We return to the report of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. I was about to say "hopelessness", which might not be too far off.
Report of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Motion (Resumed)
The following motion was moved by Deputy John Curran on Thursday, 7 July 2016:
That Dáil Éireann shall consider the Final Report of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, copies of which were laid before Dáil Éireann on 17th June, 2016.
There is always hope.
The next speakers are Deputies Bernard J. Durkan and Michael Harty, who are not in the Chamber. I call on the following speaker, Deputy Boyd Barrett.
Does Deputy Boyd Barrett want Deputy Durkan's time as well?
Yes. May I?
Not agreed.
If there is nobody else here, I would like to speak for a longer time because there is no subject that frustrates and taxes me as much as this one, and it has done since I came into the Dáil in 2011. There has been much debate about this issue for a number of years. I will not start with the general picture, although I will come to that later but much of that ground has been well-trodden over the last few weeks and we will debate it again when the new housing strategy is published on Tuesday. However, I want to make a particular case for the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area, which is important not just for the people in that area, but is also, I want to argue with the Minister of State, relevant to solving the problem on a wider level. The reason I say that is very simple.
I am not a prophet but I was the first person in this Dáil in 2011 to warn the Government that a housing crisis was looming. In 2011, I brought homeless people from Dún Laoghaire into the Chamber, I suspect for the first time in its history, and warned that there would be a crisis. This was not because I was a prophet; it was because there was something about Dún Laoghaire that was ahead of the curve in housing, rent and property prices but which, if we had seen it, and we did see it, was a harbinger of what would happen everywhere else. At that time it seemed preposterous that rents and housing prices would skyrocket out of control or that there would be a shortage of affordable housing because, remember, in 2011 we were in the crash period. Rents were for a brief period falling, house prices were on the floor and there was, according to the census, a massive surplus of housing.
It seemed preposterous, therefore, that we would have a housing crisis, yet we had one in Dún Laoghaire, even then. It was building up and had been there for years but it was accelerating even then. The reason was that property and rental prices hardly fell in Dún Laoghaire at all. As they have climbed everywhere else, if that was true back in 2011, can Deputies imagine what the situation is like here? I am not, generally speaking, for arguing exceptionalism because this is a big, broad problem. What I am saying is the problem is worse in Dún Laoghaire but points to what will happen everywhere else. Just so Deputies understand the scale of the situation we now face in Dún Laoghaire, the average house price in Dún Laoghaire is €459,000. That compares with Dublin city, at €330,000; Fingal at €292,000; and South Dublin at €277,000. We are off the Richter scale in house unaffordability, with prices €120,000 higher than the Dublin city average.
Regarding rents, the average rent of a three-bedroom house, according to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, in a report produced in the last few weeks, is €2,291. The average for a one-bedroom house or apartment is €1,800. Let us consider the new rent supplement limits. The newly increased rent supplement cap is €700 for one bedroom for a single person, not even half the average rent in Dún Laoghaire. The cap for one bedroom for a couple is €900, half the average rent. The cap is €1,150 for a two-bed and up to €1,200 for a three-bed, €1,000 short of the average rent. The increased rent caps will therefore not even scratch the surface of the rental, homelessness and accommodation crisis in Dún Laoghaire. They are not even in the same planetary system as the crisis that now faces us.
I went on Daft.ie yesterday, and I recited these points at the social protection committee yesterday. Guess how many houses are available on Daft.ie in respect of the cap in the different categories? For the one-bed for a single person: zero; for the one-bed for a couple: one in the whole of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area; for the two-bed: zero; for the three-bed apartment: zero; and for the three-bed house: zero, none. That is what we face. Anybody who leaves home and is looking for accommodation, evicted by a landlord because he put up the rent, whatever the circumstances are, is done for - not just people on social welfare, but also working people. It is a disaster. The number of people homeless in Dún Laoghaire has doubled in the last year alone. We have only one emergency accommodation residency in the whole of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area for single people and one for families. We have 5,700 people on the housing list, with only 53 houses to be built in the next year. The figure of 5,700 is up from 4,584 two years previously. The crisis is exponential.
Let me give the Minister a few human examples. Michael and his partner had their home repossessed because of mortgage unsustainability. They have a daughter who is 18 and severely autistic. They were granted the right, which is very difficult to get in Dún Laoghaire, for self-accommodation, but the procedure is a total disgrace. They have to move from hotel to hotel every three or four days, into town and back out of town because we do not have any emergency accommodation in Dún Laoghaire. Each move means at least 45 minutes on their telephone, using up their credit to get through to the person with the credit card who pays for the self-accommodation in a hotel.
Dónal, a 72 year old man, who does not have the right to self accommodate, is staying in the Brú Aimsir hostel in Dublin city. He has a walking frame. He has no rolling bed and cannot leave his belongings in the hostel during the day. He must walk around, on his walking frame, with his belongings every day. Thomas is another pensioner who is sleeping rough in Dún Laoghaire because he will not go into Dublin city and stay in hostels with drugs and drink. He is afraid of the city. The council will not even register him as homeless because he will not go into the homeless hostels in town and there is no homeless accommodation in Dún Laoghaire. Siobhán is a young woman in her early 20s who is terrified to go into a hostel in Dublin city and is couch surfing and sleeping in cars.
Although the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, is a central plank of the 2020 strategy in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, only 12 landlords have been signed up, and it is not a permanent home. I am dealing with three families who have disabilities and who are in RAS. They need permanent adapted accommodation. However, it is not being built. Lori and Fergus, for example, who have three children, are in their third RAS tenancy in a three-year period. Lori is on crutches and has Crohn's disease. Although she needs a bathroom on the ground floor, it is not available. They live constantly in this precarious situation. The stories go on. I do not have time to list them. It is an unmitigated disaster.
What do we need in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown? We want the homeless executive to provide emergency accommodation in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. It is preposterous that pensioners, disabled people and people with children are being told to go into hostels in Dublin city when their family networks, support networks or schools are in Shankill, Blackrock or Dún Laoghaire. It is unacceptable. The council and central homeless executive must be instructed that people are to be kept in their localities.
We need higher rent caps in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The Government has a lower rank of rent cap increases for Fingal, given that rents are lower on average there. Could the Government please acknowledge that Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, including the south Dublin area, has rents such as I have described? Although I do not agree with HAP and I do not think it will work, in so far as it is the policy we need a place finders unit in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, separate to the Dublin unit, to help people find HAP.
Can we have a particular programme for pensioners so that people on walking frames are not sent into hostels and hotels with drugs and drink far away in the city centre? Can we have extra staff to help the architects in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to produce the Part VIIIs that will deliver? I do not know whether the CEO has asked for them, but I am asking for them. They are needed. While the council is doing some work on ramping up housing, we have been told the reason it cannot ramp up further is that they do not have staff for the Part VIIIs.
We have a big NAMA Part V development under construction. Under its original planning permission, we would have received 20% of the development. Given that the Government reduced the proportion from 20% to 10%, we will receive only 10%. The social housing is physically there. It is an insult to the people I have just described who are on the list if we do not receive at least 20% of the site. It is furthermore an insult that a significant portion of publicly owned land, such as Shanganagh Castle, which is to be developed and Cherrywood, the strategic development zone, are to be privatised, and we will not get 100% social housing on them. I understand this from the council and the findings of the Minister, and we will see the report next week. Against the background I have described, it is outrageous. I want a firm commitment from the Minister that we will get direct provision of local authority housing on the two sites on a scale that will deal with the scale and severity of the problem in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
Given that I had the opportunity last week to speak on this, I will not speak directly on it. Instead, I raise my concern about the draft proposed business for next week and acknowledge the work the committee has done over a nine week period. The Minister will launch his strategy next Tuesday. However, this forum has been given only two hours in which to debate the strategy, which is the single most important strategy to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis. Personally, I cannot accept this two-hour window. Fianna Fáil is not willing to accept a two-hour window. The schedule for next week is a draft. Our Whip has indicated that no agreement has been made on it. We will not accept a two-hour window in which to debate the most important strategy to come before the Chamber.
I have been very generous in letting the Deputy in, given that he has already spoken on the topic. It is not appropriate.
We are not in charge of the time of the House. The Business Committee will decide the allocation of time. The Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, and I would like to spend all day talking about the strategy, given that we believe in it. Many people here are also interested. I hope more time is found next week, and even the week after if the Deputy wishes. It is a very important topic. It will be a large strategy, and people have done much work on it, including the official on my right. The more time we can get, the better.
The matter has been raised, and we can come back to it. I have no other speakers on my list.
I could have gone on much longer.
I thought you needed a break.
There is much more to say.
I am glad for the chance to make some comments in closing. Many issues were highlighted in last week's debate, when the senior Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, and I spoke on it. We received a very good report from the committee. The committee Chairman is anxious that all the recommendations in it are adhered to and used, if not in the first action plan, then in the roll-out and as we go along. The draft action plan was a very early version, and it has been enhanced and increased during recent weeks. The Deputies' documents were a major part of it. Hopefully, we will have more than two hours to debate and discuss it next week.
The action plan for housing process is similar to that of the Action Plan for Jobs. It does not end next week; it only begins next week. The Deputies have all had a role in feeding into it. All of us have a role and a duty to ensure we start taking action and implementing actions and rolling things out with much more urgency. It is an evolving strategy. The success of the Action Plan for Jobs is based on the fact that it is an evolving document into which stakeholders and Deputies of all parties and none can feed with more ideas and actions as we go along. The process is being used and complimented around Europe. We will respond to suggestions. Much as we have tried, we will not have everything in it next week, and we need to keep adding to it. We need to focus on the area for the next couple of months and years to get it right and end the crisis. It is fixable. We must end it, one way or another.
This has been a very valuable debate about the insightful and far-reaching analysis and research that was undertaken in shaping the report of the special Committee on Homelessness and Housing. The committee used other reports and that expertise fed into it. The Government appreciates the time and effort that Deputies have put into the report and into their statements during these two days of discussion. I understand it is an important topic for most people, and it is important that people take the time to give us their ideas and concerns. Members attended stakeholder events in Cork and Dublin. They were worthwhile events, and they took time and commitment, which we acknowledge, given that Deputies have other issues on which they have to work.
From listening to the contributions from all sides, there is a shared view of the urgency and the need for swift and multi-stranded actions to tackle the housing and homelessness situation, although we might not all agree on the specific means of addressing them. This is why the action plan for housing, all going well, will be published next Tuesday, as the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, said in the Seanad. It has yet to be finalised and go through Cabinet. We want to reflect the mood from the Deputies that it is urgent and must be dealt with.
As the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, pointed out last Thursday, the Government is not at all shying away from the challenges the housing crisis brings, but is readying a comprehensive action plan for housing to be published next week, before the Dáil rises. This is well inside the ambitious 100-day target that was set down in the programme for Government. We will be delivering the plan within the first 80 days, a strong sign of our commitment to it, given the breadth and scale of actions proposed across the full range of housing sectors.
This commitment reinforces the priority that the Government has given to addressing the homeless and housing challenge, and that this House has given because this is what people have demanded. We all are working here together on this issue and everyone demands that it be tackled as quickly as we possibly can.
While many important actions, including fundamental reforms in planning and housing policy, have been taken over the last few years to boost supply and address affordability, it is clear that such actions have not been at the level and indeed scale of ambition to resolve the challenges we currently face. That goes without saying. Efforts have been made and measures have been tried but they have not solved the problem and we still have emergency situations that we have to deal with as well.
As the Minister, Deputy Coveney, indicated last week, Construction 2020 - A Strategy for a Renewed Construction Sector and the Social Housing Strategy 2020, both published in 2014, include specific commitments, aims and actions to address constraints in the construction and development sectors and in the provision of a range of social housing outcomes. They are having a positive effect, but not quickly enough to address our urgent shortfall in supply.
We all know where we need to be in terms of significantly increasing housing output across all tenures — social, rented, private housing, student accommodation, accommodation for older people, accommodation for people with disabilities, and including urban regeneration and bringing vacant houses back into use - to meet current demand and also the pent-up demand from years of under-supply since the economic collapse. Deputy Casey and I discussed that this morning. I am not sure who won the debate on it but I think he would agree that more is being spent there because there is nothing worse than having vacant units or voids, call them what you like, when people are in emergency accommodation. It is just not on. A lot has been achieved there, bringing 5,000 units back in to play. Hopefully, this year we will see 1,300 more coming through that system as well. That should end those long-term voids, apart from the ones that are there for permanent reconstruction. It is not acceptable and Deputy Casey was correct in saying so this morning. I totally agree with him. We must acknowledge that the matter has been dealt with and put to bed this year. The funding is set aside. We will still have temporary vacancies and we must set a limit for what we believe is acceptable. In a commercial market, probably four or five weeks would be acceptable. If someone is in local authority housing, it will take six, seven or eight weeks. We need to agree on what is acceptable and ensure the funding is there. If everything is managed properly, there should be enough money coming through the rent system on a local basis to constantly turn those houses around and put them out there as well. I refer to the newly vacant ones rather the long-term voids that need €30,000 to €50,000 spent on them. I accept the need for the latter and that is why the limit has been raised to €50,000, as was called for.
It is easy to say that we need to deliver, but there is a major challenge for the entire system to be able to respond quickly by accelerating delivery of housing for the three key sectors. At the end of the day, our focus has to be on ensuring a sufficient, stable and sustained provision of housing that is affordable, is in the right locations, meets people's different needs and is of lasting quality.
On getting the correct percentages, I note the issues Deputy Boyd Barrett raised as well and I will come back to him formally through the Department. I am aware the Deputy is conscious of having the correct percentages of social housing and private housing. I note some members of the committee argued that we should not have Part V and the percentages. I disagree with that. It is important we get a mix. It should be a minimum of 10%. I note some members were unhappy that the 20% changed, but it was not delivering. The idea of reducing it to 10% is to make it practical and workable. It is also now houses rather than cash payments or land to get that mix of housing correct. I have no problem with agreeing that, ideally, it would be higher than 10%. The 10% is a minimum and that is what we have to achieve.
At the end of the day, it has to be also about delivering houses across the sectors but also that we get the quality of houses. All of us have seen from experience the poor quality of house that was built in the boom years in some areas. People were let down by a system that allowed that to happen. I believe that the regulations have been put in place that will prevent that. That is part of my area of the Department. It is certainly something we monitor quite well because we cannot have people buying houses that are below regulation level or below quality standard. We have achieved a lot in that area as well. I am conscious that also adds to the cost of building a house, but that cost will be recouped over a couple of years through other savings people will have as well.
With preliminary Census 2016 data being released today, it is clear that we continue to have one of the highest population growth rates across Europe and can expect to see further immigration as the economy recovers. This will further increase demand for housing above current levels and also shift the market requirements from the traditional family-size home to a wider range of types and sizes of homes, particularly in the city centres.
The Government’s action plan will set out a practical and readily implementable set of actions to increase housing supply to create a functioning and sustainable housing system, with a particular focus on providing homes for families in emergency accommodation, tackling the underlying causes of people living on our streets as well as providing options and supports to find them appropriate housing, and delivering more social housing much faster and putting in place financially sustainable mechanisms to meet current and future requirements for social housing supports.
At the end of the day, it is about providing enough houses to meet the spectrum of needs. Most analysts agree that we need to be delivering at least 25,000 houses a year, almost twice our current rate. Last year, there were over 12,000 delivered but half of them were one-off houses outside of housing developments. Currently, in Dublin, there are only 4,500 houses being developed. We are way off where we need to be. The idea of the action plan for housing is to focus on homelessness and social housing, but also on how we get the market delivering more houses so we can avail of them in different ways. We also must get the supply of housing back up. Some 25,000 is probably what we want to get as a sustainable construction sector but we probably need even to be ahead of that if we are to catch up on the under supply over the past couple of years.
At the end of the day, the housing action plan will be to deliver actions to fast-track the supply of housing, now and in the year or two years ahead, but also to bring us to a stop where we have a sustainable construction sector that people can have confidence in. The construction sector that became as much as 28% of GDP a number of years ago was not sustainable but one below 6%, 7% or 8% is not sustainable either. It needs to be in between, at 13% or 14%, which is approximately 25,000 houses. That is what we want to reach in a sustainable way, that we could all believe in and buy in to. It would give us the proportion of houses across the system, such as social, private, affordable and rental. We must keep that in mind as well.
This increased and accelerated supply should help to restore some balance to the market in terms of moderating the rental and purchase price inflation, particularly in urban areas, and addressing the growing affordability gap for many households wishing to purchase their own homes. We know that, to deliver housing more quickly across all tenures, we need to look at the State's procedures and processes - be they planning, approval of social housing or otherwise - and we are doing that in the action plan. In terms of improving the viability of construction, it is important to recognise the reforms already in place are beginning to have a positive impact.
I am getting a look from the Acting Chairman. Does that mean I am running out of time or do I keep going?
The Minister of State's time is up.
I will not go into all the other issues. It is fair to say we recognise it is about putting in place a plan, but driving it. The officials in the Department and throughout the local authorities recognise that we must come at this with a sense of urgency. Members, including myself, flagged that this would happen, that it was coming down the tracks. It is here now. In my view, it is fixable. We will achieve that.
When we set a target of 100,00 jobs in the Action Plan for Jobs, commentators stated it could be done and it was laughed at. The target was not only achieved, but smashed. The process can work through the implementation of action by action with urgency as a major part.
To bring the debate to a close, I call Deputy Curran, the chairperson of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness.
First, I thank the Minister and colleagues who contributed to this debate, both today and last week. In particular, I thank the members of the committee - I did acknowledge them last week - who, over an eight or nine week period, put in considerable effort to produce this report, and all of the various groups and witnesses who attended the committee for their recommendations and the evidence presented. We did not come up with this. The report and the recommendations were based on evidence that we gathered at the committee meetings.
I was pleased to hear, last week and today, that both the Minister of State, Deputy English, and the Minister, Deputy Coveney, are prepared to consider the recommendations in this. Those are the recommendations, not of me or my colleagues but of representatives from this House of all parties and none, and those recommendations are strongly evidence based.
In particular, I compliment the Minister of State and the Minister on bringing forward the date of the action plan. It was noted with some concern when the committee was launching its report that there was a drift on the date and it underpins the urgency, both we as Members and the Government must give this issue.
The Minister of State correctly made reference to the fact that it will be a rolling programme. I acknowledge one of the first moves the Government made in terms of increasing the rates of rent allowance and HAP. Both were out of date by a number of years and the Minister has made a significant improvement in that regard. I agree with those who say it will not increase the supply of housing but what it will do is provide people who are dependant on those State supports with an equal and fair chance in the housing market which they did not have.
Various arrangements were being made where people were paying cash top-ups which they could not afford to pay and so forth. By bringing these payments up to the level they are at now, people who are dependent on them have a fair and reasonable chance, and I want to acknowledge that.
Deputy Boyd Barrett highlighted that rents in some parts of Dublin are higher than the cap. We, as a committee, acknowledged that and said that the rental allowance and housing assistance payments should meet the market value. Instead of having only two regions for all of Dublin - a Fingal area and a non-Fingal area - it is probably necessary in some parts of the country to have more regions and the bands should be broken up in that respect.
I will not repeat everything that has been said but having glanced at the Central Statistics Office figures published today, it would be remiss of me not to mention that nationally, there are more than a quarter of a million vacant premises even though tonight people will be sleeping on the streets in every major city. We have people inappropriately accommodated. They are sleeping in hostels, in hotels and so forth where they go in the evening as they have no permanent homes To be precise, 36,732 of those vacant premises are in Dublin. If only 1% or 2% of those became available, it would start to have an impact on the people lives, particularly in the Dublin area but also across the country.
Our report makes some clear recommendations based on our discussions with the Housing Agency. One recommendation is that an analysis should be undertaken, on a local authority area by area basis, of what properties are available, and why they are available and that a mixture of incentives, be they tax incentives or grants, should be introduced to fast-track bringing some of these back into habitable use. Some of those vacant properties could be brought back into use quicker than it would be possible to construct some new builds. Whatever incentives the Government might introduce should be short term and front-loaded and while a construction programme is under way, vacant properties in high demand areas should be renovated and brought back into use and that should be dealt with as a matter of some urgency.
The Minister's housing action plan will also be published. I want to reiterate two of the major findings in our report. We set a target but I would point out that the number of social houses in the country, between local authorities and approved housing bodies, is approximately 9% of the total housing stock, which is low by European standards. We stand by the recommendation that it should be increased by approximately 50,000 and the Minister of State will have his own figures from the housing plan. That figure was based on the stock level and how we might go about increasing it in terms of new builds and acquisitions. We also believe it is important that there is some sort of national housing procurement agency to drive the housing programme over a number of years. In particular, if the State has to fund housing developments in different ways with off-balance sheet methods of funding, it is important there would be a procurement agency to work in tandem with local authorities and approved housing bodies to ensure that funding models are put in place and that they are not seen as a hindrance. In that regard, it should be noted that there will have to be different types of housing. It is not all about social housing and private builds. There is a cohort of people who cannot afford either and the rental market and so forth have to be opened up. We, as a committee, see a huge potential for the League of Credit Unions and the likes of pension funds to invest in some of those and some of them could be off-balance sheet transactions. There are many opportunities here which need to be considered with a degree of urgency.
The Minister's housing action plan will be published next week. I do not want to comment on leaks from it because that is unfair. As the Minister of State said, what has come out is an earlier draft of it. I reiterate the comments of some of my colleagues and I hope that the Government Whip will do likewise at the Business Committee. The time allocated for such a large report on such a defining issue is grossly inadequate. Approximately two hours is the provisional time allocation for its consideration. I know the Minister of State does not have the full say over it but I appeal to him, his party and those in government to look at the business again next week, as we are trying to do, to ensure this plan gets the scrutiny and the support it will require over many years. It will be launched next week but the Minister of State needs to garner support from all sides of the House to ensure that this programme can be delivered effectively.
This is not about another box-ticking exercise. There are people tonight who will be sleeping on sheets of cardboard in sleeping bags and they are within a 100 yd. of this House. There are people making their way from the part of the city in which I live where they have collected their children or visited their parents and who are now staying in hotels and hostels in Dublin city. People are dependent on the actions that we will implement on the back of this report. We have to show sincerity and support for it. I hope the report does not disappoint us. We are pinning a lot on it. There is a huge housing deficit which is causing untold hardship for many people and they are not the people we always see. We can see a person who is a rough-sleeper or a person going into a hostel but right across the suburbs of this city in particular, there are many houses accommodating multiple family units. That is the real scale of the problem with which we are dealing.
I hope the housing plan the Minister will bring to the House next week will afford us an opportunity to have a proper and real debate. I hope I am in a position to stand up here next Tuesday, if I am given speaking time, to support it. Like any good plan, when it is published, the Minister and the Minister of State need to establish a monitoring team or committee, or some mechanism around it, to ensure that it is driven and that the goals and targets set are achieved. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, said on the last occasion he was here that there were so many people that night homeless in hostels, bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels and that we would be able to see that number come down over time. We want to see it come down month by month. Over the past few years, the number has gone up month by month. There needs to be a mechanism in place so that the Oireachtas can monitor the progress and implementation of this housing plan and where it hits obstacles, roadblocks or does not achieve what is intended, solutions are found.
It is a defining moment for the Government. Many issues were raised with candidates during the general election campaign as well as with every Member who was elected following it but the most defining issue raised on the doorsteps was that of housing and that is the reason a housing committee was established.
I wish the Minister of State well. I hope this plan is as strong on the recommendations we have in our report and that it matches them or goes further. I hope it receives the support of the House and, more importantly, I hope it is implemented effectively and speedily, with particular attention to the short-term actions that could be taken to address the needs of those who are most in need, those sleeping rough and those in emergency accommodation. Again, I wish the Minister of State well and I look forward to contributing to the debate next week.
Question put and agreed to.
The Dáil adjourned at 6.10 p.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 July 2016.