Richard Boyd Barrett
Question:3. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee that deals with housing will next meet. [1329/21]
View answerWednesday, 24 March 2021
Questions (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
Cian O'Callaghan
Question:4. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee dealing with housing will next meet. [13103/21]
View answer
Bríd Smith
Question:5. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee that deals with housing will next meet. [13269/21]
View answer
Paul Murphy
Question:6. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee that deals with housing will next meet. [13272/21]
View answer
Alan Kelly
Question:7. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing last met; and when it will next meet. [14479/21]
View answer
Mary Lou McDonald
Question:8. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [15521/21]
View answerOral answers (15 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 3 to 8, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on housing last met on 8 February and is scheduled to take place again on 19 April. The committee works to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of the programme for Government commitments regarding housing and related matters.
There is significant work under way on the implementation of these commitments across Government Departments and agencies, including through regular discussion of these matters at meetings of the Government. This is supported by the provision of over €3 billion for housing initiatives this year, including funding for 9,500 social homes to be built as part of the overall delivery of 12,750 social homes; €210 million for lending under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan; €88 million across the serviced sites and the local infrastructure housing activation funds; and €35 million for the cost rental equity loan scheme, through which the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage recently approved funding for the delivery of 390 cost-rental homes this year. The budget allocation also supports the continued delivery of housing supports in relation to residential tenancies, homelessness and the maintenance and upgrading of existing stock.
Significant progress is also being made on key enabling legislation for measures to increase the availability and supply of affordable, quality homes, including the Land Development Agency Bill, which has recently completed Second Stage in the Dáil, and the affordable housing Bill, which is undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny. Legislative measures have also been introduced and extended to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on tenants, although current public health restrictions will have an impact on housing output this year. Work has also started, under the aegis of the committee, on a new multi-annual housing strategy, to be called "Housing for All".
The committee operates in accordance with established guidelines for Cabinet committees and substantive issues are referred to the Government for discussion and approval.
I feel like I am living in a parallel universe whenever I hear the Government talk about housing. I hear about all these grand plans, but I believe there will only be one additional council house in my area this year and we only got one or two last year. All the rest is outsourced and now the Government is planning to outsource more through the Land Development Agency, LDA, and privatising public land.
I wish to raise the fraud that is the Residential Tenancies Bill 2021, which will be before the Dáil today, in that it is a pretence by the Government that the latter will protect tenants from eviction during the pandemic. Its protection is being extended to a tiny, limited cohort of people who have gone into arrears as a direct result of income loss due to Covid, but where everyone else is concerned, a green light is being given to landlords and vulture funds to evict people.
The Taoiseach may have read in The Irish Times or heard on radio last week the details of a case that I have raised with him and the Minister repeatedly. It is a textbook case of tenants being mass evicted by vulture funds. There is nothing to protect them. How can the Taoiseach justify people being evicted into homelessness and the less safe environment of the homeless system on 5 April just because the 5 km rule is being changed when we still have a pandemic raging? This is just one of the many examples of unscrupulous corporate landlords and vulture funds that are, for no other reason than profit, evicting into homelessness decent people who have always paid their rents. The Government is going to allow it instead of doing what we are asking for as a minimum, that being, to extend the eviction ban until the pandemic has passed.
Recently, I accompanied the Dublin homeless outreach team when it visited homeless people who were sleeping on the streets of Dublin. I met homeless people who told me that they felt safer sleeping on our streets than in private emergency accommodation. I raised with the Taoiseach previously that the National Quality Standards Framework, NQSF, is not applied to private providers of emergency accommodation. When I raised it with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in the Dáil, he incorrectly stated that it was being applied. Afterwards, Mr. Brendan Kenny of Dublin City Council confirmed to the Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage that that was not the case. Subsequently, the Minister gave national media interviews where he again insisted that the NQSF was being applied to private providers. This is a serious issue. Some private providers have been operating without fire certificates and a range of matters need to be addressed. For example, there is a lack of independent inspections. "RTÉ Investigates" has also confirmed that the NQSF is not applied to private providers. I have with me copies of reports from Dublin City Council confirming that. I am happy to show and go through them with the Taoiseach or the Minister.
When will the Government act to ensure that private emergency accommodation for homeless people is safe and up to standard so that people who are sleeping on our streets can avail of it? When will the Government ensure that the NQSF is applied to all providers, including private ones?
The housing crisis is extreme and has not abated at all under the Taoiseach's watch. There are 8,313 households registered as homeless and another 62,000 families on the housing list. This is shocking, but just as shocking is the fact that there are 230,000 empty properties across the State. It is not that there is a lack of housing. Rather, there is bad housing policy. Not enough public housing is being built on public land and the rents and prices paid for housing are ridiculously high and unaffordable. The rent for an ordinary house in Dublin is €2,500 per month.
The Taoiseach may be aware that this situation is being exploited in our areas by far-right and fascist parties to blame immigrants rather than successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, including this one, and the bankers and fly-by-nights that we bailed out consistently. More than half of our health service is staffed by immigrants, yet the housing crisis is being exploited by those who claim that we must look after our own first. That begs the question of who our own are. Are they the one third of Deputies who are landlords? Are they the bankers and fly-by-nights that we bailed out consistently? Alternatively, are they the workers in our hospitals and home care settings who are doing so much to help us in the Covid era?
The housing crisis is being exploited, but the blame for its continuation can be laid at the doorstep of successive Governments. Instead of dealing with it, the Government is creating the LDA, which will basically give away public land to private operators and again fail to deal with the crisis.
Last year, we launched a Bill to implement a complete ban on evictions and rent increases during the pandemic. The Government rejected that and instead adopted a piecemeal approach of banning evictions under certain conditions while the 5 km limit persisted. Now we have the potential lifting of the limit, which poses the possibility of opening the floodgates on a large number of evictions. Even worse, the Government's Bill that will be before the House today proposes to water down the protections for tenants who fall into rent arrears during the pandemic. It is a move that Threshold warns will cause considerable confusion and distress to a significant cohort of private renters.
What does the Taoiseach say to those who are looking at the possibility of the lifting of the 5 km limit and not thinking that it means they can go 10 km or travel across the county, but that they might be evicted as a result? What will the Government do to avoid a wave of evictions? Will it agree to extend the eviction ban beyond being linked to the 5 km limit? Will it agree to adopt the approach that we set out previously to halt evictions and rent increases completely while the pandemic persists?
A report published today by the European Committee of Social Rights, which is part of the Council of Europe, criticises the standards of local authority housing and Traveller accommodation. It states that Ireland is in breach of Article 16 of the European Social Charter. What are the Taoiseach's views on this issue? How will he address it?
On the Residential Tenancies Bill 2021, to which reference has been made, we need to decouple the eviction ban from the 5 km limit so that when that limit is changed, it will not lead to the eviction of families. Many Deputies have highlighted this issue. What action will the Taoiseach take on it?
On the Land Development Agency Bill, a principal concern of the Labour Party is that the Land Development Agency cannot sell off mass swathes of public land and ensure that 100% of the land is used for social and affordable housing. There is real fear that parts of sites will be privatised and sold off for further and more expensive housing. The Bill also strips away powers from councillors of all political leanings and none. This is something with which I certainly do not agree. Does the Taoiseach agree with it? Does he believe that councillors should have this power stripped from them?
I refer to the finding of the human rights committee of the Council of Europe that sizeable numbers of local authority tenants live in inadequate housing conditions. That is putting the matter very politely. Some of the housing conditions are utterly deplorable and shameful in 2021. The finding that the State is in breach of Article 16 of the European Social Charter in respect of Traveller-specific accommodation should not come as any surprise because, of course, it is not the first time that the State has been found to be in violation on these matters. In fact, these violations are decades in the making. The Taoiseach needs to give a response on these findings.
On the issue of renters, it is very clear what needs to happen. A full ban on evictions needs to be fully extended but, in addition, we need a decrease in rents. Sinn Féin has a proposal to put a month's rental income back into the pockets of renters by way of a tax credit. That should happen. We also need a full rent freeze. The manner in which renters have been literally left to their own devices - thrown to the wolves - by this Government and the previous one is absolutely astonishing.
Finally, the Government's shared equity loan scheme is clearly the wrong way to go. The Taoiseach does not have to take my word for that because, as he knows, the Central Bank, the ESRI, the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers and his own top civil servants have made clear that this scheme is the wrong way to go, will keep prices up and might even cause price inflation. It will not make housing affordable. I again ask that the shared equity loan scheme be removed from the affordable housing Bill.
The Deputies have asked quite a range of questions. First, I point out to Deputy Boyd Barrett that the Government is not outsourcing housebuilding. Some 9,500 of the 12,500 social housing properties to be built this year will be built by local authorities and approved social housing bodies. There will be very large social housing provision this year in terms of building. The Government is not outsourcing that at all, contrary to what the Deputy asserted.
I also point out that there is no green light to evict people via this legislation. It is wrong to suggest that there is such a green light. The Deputy said the same things the last time this legislation was introduced in terms of the scale and how he presented the argument. His predictions did not come to pass. The Residential Tenancies Bill 2020 came into operation on 24 October. As the Deputy knows, it sought to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on tenants to support the Government's efforts to restrict the movement of people in order to suppress the spread of the virus while level 5 restrictions were in place. There was very strong legal advice given to the Minister in terms of the parameters around which the legislation could be grounded and put into law free of any potential successful legal challenge. That was an important aspect that the Minister simply had to take on board. The legislation, broadly speaking, has proved to be effective and its extension is important.
The target is for 12,750 social houses to be built this year. Unquestionably, the three months of level 5 restrictions due to Covid has reduced output. The Government has only been in office since last July but it has made very significant commitments. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to not one house being provided. A significant number of voids were brought back in his council area under the dramatic initial programme taken by the Minister and funded by the Government last July. It brought close to 3,000 social houses back into play, yet the Deputy comes in with propaganda about not one house being provided etc. We will do everything we can to build social housing and get them built in 2021 at far higher levels. Obviously, Covid has impacted on that. The Deputies know that, but choose to ignore the impact of Covid on housing construction in the first three months of the year.
On the issues raised by Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, the Minister has established a homelessness task force. He has regular meetings with the NGOs in relation to homelessness and in terms of the quality issue, but also the provision issue, particularly during the winter, when he was very anxious that we would provide as much capacity as we possibly could. I take on board the Deputy's comments and the assertions of quite a number of homeless persons that they feel safer sleeping on the streets than in emergency accommodation. We should not be in a position where people feel that way in terms of their accommodation. I accept that point. We are consistently trying to work to address it.
In general response to some of the contributions that have been made, I make the point that ideology will not build houses.
Wrong.
From what I can see, ideology is preventing the building of houses.
I thank the Taoiseach.
Deputy Kelly asked me about the provisions in the Land Development Agency Bill in respect of councils and so on.
The Taoiseach is over time.
Look at the development on Oscar Traynor Road. Up to 900 houses - 853 homes - are stopped. How much longer will it be stopped because ideology keeps getting in the way?
Stop privatising.