Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 19 Jul 2016

Vol. 918 No. 3

Housing Strategy: Statements

Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government (Deputy Simon Coveney)

I thank Deputies for affording me the opportunity to present to them the key elements of the Government's Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. The housing emergency, which is especially acute in our urban centres, is the most pressing social and economic issue facing the country. To have a home is a basic human need, and we are elected to this House to ensure all our citizens have a place to call home. The publication today of Rebuilding Ireland - an Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness is a step forward in providing good quality, well-designed housing for all our citizens within the context of a just society.

The concept of a just society is not new in an Irish context. Fifty years ago this September, the then Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, surprised the nation by announcing a free education scheme. Fifty years later, I think there is complete cross-party agreement on the gravity of the housing issues facing us. I believe that through the implementation of this housing action plan we can transform the State's approach towards social housing and the interaction of communities involving private and social housing. The current levels of homelessness are not acceptable in a decent society. A home is a basic need. At the launch earlier this afternoon, in the short video highlighting the new Sophia housing development in Sean McDermott Street, a young man captured the life-changing possibilities of providing a homeless person with an opportunity to have his or her own home where he or she can finally close the door on the experience of homelessness and have a place that provides warmth, security and a balanced, hopeful future.

A Programme for a Partnership Government rightly put the homelessness and housing challenge front and centre and committed to the delivery of an action plan within 100 days. That I am here today presenting an action plan, 74 days into our Administration, is testament to the priority that the Government, I as housing Minister and my Department places on developing and publishing this action plan as quickly and as comprehensively as possible. We were able to move swiftly because of a range of enabling and supporting work, including the contributions of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness, whose Chairman, Deputy John Curran, and members worked hard to bring together the many facets and challenges to be faced in addressing the many housing issues. I believe we have responded to all the key and implementable recommendations of that report. In the document we specifically have an appendix responding to each recommendation in turn in some detail.

Our current housing challenges have deep roots. For a decade, our broken public finances and even more broken banking and development sectors have been incapable of providing the housing we know we need. I believe that the publication of this document, Rebuilding Ireland - an Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, is an important moment in public policy terms because it is the first time that Government has set out a holistic overview of the overall housing system. For too long, whether in this House, in council chambers or in public discourse generally, we have polarised the debate on housing provision, focusing alternately on social housing or home ownership needs but never bringing those two elements together in a detailed way. This action plan crucially brings together the two sides of the one issue, which essentially is about providing affordable homes, and State intervention when people cannot afford to do so. Too many of our cities, towns and villages show the effects of that kind of thinking, resulting in ordinary decent people being instantly categorised based on where they live or the name of the estate where they come from. This action plan points towards a very different path for the future. While it opens the door to a massive public house building and acquisition programme, it aims to deliver that programme not through large swathes of mono-tenure estates but through a mixed tenure approach to integrated and cohesive communities.

This action plan is ultimately focused on delivering more homes for the people who need them. It includes more than 80 separate actions structured under five main pillars that will address the needs of people who are homeless and at risk of homelessness; accelerate social housing delivery; build more homes for the wider housing market; improve the rental sector; and utilise the houses we have, many of which remain vacant.

I will outline particular actions that stand out for me as Minister and for the Members of the House. With regard to funding and viability, with the support of the wider Government and, in particular, my colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, a massive €5.35 billion of funding will be provided from now until 2021 to support the delivery of some 47,000 units of social housing. To ensure a planning-led approach to meeting our current housing challenges, a €200 million local infrastructure housing activation fund will provide enabling infrastructure to open up large sites for early development by housing providers, with potential to develop between 15,000 and 20,000 new homes directly linked to that investment, at least 10%, and potentially much more, of which will be social housing. A complementary National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and private sector large-scale infrastructure development finance fund will seek to provide additional funding for on-site works by developers. Underutilised and publicly owned lands will be opened up for mixed tenure developments to provide the social and market housing we need side-by side. Funding has been put in place for increased limits for rent supplement and housing assistance payment, HAP, from 1 July this year, costing approximately €55 million next year. A total of 2,000 affordable rental homes will be brought on stream, using the proceeds of the State's sale of its stake in Bord Gáis Energy, and measures will be developed to bring on stream an additional 7,000 student accommodation places by 2019, thereby providing purpose-built units for our growing third level sector, and in the process, freeing up rental properties in our cities, which is badly needed.

With regard to regulatory reform, legislation will be developed and introduced to the House in the autumn to speed up the planning process by enabling large housing applications to be made directly to An Bord Pleanála after careful preplanning consultation involving local authorities, to streamline Part VIII procedures for local authority and approved housing bodies, and to remove regulatory barriers to reusing vacant and underutilised properties, particularly in our city, town and village centres, many of which have suffered most in recent years.

A major new strategy for the whole of the rental sector will be brought forward before the end of this year, striking an effective balance between, first and foremost, the rights of tenants and creating a stable environment for badly needed investment. We have had debates on that sector already in the House, and I look forward to those consultations continuing. Putting in place a national planning framework early next year will ensure a long-term approach not only to planning for housing the 500,000 people who will live in our country over the next 20 years but also to identifying key sites and measures to ensure proper use of land and vacant properties. We will also be examining further legislative measures on mortgage arrears to do all we can to keep people in their homes, where at all possible.

On the issue of delivery, a new housing delivery office will report directly to the Secretary General of my Department and to me, as Minister, to co-ordinate key elements of the overall social and market housing delivery programme under this plan. A total of 1,600 currently vacant homes will be acquired by the Housing Agency for onward transfer to local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, as an initial exercise for a new procurement centre in the agency.

A total of 20,000 new homes, 2,000 of them Part V houses, will be brought on stream by NAMA. There will be 1,500 rapid delivery homes built by this time next year - a trebling of the previous target - to banish the spectre of families living in totally unsuitable hotel accommodation. A new National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, backed special purpose vehicle will look to access private funding sources to deliver additional social housing as part of mixed tenure developments. There will be 3,000 new homes delivered on State lands as pathfinder mixed housing developments. We hope that these will show an example for many others to follow. Social housing design, approval and delivery procedures will be overhauled to ensure swifter delivery. The number of tenancies provided by Housing First teams for rough sleepers in Dublin will be tripled from 100 to 300 tenancies and the housing-led approach will be extended to other urban areas. An additional 7,000 housing assistance payment tenancies will be delivered in 2017 and 2018. A new initiative will be put in place to provide access to independent expert advice and legal advice for people facing serious mortgage arrears, and more households will be facilitated with the option of a revamped mortgage to rent scheme.

Additional resources will be made available to An Bord Pleanála and local authorities to ensure they meet the statutory deadlines to which they have committed. This is an 18-week turnaround time for decisions for large-scale residential developments. The role of the Residential Tenancies Board will be expanded and strengthened. Resolution of unfinished housing estates will continue focusing on alignment with the social housing investment programme. Proposals for new urban, village and rural renewal programmes will be brought forward to harness the synergies between planning, housing and community development initiatives of the relevant Departments.

On the supporting measures, there will be enhanced supports for homeless families with children, such as the provision of free travel in order that families can better access the services and amenities they need. A range of measures will be advanced to meet the needs of homeless people with mental health and addiction issues. The HSE has committed to trebling the amount of money it will commit to supporting homeless people within 2016 and 2017. It is currently €2 million and it will rise to €6 million next year. As housing delivery activity ramps up, emerging skills needs will be met through measures to support the supply of skilled tradespeople. There will be better management of social housing stock through rapid re-letting of vacant units and through the introduction of choice-based letting which has enabled a 25% reduction in the numbers on the housing list in Cork.

Above all, I believe that through the implementation of the action plan, we can and will comprehensively address the homelessness issue, and not before time, and arrest the growing affordability gap for many households looking for a house. The implementation of the plan will drive the rental sector to provide a range of quality accommodation in bigger numbers and deliver housing in a way that supports and does not direct economic growth. We can also achieve wider objectives such as the need to support proper planning and sustainable development.

I look forward to hearing the views of Deputies on the analysis and actions proposed under Rebuilding Ireland - an Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. I also look forward to receiving constructive input to moving forward its implementation. The State cannot do this alone. We need all stakeholders, especially housing providers, landowners, agencies and policy-makers across Government to work towards a common goal of providing good quality, affordable and well-located homes for our growing population. Business as usual is simply not an option. We each have our roles and must fulfil our respective responsibilities with the public sector empowered to act and the private sector enabled to support and deliver.

I believe this strategy to be a significant step forward. It is not the perfect article and we do not pretend it is. If there are mistakes in the strategy, we will correct them. However, I believe it is a very good start as a signal of intent by Government and a commitment of very significantly increased resources. It is a plan that has been tested and will deliver, if implemented, a very significant increase in the number of social house constructed and provided. This would kick-start the private sector into building the many more houses that are needed. We have the capacity, with this plan and its implementation, to get to building 25,000 housing units by mid-2019, but we need to go well beyond that figure to deal with the deficit that was created over the ten years of virtual inactivity in the construction sector. We need to go beyond 25,000 to somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 housing units which are a mix of social, affordable and private. The structures, mechanisms and decision-making procedures that we are looking to streamline and improve by this strategy, can and will facilitate that. The construction sector's response today to the plan has so far been positive. We want to work in partnership with all the stakeholders, whether that is to address the vulnerabilities of people who are homeless, or people who are rough sleepers who rely on emergency accommodation night by night, or families who are living in totally inappropriate emergency accommodation at the moment. Ambitious targets have been set but it is intended to deliver on those.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

I call Deputy Barry Cowen who will be sharing time with Deputies John Curran, Mary Butler and Pat Casey. In fact, he will be sharing with just two. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Barry Cowen

I thank the Minister for his deliberations. As he has said, and as many of us have said in the Dáil since it reconvened, the housing crisis and homelessness crisis or emergency is the greatest issue facing Government, the country and society. It was high on Fianna Fáil's agenda when we sought to facilitate an arrangement to allow Fine Gael to lead Government based on the numbers it had with a view to producing a new housing strategy. I acknowledge the foresight of the Dáil in putting together an all-party housing committee on an emergency basis. I acknowledge the work it did under the chairmanship of Deputy John Curran and the way in which it sought to meet and consult all the stakeholders in the sectors in the housing area, those who are greatly affected by homelessness and all those who help and assist them. The work of that committee has fed into a process which allowed the Government to make a wholesome response and bring forward a strategy that has the potential to address this issue, in the full knowledge that other strategies were not that successful. There are aspects of this strategy that appear fine and good and have potential. However, we must be mindful of the fact that in November 2014 we heard a lot of this also. Unfortunately, much of what was promised then has not materialised.

It is against that background that I will read into the record a paragraph from page 44 of the strategy which was published today. It talks about increasing and accelerating the delivery of social housing:

The Social Housing Strategy 2020, published in November 2014, committed to providing 35,600 new social housing units between 2015 and 2020, at an estimated cost to the Exchequer of around €3.8 billion. Local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies are delivering these units through a variety of new-build and acquisition mechanisms as well as through leasing arrangements and tackling vacant stock [an exaggeration]. Given the scale of the current pressures in terms of delivery, more direct intervention is required to expand and accelerate overall social housing supply, particularly in the short term.

Under this Action Plan, targeted social housing supply is being increased to 47,000 units over the period 2016 to 2021 (at which stage some 10,000 units will be delivered on an annual basis). This will be achieved with Exchequer support of €5.35 billion, with the following delivery profile as set out in [the following graph].

What jumps out from this paragraph is that the figures indicate an increase of 12,000 housing units on the last plan, much of which has not been delivered and many of which were lease units rather than new build units. That equates to a little more than 2,500 new housing units per year in addition to the previous plan that was in place. The committee recommended 10,000 new units per annum.

It might be described as ambitious but there were many priorities within the content of the recommendations that offered opportunities to meet that demand for housing. We have to provide houses or units for people to live in.

Apart from all that, I acknowledge that there is an increase of €2 billion over five years which has to be welcomed. I acknowledge there is an appendix with timelines attached and I heard the Taoiseach today call them "timebombs". They will be timebombs if they are not adhered to, and we in opposition, like anybody else in opposition, will seek to hold the Government to account for that. We will have a watching brief to ensure that what is in the plan will be implemented.

I will be brief about what is not contained and why I think the plan is incomplete. I am seeking to be constructive. I have the same rights and representative responsibility and role to effect change for my constituents, for the country and for society. While there is an aspirational commitment in respect of the rental sector and first-time buyers, much of what the Minister hopes to enact will, I expect, be contained in the budget such as rewarding landlords for improving the quality of tenure over time for families. The all-party committee made sound recommendations on that to be taken on board.

I am surprised and disappointed there is not a firm commitment to student accommodation. There is a commitment to review student accommodation and report back in quarter two next year, this time next year. Many of us know there is a crisis in respect of student accommodation. Students are competing with families for accommodation in cities and near colleges. That is not right or appropriate. I had hoped a vehicle would be put in place to allow colleges access funds to build units and provide them as soon as possible. That process should have been commenced much sooner than the commitment in this plan.

In respect of mortgage arrears and mortgage distress, we would like to see firm legislative proposals to allow mortgage-to-rent solutions be imposed by courts rather than considered by courts where there was a bank veto for too long.

The housing delivery office has potential but does not go far enough. A housing procurement agency or housing authority is needed to drive development and change and to build houses. The Dublin Docklands Development Authority did a job. It might have wound up in an unfortunate manner but the job it was asked to do was to develop the docklands and it did so. A housing authority's job is to build houses and this has the potential to build houses, but the way in which the Minister seeks to fund it off-balance sheet is very limited from what I have seen without getting into greater detail. The Minister says it has the potential to deliver 5,000 units over five years. I would have expected it had the potential to deliver many multiples of that. It has the potential to draw down funding from a wide range of sources, including the credit unions who want to get involved, to help and gain a return for their funds, rather than have them in the pillar banks with no return where they contribute to profits piggybacked on people who are paying 2% over and above the European average. We do not want them to be associated with that. We want them associated with providing a vehicle whereby a massive amount of funding can be given to provide the massive number of units needed.

People want homes and houses, irrespective of where they come from. We can provide a vehicle whereby they can be leased for 50 or 100 years, if necessary, to get over the EUROSTAT issue the Minister mentioned that he fears. This could provide adequate resources, funds, contracts and joint ventures in order that local authorities can appease and settle those who are on their waiting lists, approved housing bodies can play their role, colleges can build units and the private sector can borrow from that fund at competitive rates because they are not competitive now. I accept the mixed tenure commitment will seek to help those who have a good education and good jobs and cannot even start to rent, let alone own a home. They have to be accommodated and I expect they will be.

Deputy John Curran

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Having read the plan, and to be fair about it, I broadly welcome it. There are issues I have with it and there are things I would like to have seen done differently. I welcome it because if this plan is implemented in full, in the fashion outlined and the timelines are met, we will be much better off than we would have been with the plan we were implementing three months ago or before the general election. This makes a serious effort under several headings to tackle the housing issue. The Minister said, in an honest assessment, that it does not have all the answers but it is a good start. It is a start. Certain elements are framed in such a way that it is an evolving plan. The answers are not all here, there is further research to be done and people who read the plan need to acknowledge that the Minister has not said this is the definitive handbook, that all the answers are here. There are certain areas that must be further developed.

Our greatest sympathy and that of any public representative is with the people in emergency homeless accommodation today, whether in hostels, bed and breakfast establishments, guesthouses and so forth. The Minister put his head on the block a bit today when he gave a very definitive timeline and I genuinely wish him well. For people living in such inappropriate accommodation, the urgency the Minister has attached to dealing with that is important. I acknowledge that he has published this report significantly ahead of time. That demonstrates his urgency in dealing with this issue.

From the point of view of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness, one of the issues on which we probably differ is that we had envisaged a national housing procurement agency, an overarching body, but the Minister proposes a housing delivery office within the Department. We need to see the detail. He also says the housing agency would run a procurement centre in parallel. We differ on that in terms of the efficiencies that might be driven. The Minister has made his plan and I do not think a plan should fall over on this issue but it was not as we had envisaged it. We felt that the way to go would be to have one centralised office that would be effective and efficient over a decade to drive the housing programme the Minister has delivered here, and one that Ministers after him would have to follow. He has chosen a different route.

The Minister has some innovative proposals about vacant properties which need to be dealt with urgently. I am conscious that Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures produced last week indicated that even in the greater Dublin area where the housing crisis is at its worst there are still significant numbers of vacant properties. While not all would be suitable for residential occupation, local authorities need to be tasked with identifying them and developing the initiatives the Minister has indicated in dealing with that.

There is certainly a job of work to be done in the private rented sector. It is several years since we had a strategy in that area but private rented accommodation will endure for some considerable time, as it has in most other countries and cities. One of the biggest concerns people have is about security of tenure. The Minister says that by the end of the year he will have a strategy for the sector, which is important. This will also, however, require legislation to underpin it in respect of rents, security of tenure and other similar issues.

The committee asked for a moratorium on repossessions for a short period while additional legislation comes in, either what the Minister mentioned in the programme for Government or proposals that we might have. While mortgage arrears are mentioned in the report and the Minister refers to the potential for legislative measures later in the year, I would like to remind him that one of the committee's specific recommendations was that the code of conduct on mortgage arrears should be amended on a statutory basis to include an offer of split mortgage or mortgage to rent. Those issues should be considered.

The Minister refers to the off-balance sheet issue in the plan and I was a little bit surprised that only 5,000 social housing units will be built over five years. We felt that could have been more ambitious. Perhaps there is a job of work to be done with pension funds, the Irish League of Credit Unions and so forth.

Deputy Simon Coveney

We think there is a lot more potential there but we wanted to have a basic target figure.

Deputy John Curran

I am not being critical; I am setting out what I feel. I am pleased to hear it, but as a committee we spent a considerable amount of time with the NTMA and the Department of Finance. Having met groups such as the Irish League of Credit Unions and others, we feel this model has greater potential. I acknowledge and accept that the Minister is saying it is a starting point. I agree that we have to start somewhere, but we felt it had significant potential.

My time is running out, but I want to finish on a specific point that I do not want to miss. The Minister has established a local infrastructure housing activation fund at a cost of €200 million. The report states it could deliver 15,000 or 20,000 housing units. I want to put a document on the record that was presented to the committee during our consultation. It clearly indicated that across the four local authorities in Dublin, 48,000 or 49,000 housing units could be developed without planning permission and local authorities had a deficit of about €160 million. The document should be specifically considered because the Minister is not addressing the issue that was presented to us with the amount of money he is spending.

The Minister should examine the information we received during our meetings. It is important that the deficit in infrastructure is front-loaded to allow private development and social housing on lands across the four Dublin local authorities.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

The launch of the housing action plan is a significant event. It is particularly significant for the 4,152 adults in emergency accommodation, an increase of 160 on the previous count, and for the 2,206 children who will sleep in emergency accommodation tonight, an increase of 29 on the previous count. It is also significant for all the people who are sofa-surfing or living in overcrowded accommodation, those at risk of homelessness due to repossessions or excessive rents, the 130,000 or more households languishing on local authority housing lists for up to ten years and those priced out of the first-time buyer market. The plan the Minister launched today will determine whether things start to get better for many, if not all, these people.

It is also a big day for the Government. This is the first real test of how it intends to govern, whether it will abandon the failed policies of the previous Administration and embrace new ideas and new politics or continue to underinvest in social housing and under-regulate the housing market as it did over the previous five years. As we all know, that had devastating consequences for many people.

I commend the Minister, the Minister of State and their team on completing and publishing the report early. It involved a significant amount of work, something I acknowledge. I also acknowledge the work of others who assisted the Minister. The continual references to the Committee on Housing and Homelessness is a very positive sign. The Minister referred to appendix 2 of the report when he referred to cross-referencing recommendations of the committee with his recommendations. In fact, he only referenced our priority recommendations. Although that is welcome, there are only 23 priority recommendations while there are 84 other recommendations.

I have only read the full plan properly once. The Minister has only fully accepted seven of our 23 priority recommendations. The 15 others have not been accepted or fall substantially short of what we proposed. I have written to the Chair of the Select Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Maria Bailey, to request that not only do we have a meeting to scrutinise the plan this week or next, but also that the Minister attends the committee in order that we have time to get into the detail of many of the questions Deputies will no doubt want to ask. He will address some of them today, and I hope he will facilitate a committee meeting.

I want to comment very briefly on each of the five pillars of the plan. I want specifically to address funding. The total amount of funding allocated goes to the very heart of this plan and its ability to deliver on its commitments. Earlier today, the Minister claimed that increased investment on the Kelly plan is in the region of €2.2 billion. This is simply not the case. I will talk Deputies through the figures. Deputy Alan Kelly's plan committed €3.8 billion over six years or €633 million per year, on average. The Minister's plan commits to €5.35 billion over six years or €891 million per year, on average. That is an annual increase or difference of €258 million between his plan and that of Deputy Alan Kelly's. Over the course of six years, that is €1.54 billion.

The total increase in the Minister's plan compared with what would have happened otherwise is significantly short of what he says. In fact, if one compares the five years left in Deputy Alan Kelly's plan and the first five years of the Minister's plan, the difference is €1.2 billion. That is a substantial gap. Massaging the figures is not a good place to start when one is announcing such an important plan. The Minister should clarify that issue on the floor of the House today.

I will deal with the pillars in order. I strongly welcome the commitment in the plan to reduce dramatically the use of hotels by mid-2017 through rapid build and the acquisition of vacant units. That is a very brave commitment on the part of the Minister. I am concerned that the timescale is very tight and I am not sure how many families the Minister intends to move into rapid or refurbished units and how many families will remain in them permanently or will be moved on to council housing or housing assistance payment, HAP, schemes. That is not clear in the plan, and it would be good for the Minister to clarify that today or at a later stage.

I also welcome the commitment on additional funding for mental health supports for people in emergency accommodation. I am deeply concerned about the text of the plan with respect to tackling mortgage distress, in particular preventing people at risk of losing their homes from becoming homeless. The proposal for a dedicated court in the programme for Government seems to be gone. The clear commitment in the programme for Government for amending the code of conduct on a statutory basis also appears to be gone, and there seems to be a significant roll-back on what was in the programme for Government to help those families in very significant mortgage distress. Again, I would be interested in hearing the views of the Minister on that.

Sinn Féin absolutely and unequivocally welcomes any increased investment in social housing and output. There is an increase in both of those in the action plan, which I fully acknowledge. I also strongly welcome the shift towards the greater use of mixed tenure estates, as the Minister has outlined.

I see the plan moving in the direction of local authorities providing housing, while private sector developers build estates and benefit from the cost rental and private units. That is a more expensive way to do things and denies the statutory sector the profits that generate from that which could be recycled into increased social housing provision. I do not believe it is the best use of local authority land or expertise. Therefore, I again urge the Minister, as I did privately before, to include in the mixed tenure plan or aspect of the plan the ability of local authorities not just to lead but to develop fully, control and benefit from those mixed tenure estates.

Obviously, an additional 12,000 social housing units are outlined in the plan, but it is important we interrogate that figure fully. The headline of 47,000 social housing units does not adequately characterise or capture what is taking place. According to the Minister, 26,000 units will be built by councils or approved housing bodies or purchased under Part V. I am interested to know whether there is an estimation of the balance because clearly the State has more control over housing provided by local authorities and approved housing bodies as opposed to Part V.

Some 11,000 units are to be provided through other acquisitions by council and approved housing bodies. Given the fact that the census figures from 2016 tell us there are 189,000 vacant units in Ireland, it seems to me that the 11,000 target is too small. If I am misreading the plan, I ask the Minister to clarify the figures.

A journalist asked the Minister about the 10,000 units to be provided through leasing, and he evaded the answer. How many will become public or voluntary housing association owned units? How many will remain in the private sector and be leased over a period? That is quite important.

On the potential 5,000 units to be delivered through a special purpose vehicle off-balance sheet, are they in addition to the 47,000 thousand units mentioned in the plan? Are they included in the plan? Who will own the units? These are crucial questions.

From my estimation - I am more than happy for the Minister to correct me - what we are looking at is an increase of the real social housing stock owned by approved housing bodies and local authorities in the region of 6,000 units a year over the lifetime of the plan. That is 40% short of what the committee proposed and that was a minimum.

I am deeply concerned that the total increased funding according to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, at the press conference this morning for next year is €150 million. Could the Minister confirm whether that is the case? I appreciate the fiscal constraints on the Government but if it is, given the scale of the crisis, that is not enough when we need to front-load direct State investment in social housing.

Pillar 3, which relates to building more homes, is disappointing given how much of a centrepiece the Minister has made of increased provision of private housing by the market. In the region of 25,000 units a year are required. I echo some of the comments made by Deputies Cowen and Curran so I will not repeat what they said. It seems to me that there is little of real substance in terms of concrete actions to make homes more affordable. There is no great value in increasing the stock of private housing if it is costing between €330,000 and €350,000 for first-time buyers. I am deeply concerned about that.

Notwithstanding the additional 12,000 social units, I am concerned that the Minister is talking about 100,000 units ultimately for social use being delivered by the private rental sector. The Minister referred today to 84,000 housing assistance payment, HAP, units, 10,000 leased units and 4,000 rental accommodation scheme, RAS units. That remains an enormous over-reliance on the private rental sector. I admit it is slightly better than the proposal of the previous Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, but it is still deeply concerning.

Pillar 4 focuses on improving the rental sector. I fully agree with Deputies Curran and Cowen that this is the most disappointing section of the strategy. There are no firm commitments.

Deputy Simon Coveney

There are firm commitments.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

There is the promise of a strategy and we will engage constructively with the Minister in the Dáil Chamber and in the committee whenever he develops the strategy but there is a lack of firm, hard commitments not only on the long-term development of the private rental sector but the type of legislation on tenancy terminations or the purpose and outcome of a review of standards.

There is nothing on rent certainty, despite the escalating rent crisis and nothing specific on student accommodation other than, again, just a promise of another strategy at some future point. I acknowledge the point made by the Minister that his team did not have enough time to develop that part of the strategy. I suspect the real blockage is not the lack of time but, rather, the unwillingness on the part of his Cabinet colleagues to take the kind of policy decisions required to provide long-term solutions to a broken private rented sector.

Pillar 5 deals with utilising existing housing. Last week, as we are all aware, the Central Statistics Office revealed that there are 189,000 vacant units throughout the State. When the Housing Agency published its report based on the 2011 figures, many rubbished it, saying that the 2016 figures would show a significant reduction in the number of vacant units. They were wrong and the Housing Agency was right. While I again welcome the proposal to allocate €70 million to acquire 1,600 vacant properties, that is nowhere near enough. If the Housing Agency spends the money quickly, will the Minister replenish it and make it a rolling fund, and will he ask local authorities to develop actions plans for the long-term reintroduction of such units into the overall public private stock at local authority level?

The plan is undoubtedly better than that of the previous Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly. There is no question about that, but in the view of the party and constituents I represent it is simply nowhere near enough. The Minister has adopted much of the rhetoric of the report of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. He has adopted some of its spirit in his recommendations but the gap between the committee’s report and what the Minister has published today remains far too great.

There will undoubtedly be some improvements for some families following what the Minister has announced today. I will take the Minister at his word, that those of us who will sit with him in committee, privately or in the Dáil Chamber, to try to improve the quality of the plan will see improvements over a period. We will not be found wanting to make constructive, realistic proposals to the Minister as we did to the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Crucially, however, unless the Minister is more ambitious and unless the Government ensures greater investment in the direct provision of local authority and approved housing body social housing, the crisis that is gripping tens of thousands of families in the housing system today will continue and things will continue to get worse.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan

I welcome the fact the Government has published its action plan for housing and homelessness and that it has done so ahead of time, and also that it has taken on board many of the recommendations of the Oireachtas committee, although, as has been pointed out, not all of the recommendations in full and not all of the recommendations that were made. Nevertheless, it is welcome that the action plan has been published and that it has five pillars which are designed to address what is a very serious problem.

I am concerned at what the plan does not contain and whether it can break the logjam that halted construction after the economic collapse of 2008. That is the challenge. People who are homeless, or are at risk of becoming homeless, need the plan to work. I wish it success because it is the most important issue and it needs immediate and effective action.

The biggest issue staring us all in the face is the need for housing at a time when there are zoned sites available. However, hardly anyone is building, apart from one-off houses in the countryside to which the Minister referred at the launch of the plan this morning. If it is cost-effective to build one-off houses, why is it not cost-effective to build multi-unit developments with the economies of scale attached to building more than one unit, especially given the demand that is building up in the cities? We are constantly being told by the private sector that it is not cost-effective to build, yet people are building one-off houses in the countryside. Therefore, those protestations must be challenged. I agree incentives should be provided, and some were announced today, such as the upfront payment for Part V units and making publicly owned land available for private housing to be built for profit. I agree with the Minister and others who have said that a social mix is desirable. It is good that publicly owned land will be made available for social and affordable housing, but it will also be made available for private development and presumably for profit. I agree with Deputy Ó Broin that there needs to be some public payback for that. While I agree with the principle that we need a social mix of housing, there must be some reward to local authorities where publicly owned land is being used for private profit. We must learn from the mistakes of the past whereby huge swathes of public housing are in one part of the city and other parts are entirely composed of private housing. The Minister cited Cork as an example.

There is also a pressing need to have disincentives to the hoarding of land and sites until they become more profitable. While I agree that we need to provide carrots to get the private sector to build, we also need sticks to ensure it does not sit on land to make a greater profit at a later stage. While the Minister answered questions on the plan this morning, he specifically said he is concerned that investment funds are buying up zoned land. I share the Minister’s concern. The only purpose I can see for buying zoned land is that one can hold on to it for some time to make a profit. The Minister must provide a strong deterrent to the hoarding of land for future profit.

The Labour Party put forward proposals in the Social Housing Bill yesterday. I hope the Minister will look at the proposals contained in the Bill, one of which is the implementation of the Kenny report and other of which is to bring forward the vacant sites levy. I accept the Minister said this morning that he would bring forward the vacant sites levy as soon as he legally could, but he should keep the matter under review because it is not planned to introduce it until 2018 and I believe it could be brought forward earlier. These two measures would provide the necessary deterrent to the hoarding of land.

Our Bill proposes the implementation of the recommendations of the Kenny report which, as we know, was published more than 40 years ago. An all-party commission on the Constitution in 2004 found that it was not contrary to the Constitution. I was a member of that committee. The Kenny report proposes that land acquired for the purpose of building houses through compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, would only have its current value plus 25%. In other words, one could not sit on the land and then make a profit by having it rezoned for housing.

A second proposal of our Bill is that the remit of NAMA be broadened and the organisation rebranded as the national housing development and finance agency. I know there are a number of measures proposed regarding the Housing Agency, for example, and the NTMA and others being part of the solution. However, we believe that NAMA could be a much greater part of the solution if its focus were changed and if its considerable monetary resources and expertise were used for the provision of housing, whether social or private.

We also propose measures to professionalise the landlord sector. Again, there are references to this in the housing strategy, but I believe that genuine measures could be introduced in this regard. There is a professionalised landlord sector in other European countries that provides stable, affordable rented accommodation but we do not really have that in this country, and we need more measures in this regard.

The fourth measure in our Bill I wish to highlight - I acknowledge that Sinn Féin has also proposed it - is the linking of rent to the consumer price index. We published all these measures about a month ago in a draft Bill, which we have added to, and we published the full Bill yesterday.

The Government is not proposing any specific actions regarding any of these four measures and others that we have published. We in opposition want to be constructive but we also hope that the Government will seriously consider measures presented by the Opposition.

We also urgently need more measures to give security to those privately renting. Some measures in the housing strategy will give some protection for tenants, such as, for example, where houses are being sold, that tenants stay in their homes. The Minister has announced that in large developments there will be protections. I have not seen any measures that would protect, say, the person who is in an individual apartment or whose landlord owns only a small number of properties. The majority of people privately renting are in those kinds of situations where the landlord does not own a very large number of properties in any one development. More security of tenure is required. Again, I know the Minister has said that there will be a plan later in the year in this regard, but a number of measures need to be taken in this area because people in the private rented sector face a great deal of insecurity.

I welcome increased funding for construction of social housing, building on the €3.1 billion provided by the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, in the strategy he announced in November 2014. It is important to note the amended amount of €5.35 billion and, again, Deputy Ó Broin has pursued the numbers surrounding this issue. However, the Minister's plan goes up to 2021, whereas the plan of the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, went up to 2020. I know that they are both six-year periods, but there was very little money available to spend in the first year of the plan of the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly. Fair is fair, and we must give credit to the former Minister. When I was in that Department, there was no money, and any bit of money we had we put into voids and bringing local authority houses back into use. That was effectively spent certainly in some local authorities, and I would cite Fingal as a particularly good one, but there was hardly any money to spend on the construction of houses. That money is now becoming available because the economy has been fixed, so we need to ensure it is spent, and spent effectively, but I do welcome the additional money.

There will be real challenges in getting the money spent. That will be the real test of the success of the plan. Money allocated to local authorities for social housing gets turned into actual houses at a snail's pace. I highlighted a hole in the ground in my city last week. I had allocated the money to housing there when I was Minister of State with responsibility for housing and planning. We had been given a commitment and I had it in writing that the houses would be built by April 2016, but it is still a hole in the ground. I am not hitting out at my local authority in particular because I know there are similar situations throughout the country.

We need to get rid of these obstacles and logjams. The matter will not be addressed simply by fast-tracking the planning process. If one considers Part VIII, for example, it is only an eight-week process plus possibly another four weeks if additional information is asked, so that is not the problem. I have some concerns about tampering with the planning process to address the issue of the slow pace of build because that is not where the problem is. The problem surrounds getting the money, getting to the planning process and then getting the construction done. The Minister needs to focus on that area. I point to the Minister of State sitting beside him because we were together in the Department of Education and Skills. Schools can be built relatively quickly, and I think I saw the Minister of State, Deputy English, on a television programme talking about that. There are examples in the Department of Education and Skills, both in my time and that of other Ministers, of our being able to build schools. One allocates money and the school or classrooms or whatever is built in a relatively short time. There are real issues to be addressed in this regard, and I hope we can get rid of those logjams.

In the time that is left to me I want to refer to a few other matters. I agree that student housing is referenced in the strategy but it needs much more specific proposals. Anything I saw in the plan was, I believe, there already. On the issue of homelessness, which is very important, I fully support the proposals of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the involvement of the Minister, Deputy Zappone, in supporting children and simple things like transportation. The cost of travelling was identified, along with the need to get to school, to have preschool facilities and to have the school completion programme available to these young people. They are extremely vulnerable and protection policies need to be in place to ensure these children are not exposed to any risk. These measures are very important, but getting the families into homes is the real solution, and that must be the focus.

I support the Housing First proposals and note that there is a proposal to expand them. I have some experience of this as well and was at a conference in Limerick two weeks ago on Housing First. It is about giving people a home, taking them as they are, whether they are addicted to drugs or have mental health issues or whatever, putting them in a home and giving them the wraparound 24-hour support they need to stay in that home. When it is explained to private landlords that such support is available, that the housing association working with those people will deal with the paying of the rent, and the kinds of supports that are in place, it should be attractive to landlords as well. It is a model that works and has been shown to work in other parts of the world, so I urge that that programme be supported, continued and expanded.

There are a large number of measures in the plan. There is a need for more strategic focus, particularly on the disincentives to construct. I would like to see a lot more focus on that and on the fact there are nearly 200,000 vacant houses in the country that are not holiday homes. I suspect that most of those are private because the voids money has brought back into use much of the local authority housing and housing authorities have got quicker at turnover. We in opposition will work with the Government to deliver on this plan. However, we want the Minister to listen to the measures proposed by us and by other Opposition parties.

At all costs we must avoid the boom and bust cycle that nearly broke our economy and our society, and that was the basis for the huge problems of housing and homelessness that we have now and which have caused such misery and anxiety for so many of our citizens.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

There is nothing I would like to believe more than that this plan will deliver. Everybody in this House wants to solve the problem, and how could they not, given the scale of hardship and suffering for homeless people in emergency accommodation or those who have been waiting on housing lists for 15 to 18 years with little or no hope of ever being housed? However, when one looks at the detail of this plan I do not think it will deliver. That is so, not just because it does not take on board what people like ourselves have been saying since 2011, but also because of what was confirmed by the chairperson of the Housing Finance Agency, Dr. Michelle Norris, this morning. She summarised what we have been saying for five years and it stands as the most accurate critique of the failure of this plan to get to the kernel of the problem. Dr. Norris said:

We have become too dependent on the private sector to house low-income households. If we are going to deliver houses we need in the short term, in my view, local authorities to be introduced to building at a large scale that will involve them having permission to borrow money.

Therefore, local authorities must directly deliver council housing and be given the money to do so themselves. Dr. Norris has recognised the problem and she is right. The question is whether this plan proposes to do that, and it does not. It is littered with references to incentives, private developers, vulture funds, competitiveness-----

Deputy Simon Coveney

It is not.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

It does not mention vulture funds specifically, but it talks about those who will build large-scale rental property. Those are the vulture funds, the people who bought up land and property and own it. The most telling confirmation that my assessment of this is right came when I asked the Taoiseach earlier today if he could tell me how many local authority houses would be built under the plan. He frankly admitted that he could not give me an answer to that question. It is not in the plan. I have heard since from journalists, which I presume came from the Minister, and who I suspect, like everybody else, want to believe that this plan is a new departure. Everybody wants to believe that, while we all wanted to believe that Deputy Alan Kelly's plan was going to change things, but it did not.

The Taoiseach could not answer the question of how many council houses will be built, and neither can this report. The nearest it gets to answering the question is on page 45 where it states, "With cooperation and mobilisation by local authorities and AHBs, this Action Plan envisages a significant progressive increase in social housing build activity to over 5,000 ... a year by 2021." Let us read that carefully. It is not 5,000 a year to 2021. That would still only amount to 25,000 and it would not all be council because some of it would be from approved housing bodies. However, the Minister hopes to get up to 5,000 in 2021. Therefore, of the headline figure of 47,000 social housing units, which sounds good, fewer than 25,000 - in fact, I suspect it is considerably less - will be actual local authority houses.

In the time of the previous Government the housing list went from 96,000 to 140,000 families and households, and although we do not quite know what it is now, it is up by more than 45,000. If the rate of increase in the housing list continues, we will have a longer council housing list at the end of this plan than we currently have. That is because at the centre of its strategy, this plan does not envisage local authorities taking advice from the Housing Finance Agency and getting back to direct provision of large-scale local authority housing. Why are the figures not in it? Will the Minister tell me how many council houses will be built under this plan? The Taoiseach could not answer and I bet the Minister cannot do so either.

Deputy Simon Coveney

I will provide clarity later.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

This session is for statements, not questions.

Deputy Simon Coveney

I provided clarity earlier today, but the Deputy did not show up.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

Deputy Boyd Barrett should continue without interruption.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Deputy Gino Kenny showed up. It is not in the report. The bulk of the report is about the housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. I disagree with the principle of HAP, but for the desperate people coming into my constituency office daily I would like to think I could say, "There you go. It's not a council house, but it's something." I can tell the Minister, however, that it is not going to happen. Given the numbers involved, the Minister might get some of it but he will not get anything like the targets he is talking about. There is no evidence that they are signing up in significant numbers and why would they?

Deputy Simon Coveney

They are.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I know from my own locality that they are not. I read these figures out the other day and will do so again. Even with the Minister's increased rent caps or HAP limits, rent levels in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown for a single one-bedroom dwelling are €1,800 per month, which is double the Minister's limit. Why would a private landlord enter into an arrangement with the Minister for a cap of €1,300 when average rents are €1,800? For a three-bedroom dwelling why would they enter into an arrangement with the Minister when the average rent is €2,200 and all they can get from him is €1,300? They will not do it and that is the problem. Sadly, I do not have time to go into the detail. As is so often the case, there is a reliance on the private sector and an ideological blindness. In addition, there is kowtowing to developers who say they cannot make enough profits which is why they will not build and deliver social and affordable housing. We keep kowtowing to them, however, but they still do not deliver, and we do not get the council housing we need to solve the problem.

Deputy Maria Bailey

Give us your solutions.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I just gave them to the Minister - build council houses.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

We are in the midst of the biggest housing crisis this State has ever seen. The Minister's plan proposes yet more focus on private developers to resolve this, yet this is the same market that caused the problem in the first place. The Minister has now introduced a new element by making it crystal clear that public land - the most precious way we have of resolving the housing crisis - is to be gifted by councils to these private developers. It is an incredible thing to do in the midst of a housing crisis.

Deputy Simon Coveney

Nothing is being gifted to anybody.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

It is up to 75%, as well as money upfront for Part Vs and a range of other rewards. The Minister never listens to anything we have to say, but will he listen to the CEO of NAMA? He said it is not that housing is unprofitable for private developers, it is just not profitable enough. Apparently a profit of €20,000 is not enough for them, so the Minister is now proposing to reward them for hoarding and the strike of capital that they have been engaged in. This time the Minister will give over local authority land.

I will start with the poverty of ambition in this plan. We hear that this is the biggest investment in yonks. Deputy Alan Kelly used to tell us the same when he was the Minister.

This would not even bring us to the level of building that obtained in 2007 but, as we know, there is now a waiting list that is a multiple of that number. In 2007 and 2008 we were building approximately 5,000 local authority or housing association houses and acquisitions and houses provided under Part V stood at approximately 9,000. This information is available from the bar charts contained in the report, which the Minister can check if he so wishes. The plan now is to provide 9,000 social houses per annum, which is an incredible paucity of ambition at a time when leprechaun economics indicate we have massive growth rates in this country.

There is also a poverty of ambition in the context of the 200,000 vacant houses. From my reading of the plan, 1,600 such houses are to be acquired. Perhaps the Minister would clarify if that is the case? Local authorities are to be ordered by the Minister to hand over land to private developers for development, in respect of which trickle-down housing of the order of 25% to 30% is indicated. Why are we doing this? According to the Minister for Finance, there is no shortage of money. There is €5.4 billion available under the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, which could be used for the provision of public housing but we are barred under EU fiscal rules from doing so. Has the Minister asked the EU for a derogation because of our housing emergency? Has he had any communication with Brussels on this matter? According to the report, the Department has, while the housing crisis has been raging, spent two years trying to find a workable off-balance-sheet model to get around this quandary. We have the land and the labour in the form of our many unemployed construction workers and we also have the money but we are not allowed to provide housing on a public basis. The solution must involve the private sector and it must be self-financing. It is capitalism. It is the neoliberal impediment that is preventing us from resolving our housing crisis.

I would like now to speak about the ISIF, which has moneys to the tune of €5.4 billion, and NAMA's €2.4 billion in cash reserves. The total resources of €8 billion of these two entities could be spent on social and affordable housing provision but the State cannot use that money to build housing. That is the problem. Let us simplify matters. The Minister announced approximately ten different schemes today but our inability to use the funds to which I refer is the problem, which is outrageous. The Minister also announced a new type of housing estate today. The term "mixed tenure" has been used, which is something similar to motherhood and apple pie. Everyone is in favour of diversity.

Deputy Simon Coveney

They are not, actually.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

We all want to see a different mix of people in estates.

Deputy Simon Coveney

There are many people who are against it.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

Deputy Coppinger, without interruption please.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

The Minister is continually interrupting.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

Deputy Coppinger keeps putting questions to the Minister. A set amount of time has been allocated to each speaker. If people continually interrupt, they are interfering with those who want to contribute.

Deputy Ruth Coppinger

Perhaps the Acting Chairman would allow me a couple of additional minutes to allow for the interruptions. Some 25% to 30% of the housing on council-owned land will be social housing and 75% will be privately mortgaged or, to use the new term, "affordable rental" houses. What does affordable rental mean? Perhaps the Minister will clarify if I am correct that it is 70% to 80% of market rent. The cost of renting in many parts of Dublin is €1,200 to €1,400. That is not affordable. That we would call such a level of rent affordable is laughable. The people in Tyrrelstown who live in houses and not apartments are paying €1,500 per month for small dwellings. An affordable rent for them under the proposed scheme is not affordable. We need to raise the eligibility levels for social housing so that people such as bus drivers, etc., can apply for it. We also need to provide people with affordable mortgages, such as were previously available from the councils. The mortgage I obtained from Fingal County Council 12 years ago when I was a teacher allowed me to access a house. We need to give other people that same opportunity.

I received an e-mail last night from a family whose rent is being increased by €100. While €100 would not be a lot to the Minister, it is to the family in question. The couple's monthly income - they are both working - is €1,700. They live in a two bedroom house with their three children and their rent is being increased to €1,200 per month, which will leave €500 per month for five people to live on. Is there anything in the plan for them? No, there is not one solution. What we need is emergency legislation to ban repossessions. The Committee on Housing and Homelessness recommended a moratorium on repossessions but the Minister did not take that on board. How many months will it take before it becomes obvious to him that we need rent controls and that the private rented sector is the source of homelessness and poverty? The Minister plans to entrust 65% of social housing provision to the private rented sector. This is a hugely expensive way of providing social housing. We need to return to utilising public land and public funds to build a range of affordable and social housing for people to buy or rent.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

The next speaker is Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan. Is the Deputy sharing time?

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan

I am sharing time with Deputies Connolly and Wallace.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Declan Breathnach)

The Deputies have five minutes each. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan

We know the problem and we know the reasons and the circumstances that gave rise to the current housing crisis. We know also that this crisis was brewing for years. The interventions which could have been made at various stages and which would have made a difference to the situation not escalating or becoming worse were not made. One significant factor was that local authorities stopped building houses.

We know all the statistics, including that there are over 90,000 people on the social housing waiting list, that the numbers of people in homelessness are rising, that the numbers of those in emergency accommodation are also rising and that the numbers of individuals sleeping rough and the hidden homeless who move from couch to couch are increasing as well. In addition, many of the people on the housing lists long term are being pushed down those lists because there are more people coming onto them. We know that demand is exceeding supply.

Having been a member of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, I know that the solution involves a multifaceted approach. I acknowledge the wide-ranging consultation in which the committee engaged, including with the Minister. We are at a point now where we need action rather than words. What we do not want is actions that will lead to negative consequences later. One of the key areas is social housing provision so that we can get people out of emergency accommodation and private renting, which is more cost-effective. When one balances what the Government is spending on emergency accommodation, homelessness and rent supplement versus what it would cost to build social housing and get people back into homes, that to which I refer makes economic sense. Many individuals and families are putting themselves under immense pressure to get top-ups to meet the cost of rent. It is essential that we get social housing right.

We know that 10,000 units per year is not enough but if we can deliver on 10,000 real social housing units, it will make a difference. Lone parents with children, senior citizens, couples and single men who are on the housing lists should benefit from this new build. For me, success will be the movement in significant numbers of such people into one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units. I would like to speak about children because a number of mothers asked me to specifically refer to the devastating physical and mental effects on their children of living in emergency accommodation and the shame they feel when their friends see them going into a hostel or hotel. I know projects in the north inner city that are accessing counselling for such children.

I tried to read as much of the report as I could this afternoon. Obviously, I was looking at it from the point of view of the cross-party committee report. The latter report was pretty well received by those working in housing and homelessness and I did hear some positive reaction to this report. It is disappointing, however, that some of the committee's recommendations are not included in it. For example, was the advice of the Attorney General sought on the committee's recommendation for a moratorium on home repossessions? Will the Minister give an assurance that homeless shelters will not close unless residents have viable alternatives? Will he similarly provide that hotels that are in NAMA and being used as emergency accommodation cannot be sold until the residents get alternative accommodation? One of the key pillars of the plan ought to have been around prevention but I do not see any proposals in that regard in the report. On rent certainty and fixed tenure, I presume the affordable rental sector issue will be addressed in the autumn statement.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting with Social Justice Ireland on financing for social housing at which it was suggested that we could invoke the structural reform clause in the EU Stability and Growth Pact, which would, it was suggested, provide us with €1 billion in on-balance-sheet funding and, along with that, the off-balance-sheet mechanism of low-cost finance, which we know is available from credit unions and the Housing Finance Agency.

In the case of O'Devaney Gardens, I looked at submissions made to Dublin City Council by residents who live in the area. They are very much in favour of mixed tenure and want quality housing. They made an interesting point about the need to define "affordable". Perhaps that issue might be looked at also.

How much funding will be available to each local authority, particularly those with the longest housing waiting lists such as Dublin City Council? We suggested one framework. The Minister is suggesting the housing delivery office and the housing procurement office, but I am anxious to know who the actual driver will be.

I welcome what the Minister said about mental health and addiction issues, but there is a lack of specific measures to deal with them. We need timeframes for monitoring, evaluating and implementing measures. The Minister should come here before Christmas at the latest to give us a rundown on what the actions taken have achieved. I listened to the response of Brother Kevin Crowley, for whom I have great respect. He said action was needed and that the time for talk was over. We need action now.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I listened to the Taoiseach tell us this morning that the local authorities had not measured up. He repeated this later using different phraseology. Let me say Galway City Council has measured up. It produced a housing report every quarter of every year in which it set out its strategy and identified the land it had zoned for residential purposes. The accompanying note stated construction had been suspended and that there was no funding available. That was the position in Galway where I had been since 1999 and left earlier this year. Not a single social house has been constructed since 2009. There is a housing crisis in Galway because we did not use public land to provide homes with public funds. I am sickened to the core when I hear Labour Party Members justify this by saying because of the state of the economy we could not afford to build homes. There is something seriously wrong with our definition of what an economy is if we cannot afford to give people homes and there is something definitely wrong with an economic strategy that does not allow people security with all of the positive benefits it brings.

I welcome some of the measures included in the report such as the strategy for urban and village renewal. There are 84 recommendations made. I agree fully with Deputies Richard Boyd Barrett and Ruth Coppinger that there has been a complete failure to address the fact that a state must provide homes on public lands. The facts are outlined on page 45 of the report. The Minister intends to build up to 5,000 houses by 2021. He cannot possibly provide homes with this strategy at the rate at which the waiting lists are increasing. What is worse is that he is going to rely on the very market forces that, through repeated Government policy, caused the crisis in the first place.

I hope the Minister will conclude tonight by acknowledging that there is a national emergency, not because the economy failed but because we failed to use it to provide homes for people. Each Deputy has an anecdote. I can say I made representations today on behalf of a family who has been on the waiting list in Galway since 2002. They are number one on the list. Galway City Council has responded by stating it is not in a position to tell the family when they will have a house. Sticking with the position in Galway but making a general point, Dr. Pádraic Kenna of NUI Galway has concluded a piece of Europe research that continued for over two years. While I hear Deputies ask for a moratorium on house repossessions, with which I agree, Dr. Kenna points to the significant finding of the research that evictions result from increased rents and that such evictions are greater in number than those arising from a failure to pay a mortgage. The document fails utterly to give security in the rental sector, while its thrust is we have to rely on it. I am appalled that the Minister thinks we should give public land bought at the highest prices to private companies on which to build to provide social housing rather than the other way round. The Kenny report has been quoted by the Deputy from the Labour Party. Successive Governments have refused to act on it. We have refused to recognise the long-term gain in providing homes for people would spur the economy and lead to a much healthier society and wealthier country.

We are going to give more money to approved housing bodies, which are unregulated. In the past few weeks we have come into the Chamber to talk about the unregulated charities sector. We have approved housing bodies that are operating in an unregulated market.

Deputy Simon Coveney

We are committed to regulating it.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I have noted it and I am about to thank the Minister for recognising the gap and for the fact that there will now be a regulator. I hope a regulator with resources will be put in place much more speedily than has been the case in the charities sector.

Deputy Mick Wallace

I am sorry I do not have more time. The Minister will not be shocked when I say I would have liked to see a lot more in the report, but I will not shoot him, rather I will give him the benefit of the doubt and I am hopeful he will deliver a lot more in time. Rome was not built in a day, but it was started. I accept that it is a start and will not dismiss it out of hand.

I will address the issues that we still need to address. I do not think the issue of affordability has been dealt with. We still have a huge problem with how we provide housing and dealing with this issue is a huge challenge. I am not saying the Minister should be able to sort it out overnight, but as he learns more about it, I hope he will take a stronger line in some areas. Land-banking is a massive problem within the industry that will stay with us for a while longer. It does not look as though the funding issue has been addressed either, as I would like it to be. The EU rules must be challenged. We are still very much restricted by them and they are stopping us from borrowing cheaply to invest in State housing provision.

We have discussed the issue of affordability a lot at the housing committee and established that there is a big difference between the cost of providing local authority and private sector housing. The difference can be up to €100,000, which is an awful lot of money. We are not providing quite as many social houses as we thought. My understanding is we were recommending 50,000 local authority new builds, but perhaps I have misinterpreted. I understand we are looking at a figure of 26,000 local authority new builds. This represents a missed opportunity.

In a building regulations blog someone wonders why the Minister did not establish a fund of something under €100 million and buy 50,000 or 60,000 houses to take people out of emergency accommodation. Investment funds are still buying houses for less than the cost at which we can build them. Why does the Government not take that position?

The Labour Party suggested we rebrand NAMA. I would prefer to abolish it. I am very concerned that we will expect NAMA to provide 20,000 houses in the next few years. This is an organisation that looks worse by the day. It lacks accountability and transparency and has been seriously economical with the truth. It is dysfunctional. The Minister might think I am making it up, but I am not. It is not an organisation on which he should be hanging his coat to help him resolve the housing crisis. We are going to use land owned by the people, yet nine out of ten units will be available through the private sector and NAMA will be doing deals with developers and investment funds to provide it. Many of the people in question have actually grown from a dysfunctional property market in Ireland.

Some of their strength is based on ill-gotten gains. They are people who formerly worked in NAMA and got involved in this area. People were asking why the private sector is not building and they get a couple of things mixed up. There is an entity called the builder and an entity called the developer. The builders are prepared to build, they are able to build and they want to build. The developer is a different animal. It is true to say it is not financially attractive enough for him at present. It is for the builder but not the developer. One of the main causes of this is that the so-called developers, of which there is now a new, much bigger version, namely, investment funds or vulture funds, are still preoccupied with picking from the carcass of what is left of stressed assets from the failed financial institutions and NAMA. That is a huge problem for us. Builders are prepared to build. They are not saying there is not enough money in it for them. They cannot get the money. People should stop confusing builders with developers.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy's time has expired. We will move on to the Rural Alliance, which has 15 minutes. I understand Deputies are sharing time.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

We are not the Rural Alliance; we are the rural Independents.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We will arrange for that to be rectified. Having said that, I will still allow Deputy Danny Healy-Rae to speak.

Deputy Michael Harty

I am sharing - five minutes each - with Deputies Mattie McGrath and Danny Healy-Rae from the rural Independent group.

I will speak on a sub-group of homelessness which is street homeless people. Homelessness is a deeply unhealthy state. Many of those on our streets suffer from mental illness combined with drug addiction - a so-called dual diagnosis - but many also have physical illnesses which relate to being on the streets and their drug addiction. If people have that triple diagnosis, they are in a seriously unhealthy state. If we are to avoid unnecessary deaths on our streets, we need to address those three issues. The challenge for this Government is to provide safe, secure and appropriate housing tailored to the individual street homeless person's needs coupled with essential medical, addiction and social support services to ensure that exiting homelessness is sustainable and for the long term. Those health and support services should be a priority. There should be linkage between supplying appropriate housing and appropriate services if we are to allow these people to get off our streets.

There are some startling statistics available, including that: 85% of our street homeless people have either a mental illness, a drug addiction or a physical illness; 50% of them abuse drugs as well as having a mental illness; 13% have serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder; 33% have self-harmed in the past six months; and 50% are on methadone or taking heroin. There is an alarming rate of suicide ideation and attempted suicide among these individuals. It is very difficult to obtain accurate figures on how many people are street homeless in Dublin due to the transient nature of homelessness and the scatter of homelessness around the city. If one adds the number of rough sleepers, which a recent count indicated was 106, to those who are in night shelters, hostels or treatment centres, the figure rises to over 300. Estimating the number of homeless in other areas outside Dublin is equally as difficult. All one has to do is walk up Grafton Street and along St. Stephen's Green towards Baggot Street to see the evidence of street homelessness. I did so three weeks ago and at around 10.30 p.m. there were 14 people setting up their sleeping bags and cardboard boxes in doorways. That was in 500 or 600 yards walking around the city.

There are many complex factors that lead to homelessness, including family breakdown, poverty, poor education, unemployment, leaving institutional care, drug addiction, alcohol addiction and mental illness. There is a disproportionate number of homeless people on our streets who have been in care or in prison. Foreign nationals make up a significant number of those experiencing homelessness because they lack access to housing entitlements. There are two broad methods of exiting homelessness. One is the Housing First model, which has been mentioned extensively in the report. Housing First offers a homeless person on the street secure accommodation without any barriers or questions. After they have accepted that they get wraparound services - psychiatric, medical and addiction services - but they are taken off the streets before they get them. The treatment first model is a staircase model whereby people are offered detoxification, stabilisation and rehabilitation services before they are offered a house or accommodation. There is a need for both of these models. There are many variations of these models but the most important part of all of them is providing somebody with secure accommodation. There is one frightening statistic on those who go into psychiatric hospitals and have delayed discharges. At the beginning of January, there were 10,000 hospital days accumulated on delayed discharges. If a hospital bed costs €500 a day, that is €5 million wasted on delayed discharges.

I commend the report to the House. Increasing the number of Housing First units from 100 to 300 is very important. There are 50 people already waiting for housing if they could get the accommodation from Housing First. The lack of accommodation is the critical part. I wish the Minister every good fortune in implementing the report. I hope all the other Departments associated with the Minister's initiative can supply what he requires from them.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I welcome the report and wish the Minister well. I wish Deputy Bailey well as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government, which I look forward to working and engaging with. I pay tribute to Deputy Harty and others who worked on the interim committee. I know the work that Deputy Harty put in and he has provided very interesting statistics on foot of his professional experience. I will talk more generally and about the delivery.

I wish the Minister well. He is more down to earth and realistic in what he has to do. We had a previous Minister who announced something every day. I am talking about Deputy Kelly. The houses would not fit in Ireland if he had built them all. Blunder, bluff and bluster was all we got from him. He would turn sods and design maps but really he did absolutely nothing. We hear the Labour Party lecturing and telling us what we could do and the Deputies on the left that know everything about building, developers and bankers, but there are very few of them involved in voluntary housing associations or in other aspects of housing. They should do something rather than telling us all how to do it.

We have a serious housing crisis. We know that. I have spoken to the Minister before on this. I hope he gets involved and gets down and dirty because there are blockages. I agree with Deputy Wallace. I do not agree with him a lot of the time. Tá sé imithe anois. I do not know if he was a developer or a builder or a bit of both. That is his business but some people are confused. He knows the difference between a developer and a builder. We cannot denigrate and demonise every builder in the country. They were the backbone of the economy and they provided great employment. I am glad that the Seanad agreed a motion earlier tonight to give self-employed people some benefit from PRSI. They are a decent race of people. They are not aliens, they do not have horns and they are not monsters. They are genuine people. I have worked for many of them and I saw the results. They want to build and have the capacity to build small schemes of houses and one-off homes for people who want to house themselves if they can get a mortgage.

There are a lot of blockages in the system. I agree that NAMA is a vehicle. I said it in this House - from this very seat - on the night NAMA was set up that it was like a wild animal being released in the woods and nobody knew where it would end up. We do not know now if it is in Austria or Syria or where it is but we know it is a mess. It is unaccountable and it is not delivering. I see there are aspirations regarding how many houses it will build and deliver. We have had that before. It failed and it is not accountable. The sooner it is disbanded and the animal is reined in or lassoed and brought down to Puck Fair in Killorglin - he need not be put up at a height, just put him up in pictures - the better, because there will be inquiries and investigations into NAMA in decades or years to come.

There are blockages in respect of planning. I do not know what has happened to our county councils. They have suffered cutbacks in funding and staff and they have also lost their way and their will to build houses.

The Census has referred to the number of vacant houses. Local authorities have a lot of them. They are boarded up, in some cases for years. They tell us that they cannot get funding or approval from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Department tells us something else. There should not be such blockages.

Planning is also an issue. There are young couples in my area who want to build houses. I have told the Minister, Deputy Coveney, this previously and I want him to come and see the area. Lately, I heard from three such couples who had done everything - they got the design, engineers and everything else. Willing to house themselves, they paid a lot of money. The planning rules are so restrictive. There are fiddly issues stopping them and delaying them. On the other hand, there is lovely zoned land in the town of Cahir and elsewhere which should be developed. We cannot build any house because there is no access and the planners are afraid to give permission for any more than two or three houses. As I said, people want to buy houses for different reasons.

Vulture funds are buying up the houses that borrowers have been evicted from. There is no coherent message in the plan for those in mortgage distress, and to stop the banks evicting borrowers. I thought there would be. There is a mention but nothing cohesive. We must stop that because we will never deal with the housing crisis if we do not stop mortgage holders being made homeless on a daily basis by the banks. A whole army has built up around this, with sheriffs, repossession agents and so on. An industry that has mushroomed out of that is distasteful, dishonest and nasty. It is terrorising borrowers and that needs to be addressed.

I wish the Minister well and I look forward to working with him. However, there are blockages, and they are simple ones. I am glad that the Minister has an overreaching responsibility in planning. I also am glad to see that something I advocated in my county development plan in Tipperary is being considered. It concerns shops and village centre places which are empty for five years or less and which will never again be opened as a shop. In such cases one need not apply for a change of planning and be involved in more preplanning meetings with planners, which one now must wait six weeks for in my county, who will place every obstacle at their disposal to prevent action being taken. As a result, we will get towns alive again, allow people to come in to live in those places and deal with the housing lists as well.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I thank the Minister for getting the ball rolling with this housing strategy. However, I will not praise the strategy until I see how it works because, as we all know, and as I know having been a member of Kerry County Council for 14 years, the devil is always in the detail and we have to see, as Deputy Mattie McGrath stated, how the blockages that we have been dealing with over the past number of years will be dealt with.

The first pledge is to address homelessness. I have been told that in regard to Dublin, the making illegal of bed-sits has contributed greatly to the number of homeless sleeping on the streets. Maybe the Minister should look at how that could be overlooked or changed for the time being until we have more housing stock available.

In the past six years, Kerry County Council has built three houses but, unlike the Taoiseach and the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, I do not blame the local authorities. Since early 2015, when Deputy Kelly made an announcement that we had €62.5 million in Kerry for housing, there has been no house built yet because there has been blockages with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government dealing with the applications for the social housing in places such as Killarney and Tralee. Thirty houses were to have been built in the summer of 2015 but to date there is no house built because there were four stages of approval demanded by the Department. Those four stages seem to go on forever. That is where I am asking the Minister to get involved and provide the staff, and ensure that the staff deal with the issues because there should only be one model for local authorities to deal with in respect of each type of housing. Whether it is a one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, four bedroom or five bedroom house, there should be one model for the country. The current situation has been causing unreal delays in getting 30 houses built in Kerry. I ask the Minister to address that aspect.

If we are to provide more housing, we need more staff. As I understand it, even at present there is an embargo on local authorities getting staff. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, are shaking their heads. I know the blockages are still there because I deal with them every day. I go to Kerry County Council at least once a week, every Monday. I know what is happening there. There are still blockages. They do not have the additional staff. It was disingenuous of the Taoiseach to criticise the local authorities and lay the blame at their doorstep because they are not to blame. I can tell the Taoiseach - I will make no bones about it - I will be more critical of him than his own party colleague, Deputy Griffin, if this does not work or if he does not put his shoulder to the wheel and ensure that it does.

On the pledge to increase speed of delivery of social housing, I hope that this process will be streamlined and, as I stated, more staff will be put in place. On the pledge to increase the output of private housing to meet demand, the private builders tell me they cannot access funding or capital at present to build the houses and that when they do, they are charged an interest rate of 12%. They cannot work with that because, they tell me, in a €180,000 house they will only have a €4,000 or €5,000 profit. They cannot take all of the responsibility and deal with all of the liabilities for that little gain. Something has to be done with the banks that we are supposed to own.

On the pledge to utilise existing housing, I highlighted this at meetings of Kerry County Council which owns many such houses. When we were working on a programme for Government, I insisted that we look at these vacant properties to see if they could be brought up to scratch. I welcome this, if it can be made work. It involves a lot of work, if one gives a loan to the house owner or landlord and hopes to get back the rent after five years or whatever, but it is a laudable exercise. I ask the Minister to put extra effort into that. I hope he will do so because there are a lot of houses vacant in my county. I even know of one house in a prominent place in a street in the heart of Killarney which, they tell me, is vacant for 70 years.

I wish the Minister all the best with this housing strategy. He will have to get stuck in. Many commentators say we will have holidays but I do not anticipate that the Minister will take a holiday this summer because there is a lot of work to be done.

I have one other issue to raise. In County Kerry, the former national roads authority, NRA or, as it is now being called, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, has deprived three couples of getting planning permission exiting onto a national secondary route. This is very unfair. Whatever regulations they are going by now were signed into law by the then Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, in 2012. I ask that the Minister look into that because it is depriving many in our county of access. All they are asking for is planning permission and they are being deprived of it by this one rule by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and TII.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I gave Deputy Danny Healy-Rae the extra few seconds for the mistake I made earlier, and I apologise.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I welcome today's action plan for housing and homelessness. We all will agree it is long overdue. In the previous Dáil, many of us could see that there was a housing infrastructure deficit. In my own area, I began to see functioning families at risk of becoming homeless in the period 2012-13 because there was a big construction projection, which was welcome at the time but which exposed a significant deficit. At that stage, we were seeing families - I had some in my area - that were sleeping in cars.

Throughout the term of the previous Government, there was an inability to listen, even to practical steps that were proposed. The committee of which I was a member, the Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht, invited all the housing agencies to hearings in early 2013. Even at that point, we made a proposal that European Investment Bank funding would be leveraged. It is disappointing that much of that advice was not taken up. Therefore, it is a crisis that partly could have been avoided.

I have briefly gone through the 117 pages of the document and I will devote a good deal more time over the summer to get more familiar with it. Certainly, the detail of some of the initiatives will need to be discussed further by us.

The Social Democrats published a housing document and there is a section included in our manifesto. We are very happy to see some aspects of what has emerged today. We sought the establishment of a housing delivery agency and I note that there is a procurement section devoted to local authorities in the Minister's Department. We will wait to see how it works, but it certainly has possibilities. The idea that a housing agency can have a procurement function is important, although it is not quite what we sought. The procurement aspect is important.

A couple of years ago we spoke about €3.1 billion being available like monopoly money. It was trotted out time and again, but it did not deliver a result. We cannot have the figure of €5.33 billion doing the same rounds; it must be more than just a figure that is spoken about. There must be practical action. There are some practical measures included in the document and it will be important for us to see how they play out.

There is a language issue. I heard it on the news again tonight that there will be the delivery of 47,000 houses. Those on the periphery will presume this means the building of 47,000 houses, but, of course, that is not what it means. It is very important that we say what will happen. Some of them will be provided under the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme-----

Deputy Simon Coveney

They are not. All 47,000 will be new social houses. It does not take in the figure for the HAP scheme; it is a separate figure of 80,000.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I am very happy to be corrected.

Deputy Simon Coveney

It is important to clarify the matter.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

It is important that the figures are as stated.

Deputy Simon Coveney

It includes building, acquisitions and bringing vacant properties back into the fold.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I thank the Minister for the clarification.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I am very happy to give way when there is such a correction. I have some concerns about the bypassing of the planning system in the way proposed. I recognise that there is a crisis, but in bypassing a system, a process can be made more expensive and difficult, as in the making of submissions. Sometimes submissions are full of good ideas. I am concerned that we could potentially lose out on good conditions that could be attached to planning permission as a result. I am also concerned that we may be circumventing the Aarhus Convention, as people are entitled to be consulted and have a role in the process of deciding on environmental issues in an area.

One of the issues we have included in our housing document, which we have brought to the Minister's attention on a number of occasions, is the favoured mixture of tenure and size, with scaling for value when the amount of houses built can reduce the cost. It appears that this is the case in what has been proposed. It is the approach that should be taken, but the only concern I have is the amount to be paid for sites by the private sector. That income will be important to build other local authority houses in other areas or to provide for the involvement of tier 3 housing associations. There are some tier 3 housing associations in my area and although there are some minor criticisms about cherry-picking, housing of a very good standard has been delivered by some of the larger organisations or associations.

Last week the Central Statistics Office indicated the sheer scale of vacant units. I accept the point made by the Minister - I have made it also - that all of these vacant units are not in the right place or perhaps in high-demand areas. Nevertheless, there are many in high-demand areas and they could be released in Dublin. We should not confuse them with local authority voids, as very often people confuse one with the other. These vacant units tend to be available in the private sector and it is a question of putting imaginative schemes in place. I noted that a number of initiatives were identified in the report and hope they will help to free some of these units. For every 1% of vacancies in the Dublin area, we could release approximately 5,000 units. They may well be suitable as student accommodation or not suitable for families, but the knock-on effect would be to release other units. I will wait to see how some of the initiatives play out, but it is important that this aspect be addressed. It is addressed to some degree in the report, but we will see how it works in practice.

There are a number of other issues. For example, there appears to be a reliance on the HAP scheme. I found it difficult in some respects in my area and it does not add to the supply. It is not a particularly sustainable approach in the longer term as we keep having to pump money into something that must be renewed over time. It is useful as a short-term initiative, but it is not a solution in the longer term. One cannot avoid the prospect of having to build a sizable number of houses into the future, probably every year for the next ten or 15 years.

The mortgage-to-rent schemes are torturous and I have dealt with a few of them.

Deputy Simon Coveney

Yes.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

We must get to grips with them if we are to get them to work. It is a very good idea if it can be made to work as there would be the least amount of disruption for a family while the equity issue was being dealt with.

There are measures relating to starter homes that are likely to be included in the budget. There are families still in what could be described as starter homes who may be inappropriately housed. For example, a family with two or three kids may be living in a two-bedroom apartment on the third or fourth floor. That group are trapped, although their housing needs appear to have been met. That group will have to be considered in the not too distant future as their living environment is not sustainable. There would be resentment if they were not given some way to move on from that accommodation to something more suitable.

There are also issues where people were victims of timing. There was a period - 2009 and 2010 - during which a group of first-time buyers were excluded from mortgage interest relief, while others who purchased either side of those years were included in the scheme. In fairness, that issue should be examined as some of the people involved may be inappropriately housed also. It just does not make sense that others who purchased either side of that period can avail of mortgage interest relief.

The Minister was correct to start the document with the section on homelessness which must be the number one priority. We all recognise the most recent escalation of homelessness primarily involved functioning families. I attended the briefing this afternoon, at which I heard the Minister's speech and noted the point about the Housing First approach. It is absolutely the right way to go, offering services and a sustainable approach into the future.

The one thing we should not do is end up in 20 years time with people saying, "We know there was a housing crisis, we can document how it came about, but they made mistakes then that we are trying to undo". Some of what I see here is attempting to get a more balanced type of housing delivery that will allow people to downsize when they are older and may need less accommodation and that younger people who need less accommodation can move to a different size of accommodation when they have a larger family.

The different types of tenure are important and I noted that the Minister will revisit the issue of long-term rentals later in the year. That type of tenure is delivered in other countries and people find the arrangement satisfactory. There is no reason a portion of our housing stock should not fall into that category. We need to get used to the idea of changing our mindset, which is that it is in some way unsatisfactory if one does not own one's home. It is a viable type of tenure as long as people can see it as their home rather than someone else's property that they are renting short term and running the risk of having to move on and, therefore, do not develop roots in their communities, etc. As long as there is that kind of security, it is a viable type of tenure and one deserving a good deal more effort. However, the Minister will address it later in the year.