their own home because of the first home scheme. We have extended and expanded the help-to-buy scheme to €30,000. That is tax back in people's pockets to help towards their deposit. Since its introduction in 2017, nearly 38,000 households have benefited from the help-to-buy scheme.
We made changes to the local authority home loan scheme launched in January 2022 when we expanded it in March. This year's budget guarantees approximately €250 million in lending under the scheme. More needs to be done to ensure people are aware of this very good lending product, which provides a long-term fixed-interest mortgage. This scheme has helped about 2,800 households achieve their dream of homeownership. In addition, there are now cost-rental homes, a tenure that did not exist in this country between 18 and 20 months ago. We have approved more than 1,000 cost-rental homes to date. Tenants in those homes are guaranteed security of tenure for a minimum of 40 years with State-backed affordable rents.
Challenges remain, as all Senators know. The past year has seen an ever-changing landscape arising from the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and rising interest rates. The Government has to be both proactive and pragmatic when it comes to emerging issues. When drafting the plan, it was important to build in the right checks, balances and flexibilities to make sure Housing for All meets the core issues and challenges as well as its objectives. This is why we are committed to reviewing Housing for All annually. The first review of the plan was done in November last year. The review set out how the Government is responding to the emerging issues. Thirty-three priority actions were identified and they will support the supply of well-built and, importantly, sustainable homes for people across the country. We will activate and accelerate the delivery of housing supply, while continuing to deliver the fundamental reforms in the plan.
We are also overhauling planning laws to streamline approvals to help get Ireland building. This is crucially important and long overdue. The Planning and Development Bill 2022 is before the joint committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. It is the most extensive planning reform since at least 2000 and it needs to happen. Planning decisions should be made by local authorities or An Bord Pleanála, not in the courts. This, along with the updating of current planning density guidelines, will further support the viability of developments and ensure the right houses are built in the right places.
Challenges also exist in other parts of the housing sector. The tightening availability of rental accommodation, as well as the increase in homelessness, are serious concerns for me and the Government. I assure Senators that our decision to bring the winter eviction moratorium to an end, as planned, on a phased basis from 31 March, was not taken lightly but it is the right one. Much of the commentary over the past two weeks has centred on a heartless Government, one which puts the interest of landlords above tenants. That is just not true. We know that had we continued the moratorium, as Sinn Féin and others suggested, we would only continue to shrink the market further and reduce the number of homes available for people to rent. We also know that the divisive narrative of us versus them, when it comes to tenants and those who have properties to rent, only serves to make matters worse. Only through increasing supply will we resolve the challenges we face in the rental market. Extending the eviction ban would not do this.
We have used the period of the moratorium to increase supply. This does not suit the narrative of some but it is the truth. We have used the past several months to increase social housing supply and emergency accommodation. For the record of the Seanad, in the last quarter of 2022, we delivered 6,000 new social homes and more than 1,500 local authority homes were refurbished. Some 500 new homeless emergency accommodation beds and 170 cold-weather beds were delivered during the moratorium. In quarter 4 of 2022, during the moratorium, 734 adults and 346 families exited homelessness and went into permanent secure accommodation. In the same period, we created nearly 2,000 housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies.
We plan to go further still. In March, the Government decided a set of actions as next steps, including ramping up the tenant in situ scheme further. That scheme exists and we want to target the purchase of at least 1,500 social homes with tenants in situ.
We are adding an additional 1,000 new social homes, on top of what we plan to build, through targeted leasing initiatives in 2023 and 2024. The majority of those homes, amounting to approximately 600, will be provided this year and will be specifically targeted at those who are homeless and the single cohort. We have amended the Croí Cónaithe vacant property grant, which has already had 1,300 applications, to bring vacant homes back to use and for sale in towns, villages and cities right across the country. We will extend that scheme to include one additional rented property.
Significantly, we are giving tenants a first right of refusal to buy their homes. I will expand the first home scheme to that end and to support tenants to purchase their homes. We will ensure there is a cost-rental backstop to assist those who cannot buy their own home and whose incomes are above the social housing limit. This scheme will be established from 1 April. For those whose incomes are over the limit and cannot afford to buy their home, that home will come into cost-rental provision. We have also commenced a comprehensive review of the private rental sector, which is long overdue. The review will be complete by the end of June 2023 and I look forward to the opportunity to come into the House to discuss it further and hear Senators' views. It will ensure that our housing system provides an efficient, affordable, safe and secure framework for both tenants and landlords. We are exploring every opportunity to add supply to the rental sector, as well as solving the root issue for good.
Fundamentally, right across the board, we must continue to ramp up supply of affordable, safe and secure homes. By any fair yardstick or estimation, the delivery of 30,000 new homes last year, up from 20,000 the year before, is a good achievement. I will publish the social housing figures within the next two weeks, once they are fully verified. We built more new social homes in 2022 than have been built since 1975. We have affordable purchase schemes through local authorities for the first time in a generation. We approved 42 such schemes across the country, with an allocation of more than €200 million to provide some 2,800 homes. We will do more. We were never going to fix this issue in the first 16 or 17 months of Housing for All. However, the first full year of the plan has given us a good foundation to move forward and to deliver more on behalf of our people.
I thank the Minister. Group spokespersons will have eight minutes each and all other Senators will have five minutes.
Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire agus gabhaim buíochas leis as a bheith anseo inniu. This is a really important debate. None of us can turn on the radio or look at social media, television or newspapers without seeing or hearing a discussion about housing. Everybody is an expert. God love the Minister for being the man with the job. In case he did not get the newsflash, he is not doing it well enough. That is the consensus among the general public. This debate is most important for those who do not own a home, young people and those who are at risk of homelessness. I am pleased to stand here today to support the Minister and to say he is doing a good job, as are his officials, the people working in local authorities around the country and in approved housing bodies, AHBs, and the people who are building homes, whether for private sale, affordable cost rental or affordable purchase. I do not care what type of home is being built as long as it is one that is secure and affordable.
I first talked about a housing crisis back in 2010 when I was in Dublin City Council. I was told by many people over the years that I should not catastrophise. I am the mother of three young adult children. I am in politics to try to make a contribution and deliver change. My children motivate me. Listening to them and others of their generation, I hear the fear and anxiety that has been instilled in them. It makes me angry for them and angry at our generation that this situation has been allowed to develop. I support the Minister. I support Housing for All because it is a meaningful and comprehensive plan that is backed up by legislation and State funding. It is the most comprehensive housing plan in the history of the State. The sum of €20 billion sounds like a lot of money because it is a lot of money. It is reflective of how big a problem we have. It is absolutely appropriate that none of us should ever forget how big the challenge is and that we all pull together to address it.
Housing for All is designed to address the two core elements of our housing emergency, namely, supply and affordability. The fastest and most sustainable way of increasing supply is to reuse the existing housing stock. Where did the Minister start? He started with the local authorities and the portion of their built housing stock that is vacant and unused. I commend the Minister on the millions of euro he has poured into our local authorities to enable them to turn around voids. I have seen the vacant properties in my constituency of Dublin Central. Not only has he put money into returning voids to residential use, he has also given money to local authorities for regeneration projects, such as those for St. Mary's Place on Dorset Street, Constitution Hill and Matt Talbot Court. Returning existing built housing stock to residential use will not only increase supply but also help to reduce our carbon footprint. The Minister has provided funding, supports, vacant housing officers, advice, guidance, regulations and, critically, vacant property grants. All of these will enable private property owners to make their properties available for use, whether as social homes or affordable homes.
Housing for All also addresses the second element of the crisis, affordability, by making use of State-owned lands. What a novel idea that we would use State-owned lands to reduce the cost of providing housing. Good on the Minister. This is the way to go and he should do more of it. The report from the Land Development Agency, LDA, this week referred to the potential for another 60,000 or 70,000 homes to be provided in this way. What are we waiting for? We should not wait another three, five or ten years to do that. I commend the Minister on the way he pushed through despite fierce opposition to the establishment of the LDA as a statutory authority and to giving it the power not just to create another register of land - how many more of those do we need? - but the power to build homes that are affordable and, for the first time in the State, the power to build affordable homes to rent. The affordable cost-rental model has been in operation for 60 years or more in Vienna, where 60% of the population live in public housing. They do so because that housing is secure, affordable and well-built. Why can we not do the same here? I commend the Minister on seeing the potential for such provision in our city and country and delivering it under Housing for All.
Housing for All is a plan that is delivering immediately for renters, would-be homeowners and those at risk of homelessness. For renters, a tax credit has been introduced, with €1,000 made available to every renter, not just every tenancy, this year. The Minister has capped rents and deposits and increased security of tenure and notice periods. Critically, as I said, he has introduced affordable cost-rental provision. He has put home ownership back into the reach of young people. In 2011, the then Government abolished affordable housing. That was a novel approach to an emerging housing crisis.
The reintroduction of the provisions of Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, is welcome. The introduction, for the first time in decades, of an affordable local authority housing model is to be welcomed and supported. In the meantime, the Minister is helping renters to buy their own home. We all recognise that the price of property has increased due to undersupply, to start with, and also the pandemic and the supply-side shortages caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Construction inflation has increased to more than 100% over the past six years. Yet people talk about property prices increasing. What are those people thinking? Do we want to build substandard properties at a lower cost or do we want people to live in homes that are safe and secure for them, their families and future generations?
The Minister is giving people their tax back through the help-to-buy scheme. A total of 37,000 people got to purchase their home by using their own taxes, which the Government has given back to them under the scheme. There have been improvements in the qualifying criteria of the help-to-buy scheme and the local authority home loans. Another welcome development is that the State is taking equity in people's homes to allow them to purchase them. It is really important that the central role of local authorities, AHBs and the LDA is recognised.
The expenditure of more than €200 million on preventing homelessness and the risk of homelessness is a reflection of how serious this issue is.
We have to eliminate homelessness and I know the Minister and the Government have committed to doing so by 2030.
The measures introduced last year included the tenant in situ scheme. I know people who were renting and at risk of homelessness in Dublin City who have availed of the tenant in situ scheme and now have a secure, forever home through the scheme. That has been game changing and the fact that it will be extended to people who are not on the social housing list but who are qualifying for affordable housing is to be welcomed.
I thank the Minister for the work he has done to date. He knows that more needs to be done. We are committed to supporting the Minister in doing that and in accelerating the supply and affordability of housing.
I welcome the Minister and the positive tone of his contribution. I agree with a lot of what Senator Fitzpatrick has said. We are in the middle of a debate which has become so polarised and negative in some respects that it is disappointing.
Next year, it is proposed to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution in relation to housing. I do not see anything in the Constitution that prevents the present Government from doing anything that is required; nothing at all. When I was Attorney General I went to the Supreme Court to defend, under Article 26, Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 and we succeeded. There is nothing in the Constitution which impedes the proper use of our nation's resources for housing and no amendment of the Constitution or no baloney in the Constitution is going to change the underlying problems which are there at the moment. It is a distraction and it is nonsense.
I do not like the term "landlords". I prefer to use the terms "lessors" and "lessees". People who have property as their private investment or pension fund have been very badly treated. The Minister's Department has made a series of fundamental errors. The introduction of the tenancies of indefinite duration and the abolition of bedsits were well intended measures. However, in reality it signalled to lessors that they were in danger of effectively becoming lessors for the community of their property, rather than it remaining their own property and their own investment.
Senator Gavan may not like me saying this but nothing was as reckless or foolish as the Sinn Féin proposal that people could not obtain a vacant possession of their own property for the purpose of selling but would have to sell it in future with whatever tenants are in it under contracts of indefinite duration. That frightened landlords massively, and rightly so, because it effectively means that the community is saying lessors are stuck with their tenancies forever. Let us be clear about this. Under the present law, if a property is rented to an elderly person, he or she is entitled to bring into the house a person to live with him or her. Unless the lessor can think of some very good reason not to, he or she is obliged to accept that person as a tenant in perpetuity and then their children if they want. That is the reality of the present law.
The idea of saying that people cannot get their property back for the purpose of selling it with vacant possession is crazy. It is damaging and foolish and it has caused a stampede out of the rented sector.
Nonsense.
It is not nonsense; it is all around us. If we were honest, we would admit that it is the case. If we were honest, we would admit it was a big mistake by "Brainbox" Ó Broin. He thought he knew everything and he appears on television as the great expert who writes books but that was a disastrous mistake and people are suffering now as a result of it.
They manage fine in France and Germany with those rights.
Our landlord and tenant system is not the same as any continental one, even the Austrian one. Maybe we should give tenants more rights under the Constitution and maybe we should use much more social housing to ensure, as in Vienna, that people have their rights vindicated. I have no problem with any of that. However, in the particular market that we were facing what was proposed was a disaster. It was a red flag in every sense, and it just spooked everybody.
Is the Senator blaming Sinn Féin for the housing crisis?
The Senator will get his opportunity.
Senator Fitzpatrick mentioned the role of local authorities. Under the housing Acts, local authorities are supposed to set out a strategy to deal with housing requirements in their own areas. Senator Fitzpatrick was on Dublin City Council, which has an abysmal record in facing up to the housing shortage in Dublin city. It spends millions refurbishing apartment developments which it built and then allowed to fall into complete states of neglect. We can see examples of this neglect in Ballymun, St. Teresa's Gardens and Fatima Mansions. The council is spending millions on refurbishing but has put in place almost no new, large-scale developments in the last few years. Ballymun is a monument to the bad planning, now, of Dublin City Council. It had good, solid apartment buildings there and it allowed those buildings to degenerate because it was not willing to invest in the properties it owned. Dublin City Council gave over Ballymun to the private sector and it has been replanned as a community. However, it is windswept and it has not turned out to be the great new city that it should have been. Dublin City Council has a lot of responsibility for with regard to the problems of the capital. It may be that we need one housing authority for Dublin city and County because the county lines are a bit ridiculous.
I want to say something about the planning law in relation to the Office of the Planning Regulator. I am glad the Minister overruled the Office of the Planning Regulator recently. He should do that very often because that office is calculated to undermine the provision of housing right across Ireland. There is a notion in the Minister's Department that somehow local authorities do not know what they are doing in rural Ireland. If one looks at an old Ordnance Survey map from 1911, one can see the number of dwellings speckled across the map. Now we have a Department trying to say that people cannot build in rural areas any more. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, wants us to live in villages and towns. The people of Ireland do not want that and I do not care about the theory that somehow it is environmentally damaging to allow one-off housing. People in Ireland want to live in one-off housing. There were plenty of one-off houses and there are plenty of abandoned houses in rural Ireland to this day. Those people deserve a different planning regime.
The Minister said that the figures for last year were the highest on record since 1975. That is interesting. I congratulate him on getting up to a record level in that way. How was it that we could do more in 1975 than we can do in 2023? Was it the Constitution? No. Was it resources? No. Was it political will? Yes. I am not trying to annoy the Minister but how have we arrived at a situation where we are clapping ourselves on the back for doing, in a wealthy country, what a much poorer country could do a half century ago?
I welcome the Minister. I congratulate him on his successes so far, his ambition for the future and his willingness to adapt the plan regarding public lands and the nursing home provisions.
We should be completely flexible and anything that can be done to deal with things on a day-to-day basis should be done.
Obviously, supply is key to getting people into houses, having competitive and affordable rents and homeownership. In 2022, 29,851 houses were completed, an increase of 45.2% on 2021 when the figure was 20,560. It is an increase of 41.3% on 2019, when the figure was 21,134. In 2022, we exceeded the 24,600 target by 5,251. That is a considerable increase. The figure of 2,108 to January 2023 is the highest outcome.
Having said all of that, we must work for more supply on every level. Statistics on social housing are being compiled at the moment and already indicate that they are at the highest level since the 1970s. Senator McDowell had some very interesting remarks to make about that.
The LDA, councils and the Department must increase social housing supply. Councils should be encouraged to build more, recruit tradespeople and bring them back home, and bring more of the Ukrainian refugees and people who are in direct provision centres into employment. Work permits should be speeded up. Everything should be done. Anyone who can be harnessed into the workforce should be brought in. People want to work; they do not want to be in hotel bedrooms or centres.
Student accommodation is important and has many things to recommend it. Colleges must be supported in this regard. My son is in student accommodation in Dublin and it is wonderful from every perspective, in terms of getting to know friends and having a whole university experience. It is very important. I am pleased by what my colleague the Minister, Deputy Harris is doing. The State is investing in the delivery of student accommodation for the first time ever. Since November, the Minister has given the go-ahead to 1,100 beds across a number of universities including Limerick, Dublin, Galway and Maynooth. The Minister is determined to deliver further on this, including beds in Trinity, UCC and UCD. We are also working with technological universities across the country to deliver student accommodation projects. This will be key to delivering more housing and better regional balance. The Minister will support that initiative and work with the Minister, Deputy Harris. That is a critical facet, among other things, of solving the problem.
In 2023, there have been 1,243 first-time buyer purchases, the highest number since data collection in this area began in 2010. The planning reform that is proposed is welcome and necessary. Vacant houses are a major issue. I am glad the Croí Cónaithe scheme will be amended and be more inclusive of people who want to rent properties. I am also happy that €150 million is going to local authorities to tackle vacancy and provide development.
Further stringent measures are required. The previous measures were inadequate and we need more in the next budget to stop people sitting on sites and squatting on potential building land. That needs more action.
An action plan on apprenticeships is in place and is yielding results, but we have to work very hard on this. There is a difficulty in getting enough people and having the capacity to do the job. We are losing out there.
The eviction ban was never intended to be a permanent arrangement. No party ever suggested it be permanent. The fear was that lifting the ban would speed up the loss and were it to be extended we would lose more private property owners in the market. The ban could not be extended forever. There was a problem there.
People are leaving the market for a number of reasons. Accidental landlords are leaving due to retirement age, mortgages are difficult to repay and there are, of course, attractive prices for houses. There are a number of reasons people are pulling out of the market. Keeping the ban in place would have accelerated that.
The Minister and Minister for Finance have to consider further tax reform to encourage landlords into the market. One of the great successes in recent years has been the room-to-let scheme. Tax reform must include tax allowances for landlords linked to competitive rents and long-term rental arrangements. A bit of imagination is required. Given the current level of taxation, maintenance and so on, landlords are being driven out of the market. Regardless of whether we want to face that fact, we need to do so. The room-to-rent scheme has been an enormous success that merits further consideration.
The huge issue of vacant houses relates not only to vacant council houses but also to the vacant houses dotted around the country. Today I am speaking on behalf of someone who has a major interest in this, my colleague Senator John Cummins, who is temporarily indisposed. The Senator is making a remarkable contribution on the Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. He has a sharp intellect which he is constantly applying to this question. He has great analytical skills and is performing in this area. I am proud to represent him here, which is what I am doing due to the fact he is temporarily indisposed.
We need to deal with vacancies and voids at local authority level and through the Croí Cónaithe scheme. We need to make it attractive. We need to deal with land that is locked in and is not being used. We are now tackling State lands. That is the Government's approach, but every imaginable strategy that can be pulled in at a given time to deal with this is required. It has to be treated as an emergency.
There are a number of dimensions to this. Homelessness is one great horror. I am proud to have a son who works in this area, whom the Minister knows and has met. He works in the Peter McVerry Trust as a recently qualified professional social worker. He is interested in this question. We have to deal with homelessness. It is a great scourge and wrong. We also have to deal with the price of accommodation. That is why we need supply.
We could discuss this for ages. I will be deferential to the wish of the Chair to run the operation efficiently. The Minister is welcome. I look forward to his proposals. We need massive ingenuity and determination. Please God, we can keep things going.
The Minister is very welcome. Last week, he and his Government colleagues voted to lift the eviction ban and increase the number of homeless citizens in our State. He did this in the knowledge that 17 of the 31 local authorities in the State told him they had nowhere for these people to go. We know from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, that there are 3,000 evictions due to fall in April. There are currently 11,754 homeless people in the State, including 3,500 children, but those figures do not include the 400 applicants for international protection who are sleeping on our streets right now. It is a pity that I am the first person to mention those figures after almost 40 minutes of debate.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
I am the first person to mention the shocking number of people who are homeless. I welcome the "Hear, hears". That is grand. Of course, the figures are getting worse under the Minister's watch every month. When he was in a supply and confidence arrangement, he was quite clear that a figure of 7,000 homeless people was not acceptable. We are now heading to double that figure.
It is a shocking record. We need to go beyond the statistics and think about the impact on families and children of having no home. I am referring to the people we meet in our clinics every week. We should think about the horrific levels of insecurity, stress and strain on families who are left to struggle in hubs or hotel rooms for months on end. I am told in Limerick that if someone gets into a hub right now, he or she can expect to be there for at least a year. That is the reality. Let us think of the damage that is doing to our children.
The Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, described these figures as a scandal this morning. He was right. It is a scandal that belongs solely to Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Senator McDowell should note that the suggestion that Sinn Féin is somehow responsible for the housing crisis is really risible. We know who has been in power for the past 12 years.
A point I have made before but which I want to make again is that when we talk about housing, we are not talking about some kind of natural disaster. It is not like an earthquake or landslide. The reason we have a housing crisis is decades of appalling housing policy. At the heart of that is an ideology that we should leave housing to the marketplace. That is why 1975 was the last time when there was a half-decent amount of social housing. In the decades after that, be it under Fine Gael or its sister party, Fianna Fáil, the best thought was to leave it to the marketplace. That is why we are in the crisis we are in today.
I want to talk to the Minister about where I live, Limerick. As of last Friday, the council was notified of 174 evictions that will happen in the coming weeks. The Minister has given Limerick council a target of purchasing 75 homes this year for tenants in situ.
That is not true. That is a base target.
We will call it a base target; I am not going to row over that. There are several problems with the target or base target, however. First, the circular the Minister sent to the councils was too rigid in its application. For example, he insists that a notice to quit must be given in writing before the council can commence the process of purchasing a house. I am aware that councils believe the Government needs to build in more flexibility that would allow them to engage earlier to give them a more likely prospect of completing purchases.
Second, the Government is operating from an assumption that local councils inspect 100% of RAS and HAP properties each year and that there will therefore be no refurbishment costs attached to purchases. That is a major problem for council staff in Limerick. It means that, in reality, there is no fund to refurbish the houses. It causes a major problem for the council in terms of being able to complete purchases. Many of the properties we will talk about in terms of tenants in situ are in a poor state of repair. Therefore, the Government needs to review the refurbishment grant allocated to properties for tenants in situ as a matter of urgency to allow for the necessary works to take place and prevent more people from becoming homeless.
Third, there has been no allocation of additional staff to process and progress the house purchases. This I find really shocking. This is something the Minister could and should have been planning for but he did not do so. In Limerick, a team of four staff is currently administering 21 separate housing projects. The best it achieved in terms of purchasing in previous years was 32 purchases in 2018. It simply does not have the capacity to get the work done without significant additional resources. There is every prospect that it will lose ground on work it is currently doing regarding the overall pipeline of future housing in Limerick. For the life of me, I just cannot understand why, during the six months of the eviction ban, the Government did not recognise that we need to staff up councils. It certainly has not happened in Limerick.
In the Minister’s contribution, he made a comment on the cost-rental administration scheme. I really hope that does kick off. I would like to see more details on it because, as he rightly pointed out, the people above the threshold of €35,000 or €36,000 that operates in Limerick will be in real trouble. These people are currently paying €1,500 or €2,000 in rent every month and do not have the money to purchase a house in most cases. Cost rental is absolutely essential. I have just given him suggestions about what he needs to do.
There are many people trying to make the situation better at the minute but there are genuine concerns over the base target. If there are to be 174 evictions in Limerick, a base target of 75 is nowhere near adequate. The estimate I hear is 300 evictions in Limerick by the end of June. The base target is not adequate, the resources are not in place, and there are no refurbishment grants to make the purchases a possibility.
I want to address the point that Senator McDowell made because it is worthy of a greater debate. No-fault evictions do not happen in France, Austria or Germany because tenants have proper tenancy rights. When the Minister referred to a review of tenancy rights, I welcomed it. I want to tell him where Sinn Féin stands on this. It believes in full tenancy rights equivalent to those of tenants in Europe. We do not believe that, in Ireland, we are somehow less worthy of having full tenancy rights. We do not believe property rights should trump the rights of tenants. That is an ideological debate. Senator McDowell can take a different view on it, as he is entitled to, but the fact of the matter is that when looking to Europe and best practice, those tenancy rights are essential. That is what we will campaign for. It is a pity that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have never recognised this over several decades and still cling to the idea that the right to sell a house and kick tenants out is somehow essential to a functioning housing market, considering that it has been proven daily for the past several years that the market is completely dysfunctional and broken. Sinn Féin will deliver the change we need, but I am afraid to say there is no evidence that the Minister will.
I, too, welcome the Minister to the House. The lifting of the no-fault eviction ban is the most important issue I deal with at this time. I welcome the opportunity to discuss it with him this evening. As someone with community clinics, I can tell him that the ban is the number one topic in Kildare South this week. At clinics in Newbridge, Kildare town, Monasterevin and Athy, people wanted to discuss the lifting of the ban. They basically wanted to know where they are to go. That is the number one issue. The issue is also what you say next to people with a notice to quit who sit in front of you and tell their story. When I look at what is available in Kildare South, including all the towns I have just mentioned, I see there is nothing for these people. That is the bottom line.
An additional problem, mentioned at a meeting of the housing committee, of which I am temporarily a member, is that the renters cannot contact the local authority at the appropriate time. It is a problem because, when they contact a local authority, they are told, because of the number of people trying to make contact, to come back a day or two before their eviction date. That is just adding to the stress. There is no other way of describing it. The no-fault eviction ban was the security blanket such people had but now the Government has lifted it and taken it away. This is a political issue, no matter what we say about it, and it entails a choice. It is the biggest issue I deal with daily.
Much has been said about the Government and having no cliff edge, but I have seen over the past few weeks that people have gone over the cliff edge. Some are just hanging on to it by their fingertips, waiting for the notice to quit. They ask the local authority what they should do on the eviction date and it tells them to come back to it a day or couple of days before the date. It is not aware of the number of eviction bans that people will present with. People are worried. I speak to them consistently about this because, as I have said, this is the biggest issue I deal with.
The decision that was made was wrong. Why were the solutions the Minister put in place in the past couple of days not in place at the start of the eviction ban period? When we asked about the tenant in situ scheme in February, by way of the Labour Party motion in the Dáil on housing, we were ignored. We asked for the scheme to be ramped up but the Minister has been talking about ramping it up only in the past couple of days.
The other day at a meeting of the housing committee, we had representatives of the local authorities present.
We asked them how they are treating tenants in situ and we were basically told it will be done on a case-by-case basis. I also asked about what happens when a tenant who is from another local authority area gets a notice to quit and I was told there were no conversations going on.
That is not correct.
I can only tell the Minister. He is telling me that and I am sure he is going to get a reply back. However, this is what I was told and other Members of this House were at that meeting as well. I was told there was no co-operation between local authorities in regard to that situation. I know of two people under stress in that case and, as the Minister knows, many people come from the Dublin local authorities to Kildare, where I am, and I am getting calls from them. If the Minister has some information on that, he should tell me because it is a huge issue in my area.
We asked the Minister and we wrote to the Taoiseach in regard to extending and continuing the eviction ban for four months to allow the Government’s solutions to work. It is what those at the coal face such as the housing bodies wanted in order to reduce the homeless figures. As my colleagues have said, it is important to read out the homeless figures. There are over 11,000 people in homelessness and 3,400 of those are children. That is the bottom line and it is where we are tonight.
There are a couple of other issues I want to raise with the Minister. Who are we going to get to build the houses? Apprenticeships were mentioned and while it is not an issue for the Minister, I believe what we need to do is pay the apprentices the minimum wage, as the union Connect has asked. In their first and second year, the pay of apprentices is too low and this is causing problems. For example, preliminary census figures tell us there are 166,000 vacant houses in the State and we need to do more in regard to bringing them back into use.
With regard to the cost-rental backstop, there are a couple of problems in my own local authority area and people have come to me. In fairness, the Minister increased the housing application loan by €5,000 but, unfortunately, it is still not enough and I am currently dealing with two cases which are just above that. The Minister told me this will be solved, hopefully, by the cost-rental backstop. Is there a limit on how much people can earn in that regard? We need to get more detail on it. It is coming in on 1 April, which is in a couple of days’ time, and the question is whether there is a limit set on the rent that people will pay. These are the questions people are asking me. This is what is happening.
I want to finish my contribution by taking the opportunity to again raise the issue of housing aid and housing adaptation loans. I know the Minister has a report on his desk, or that is what I was told on a Commencement matter in the last couple of months. I am also told we are hoping to get an increase in the loans. It is a huge issue. People are remaining in hospital, unfortunately, because they cannot build due to an increase in building costs. If the Minister has information on that, I would appreciate him telling the House tonight because many people are struggling to get their applications through.
As where I currently live, Ballymun, was mentioned, I might take a moment to talk about Ballymun and some of the experience of living there. The plaza redevelopment was supposed to be done outside the Axis centre but a council spokesperson said the redevelopment of the plaza will not commence until the completion of the Kildonan Park project. I do not understand why the two projects cannot happen alongside each other. It has been mentioned already in the House that there is a desperate need for rejuvenation and revitalisation of the area. Based on the projections we were looking at and with the funding that has been allocated to the project, it is unlikely that anything is going to happen in that plaza until 2025.
There is also land for 2,000 new homes in Ballymun. A colleague of the Minister’s, before entering the Dáil as a Deputy, spent many years slamming the Government for doing nothing about that land for 2,000 houses. I scanned through the information and found there are umpteen press releases on it, yet it has been three years and nothing has been done with that land for 2,000 houses. That is a whopping number of houses and could make a really big difference but as far as I can tell, nothing is going to be built before 2025.
I got involved in politics because my friends, my compadres, my colleagues and I lived through the recession. It was like going from technicolour to black-and-white and then back out again. We came through that, we went through college and we moved away. I have friends who left during the recession, who moved back and who were living on my couch last summer. I have friends in their 30s who were living on my couch because they could not get anywhere to live, and that is before an eviction ban came or went, or did anything else. The eviction ban was never meant to be a silver bullet. It was supposed to be an extension just to give the Government a bit of breathing space to build more social and affordable homes, and do something with the 166,000 vacant homes that were mentioned.
I thank the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kieran O'Donnell. I call Senator Frances Black, who is sharing time with Senator Eileen Flynn.
I welcome the Minister of State. I have to talk about the eviction ban today. The end of the eviction ban and the broader housing crisis is the central issue in Irish life right now. Most of the debate around it has been confined to the Dáil so I am glad that Members of the Seanad have this opportunity. We are very appreciative of that and I thank the Deputy Leader, Senator Regina Doherty, for organising this debate.
We must ask whether a tenant should be no-fault evicted into homelessness during a period of complete dysfunction in the housing market. We have to ask whether the property rights of the haves matter more than the safety and dignity of the have-nots. This Government has made its position very clear. People are frightened out of their wits. The failures of successive Governments that have treated housing as a commodity and as an investment vehicle rather than as a human right and essential public infrastructure have compounded it to bring us to this point.
We have hard data from the Residential Tenancies Board showing that 3,500 notices to quit were issued during the moratorium period and will be kicking in over the next few months. That is at least 3,500 people who will most likely lose their homes and, alongside that, we know the emergency accommodation system is under massive strain. Figures given privately to the Cabinet late last year show that emergency accommodation around the State was at capacity and this was a major rationale for the moratorium. Nothing substantial has changed in the interim.
I believe the Government is simply caving in to the demands of the landlord lobby. We are often told landlords are selling up because the rental market is stacked against them. Some 60% of notices to quit issued over the moratorium cited landlords selling up as the reason for the notice. We have heard that 43,000 rental homes were sold up in the past five years. The Government claims this is evidence of a hostile environment for landlords when nothing could be further from the truth. It is unsurprising that landlords are selling their properties in recent years, given the huge house price growth over the past decade. Many of these owners are selling up because it makes financial sense to do so.
The Daft.ie rent reports constantly show that the average yield on many types of rental properties in the State hovers at around 10% and, at worst, the average return is no lower than 5%. These are substantial returns. Imagine getting 5% to 10% in interest every year on your savings in the bank. Rents have doubled in the last decade, meaning that even landlords with big mortgages are making bumper returns as their rental income far exceeds their outgoings. How can we be expected to believe that, in these conditions, landlords are struggling?
We have to ask whether there is any hard evidence on the number of landlords who are supposedly struggling in the current environment. All of the available figures suggest they are enjoying healthy profits, so we have to face that reality. Accidental landlords, small landlords, struggling landlords - these spectral figures are constantly invoked by the Government as a justification for lax protections for renters but the Government cannot present evidence around any of them. I think it is all rhetoric and spin, to be honest.
The worst thing that can happen to a landlord if the moratorium is retained is that they continue to receive significant rental income, which either goes to them directly as income or is used to pay off their loans on a valuable asset. The worst thing that can happen to a renter if the moratorium is ended is that their entire life and their children's lives will crumble around them. These situations are not equal and it is a profound shame that this Government has tried to suggest that they are.
This is a heartless decision from the Government. People have nowhere to go. People are terrified. It is a really scary time. I am sure many Members of the House are getting letters asking what people are going to do.
I would say to anyone who is watching this and who is facing eviction into homelessness that they should know that there are people they can turn to for help. I want them to know that today. They should get in touch with organisations like Threshold, the housing NGO, and their local Government representatives. They should contact them and tell them how bad it is and how scared they are. They can advise them. Many eviction notices are invalid and can be challenged and it is possible to get more time to find alternative accommodation. They should join the Community Action Tenants Union, CATU, which can provide advice and support. It can feel frightening to stand up for yourself in the face of tactics and legal threats but tenants have rights and they should defend them.
My mother used to say - Senator Black said it is a real Dublin thing - that self-praise is no praise. I had a question for the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, if he was here. Did he ever go into a hotel where there was a mother and five or six of her children living in one space? Did he ever go in and meet the people on the ground who are living in hotels? Why is the Government paying millions of euro to hoteliers to profit off the back of people's human rights and off inequality? Why is it investing in hotels and not in people? The eviction ban was put in place on a short-term basis, while the Government came up with solutions on supply and being able to house more people but it did not do that. I am being honest because the people I represent are members of the Traveller community, refugees and migrants. Refugees and migrants did not cause the homeless crisis in this country.
Hear, hear.
We have to say that. What this Government has done, which is sad, has been to divide and conquer on the streets among poor people who are homeless, including mothers. Yet the Government could not extend the ban. I am not in government and I might come across as a bit of an eejit but by God if I was in government I would be the first to say that we need to give ourselves room to be able to fix what the system created. If you ring up looking for a house as someone from the Traveller community, you may not know what a Traveller looks like but you will know by their accent. I am glad that the rental market is under review because there is a lot of discrimination if you are looking for a lease as a member of the Traveller community, as a black person or as a person from another country. The Irish Traveller Movement and the Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community recommend a stand-alone Traveller accommodation system. Where are we on that? We have the Traveller caravan loan scheme, for which the money was never drawn down, where people could spend, say, €40,000 which was allocated for a trailer or a caravan. There is no political will here. If this Government wanted to fix the housing crisis it could do so. Where there is a will there is a way but the Government is not looking for a solution.
Well said.
I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter. Before talking about the general housing question I want to talk about a number of specific issues or challenges we face. First, I want to talk about student accommodation. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, has signed an order that will allow the technological universities, TUs, to borrow. That is significant because they can borrow, in particular, for the creation of student housing. The problem is that we still do not have the borrowing framework fully in place and this means the TUs, and the Minister of State will be familiar with the Technological University of the Shannon in Limerick, will have the capacity to borrow to provide student accommodation but the framework is not in place. As a matter of urgency, I ask the Minister of State to apply pressure to the Minister, Deputy Harris, to get that borrowing framework in place. The more student accommodation we can provide the better, particularly for the Government scheme that will help with the building of student accommodation. That will be significant and would also take students out of the general housing sector.
Second, I am concerned about the provision of modular housing. I have raised this with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. Part of it has to do with the supply that is coming in at European level because there is quite a lot of competition in this regard. I am not yet convinced, particularly with housing displaced persons from Ukraine and asylum seekers, that some of the plans are being treated with sufficient levels of urgency. I say this from the point of view of people who have offered to supply land and look at bringing modular housing into Ireland. There still needs to be a more co-ordinated approach with regard to the roll-out of modular housing, both for refugee accommodation and as a permanent housing solution.
I sit on the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media and I am glad that the plan on the registration of short-term lets was paused so that we could get this right. While we are correct in trying to tackle those who are trying to get around the planning laws by converting long-term lets into short-term lets and placing them on Airbnb, there is going to be a knock-on impact on tourism in rural areas. We all want to get those who are flouting the planning laws but it is critical that the unintended consequences of legislation like that, which could be damaging to rural tourism, are addressed. I was particularly concerned with one matter which I raised with officials from the Departments of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. They admitted that the 12,000 figure which would come about by regulating this sector was calculated on the back of an envelope; that is the phrase that was used.
From the air.
Even Threshold, under questioning, accepted that point. We need to have evidence-based policymaking. One of the concerns I have around this debate is that far too often, we have numbers thrown around without sufficient levels of evidence-based policymaking.
Tied in with that is that one of the problems we have in this country is a shortage of hotel accommodation. Paul Kelly of Fáilte Ireland reckons that we are short, even in Dublin city alone, to the order of 5,000 beds. One of the things I find interesting is that some of those who criticise Government housing policy and who object to housing in the city are even more vociferous in their objection to more hotels being allocated in the city. If we have a shortage of hotel accommodation, however, that also has knock-on impacts within the housing sector and it needs to be addressed.
I am tired of hearing that the Government is doing nothing and so on. The ultimate question in this is about supply. I have not heard once from the Opposition a welcome for the fact that we got 30,000 homes built last year, and that, as the Minister said, in the last quarter of last year 6,000 social and affordable homes were provided. They are real homes and families.
There are 11,000 people who are homeless.
Senator Flynn asked a question and I happen to talk to people who have been made homeless. I also talk to landlords and builders to try to understand what the challenge is. The reality is that 43,000 landlords have left the housing sector in the last five years. If it is so attractive, why are people not rushing to get into this sector to make 5% or 10% margins? The majority of landlords, some 70%, own only one property and the reality is that it is not profitable for them. The income they receive from rental properties is taxable and because of rent pressure zones they cannot increase the rent, and most of them do not do so. If you talk to tenants the overwhelming majority say they have a good experience with their landlords. There are some bad landlords and I have no time for them, nor have I any time for bad tenants. The ultimate challenge we have is in supply and Housing for All is working. We all want more housing out there; that is our purpose in being here. There is no one in here who does not want to see everybody housed but we have to be realistic about what we want to achieve. The demonisation of anybody within the sector will not solve the problem; we have to talk to everybody, from Threshold to tenant organisations, landlords and builders, to be able to solve this problem.
I thank the Minister of State for coming here. This is the first time the Minister of State has been in the Chamber when I have been here.
I congratulate the Minister of State on his new portfolio. He is my constituency colleague in Limerick.
I am delighted that we are discussing the important issue of housing. I compliment the Government on the work it has done to date in working with co-operative organisations and housing associations and on the number of social and affordable houses that have been delivered. There are not enough affordable houses. In my area of Limerick, a number of houses were advertised recently, approximately 25 in Castletroy and another small number in Newcastle West, but it is not enough for the combined area of Limerick. Are there plans for more affordable homes in that area? Some people tell me they cannot afford to pay the full amount but many of them would qualify for affordable homes. There is much more demand for that.
Is there any hope of expanding Croí Cónaithe to living-over-the-shop schemes as there are many vacant units in our towns and cities? There might be a convenience store or other commercial unit on the ground floor and in many towns and cities there are two and three floors above that with no one living in them. If we could consider extending Croí Cónaithe to that type of building, it would go a long way. It would also bring people back to live in our towns and cities.
I understand a review of housing density guidelines is ongoing. Will the Minister of State give an update on that? Will proposals or a Bill be brought forward on the matter? I know the Minister of State is familiar with the Land Development Agency. I have attended many meetings and know it is putting together a plan in conjunction with the Limerick City Council regeneration agency, but it is disappointing that not one brick has yet been laid. Does the Minister of State have a timeframe for when they will start to progress? There are many vacant and brownfield sites. Planning permission has to be sought and so on, which means it will take time. Are there any proposals for or updates on when they will start building?
I welcome that many people have been helped under the first-time buyers and rent-to-buy schemes. Many people have availed of the €30,000 grant. While there have been almost 3,400 registrations, only approximately 1,500 people have qualified so far. Does the Minister of State have any indication of how many more people will qualify for that scheme? Perhaps he will not have the answer today. Almost 4,000 people have registered.
Overall, I compliment the Government on being ahead of schedule. It is planned that numbers for the delivery of social housing will be up. However, there are a number of derelict houses in our towns and villages. I was first elected in 1999 and I am ashamed to say that some houses that were vacant in 1999 are still vacant. Is it because the local authorities are slow to apply for the funding or are there perhaps legal issues surrounding those houses? The Government needs to look more closely at putting the local authorities under pressure to deliver those vacant houses.
The Minister of State is welcome to the Chamber. I think this is the first time I have addressed the House in his presence.
We can all agree that desperate times call for desperate measures. We have certainly heard some desperate measures being mooted in some corners in connection with solutions to the housing crisis. Whether it is running the landlords out or the seizing of private property by the State, many of these desperate measures seem to be from the stick, rather than the carrot, school of thought. That is an imbalance we could examine.
Much has been said about the workings of the planning system, especially the degree to which planning applications can be held up or entirely prevented by a minority or even an individual. These are often serial objectors, persons who are only marginally affected by the proposed plans or, as the Government often points out, members of the Opposition. Changes made in this area could open the floodgates to thousands of new homes. I understand that An Bord Pleanála is an independent body but the Minister and Minister of State also have power. While we know the Department, An Bord Pleanála and the various other bodies that co-operate to provide housing have their ways of doing things, and likely their ideas of how things should be done, the buck stops with the Minister. Call me old-fashioned but I think the Minister should be empowered to lead in the areas to which he has been assigned rather than act as a figurehead to take the blame when the best-laid plans of senior civil servants go awry. Whether it is a ministerial writ, a statutory instrument or legislative amendments to the Planning and Development Acts, whatever mechanism makes most sense is needed. The near blanket green-lighting of planning permissions by An Bord Pleanála, ordered by the Minister's hand, would increase our 2023-24 housing stock no end.
I often think about what I would do if I were the Minister with responsibility for housing. I would bring every local authority, including their senior planners, to the convention centre to meet An Bord Pleanála every day for 31 days and order them to go and build houses on particular sites that are serviced. That would be it, straight away. They would get out and do the job.
We have 500 housing bodies and 31 local authorities. The system is seriously failing. We should be delivering 100,000 houses, not 30,000, every year. What can we do now to have a massive impact? The Government likes to say the housing crisis cannot be solved overnight. Here is something that can be done overnight. The Government should declare a period of amnesty from capital gains tax on the sale of a house or apartment owned in a fee simple to a person, couple or family who wants to live in it, but not to a vulture fund. Capital gains tax is charged at 33%. A third of a person's profit from sale is snapped up by the Government that had no hand in facilitating the sale. How many people baulk at that idea and are put off all the work and hassle of selling a house they have no use for or of downsizing? How many units would go to the market in the days, weeks and months following such an announcement? Does the Minister of State know? People could sell a house, get the money and keep the lot. The Exchequer might moan a little at the slice of the pie being snatched from its mouth but it was not going to get that pile anyway if the house was not sold. How many houses are being held on to? All the owners need is a little incentive. Let us make them an offer they cannot refuse, namely, current market value, without the stick of the seizure of more taxes or punitive measures for the crime of owning a property. The Government could throw them a bone and make the sale worth their while.
Another issue the Minister of State should look into is the RAS. I think that scheme started in 2013. People living in a RAS house who decide to buy the property cannot avail of the mortgage allowance scheme but people living in a council property can avail of it. People are punished to the tune of €11,500 for working and trying to do their best. RAS tenants lose €11,500 that should be taken off their mortgage in the first five years. Surely we should be incentivising people living in RAS houses to try to buy their properties as that property will go back to the State. The Minister of State should look at that. There are many ideas. I wish the Government would take up some of them.
We will suspend for the duration of the vote in the Dail.
Cuireadh an Seanad ar fionraí ag 7.10 p.m. agus cuireadh tús leis arís ag 7.54 p.m.
Sitting suspended at 7.10 p.m. and resumed at 7.54 p.m.