Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 9 Feb 2023

Vol. 1033 No. 2

Emergency Housing Measures: Motion [Private Members]

Deputy Ivana Bacik

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

recognises that:

— not enough homes are being built, too many vacant and derelict homes remain unused, and the overreliance on the private sector has worsened the housing crisis;

— Housing for All: A New Housing Plan for Ireland has failed as it's targets are too low or non-existent, and the Government is not meeting it's own delivery targets on social and affordable housing;

and

— a generation of young people are locked out of home ownership or secure and affordable tenancies, with 92 per cent of 18-24 year olds concerned that they will never be able to afford a home, while half are considering emigration, according to the recent State of the Nation survey by Virgin Media;

notes that:

— unpublished research by the Housing Commission, provided to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in November, suggests that the baseline housing requirement each year until 2050 ranges from 42,000 to 62,000 homes;

— the Government has still not published the number of social housing units directly built last year, but has admitted it won't meet its own target;

— despite not opposing Labour's Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill in September 2021, the Government has still not removed sale of a property, nor restricted the other reasons landlords can use as grounds for eviction;

— the number of people entering homelessness continues to rise, reaching a record of 11,632 people in December, of whom 3,442 were children;

— Threshold reported that over 50 per cent of tenancy Notices of Termination outside of property sales were found to be invalid by their advisors in Q4 2022, while only 38 per cent of tenants felt secure in their home;

— the Government did introduce a €500 Rent Tax Credit, but many renters cannot claim this if their tenancy is not registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), and asking their landlord to do so may endanger their tenancy;

— the Central Statistics Office's most recent Vacant Dwelling Indicators, based on metered electricity consumption, shows a vacancy rate for dwellings of 4.3 per cent in Q4 2021, with a notable increase in apartment vacancy rates, and seven in ten vacant dwellings showing low electricity consumption for over two years, while the Census recorded 166,752 vacant dwellings in 2022; and

— the Vacant Homes Action Plan 2023-2026, published last week, includes no national targets for the number of empty and derelict homes to be brought back into use in 2023, nor does it contain Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) targets for vacant and derelict homes for each local authority; and

calls on the Government to implement the following emergency housing measures:

— extend the eviction ban until the end of 2023, and mandate the RTB to inform local authorities when a notice for eviction has been served to a tenant;

— introduce monthly reporting from each local authority on the tenant-in-situ scheme, with adequate reasons as to why the purchase of a rental property wasn't proceeded with;

— begin an emergency public house building programme using the full resources of the State, with monthly reporting on the number of housing commencements by local authorities, Approved Housing Bodies and the Land Development Agency (LDA);

— commence the rapid compulsory purchase of vacant properties by local authorities, with targets for each, and mandate the LDA to CPO and assemble small sites for owner occupier co-operative housing developments;

— introduce a mechanism to allow tenants access to the Rent Tax Credit when their landlord has not registered with the RTB, and increase resources for the RTB;

— increase the national housing targets to a minimum of 50,000 a year, and double the delivery of social and affordable housing;

— adopt and pass into law the Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill 2021, and Acquisition of Development Land (Assessment of Compensation) Bill 2021; and

— endorse and rapidly progress Labour's Housing (Homeless Families) Bill 2017, which requires local authorities to recognise and prioritise the needs of children in accordance with their best interests and constitutional rights.

I hope to share time with my colleague, Deputy Nash. I thank the Minister of State for taking the motion, which notes that not enough homes are being built; that there are too many unused, vacant and derelict homes; and that over-reliance on the private sector to address the housing crisis has only worsened that crisis. Our motion also notes that Housing for All has failed as its targets are too low or non-existent and the Government is not meeting its targets specifically on social and affordable housing. Our motion further sets the context by recognising that a generation of young people are locked out of home ownership or secure and affordable tenancies. We have seen figures indicating that 92% of those aged 18 to 24 are concerned they will never be able to afford a home and half are considering emigration. It is in that context that we move our motion calling on the Government to introduce a series of emergency housing measures to address this crisis.

We are moving this motion during a month when we are marking three years since the number of people in State emergency accommodation first reached what was seen as the critical figure of 10,000. Three years ago this month was the first time since the foundation of the State that figure was reached. That is a rather depressing anniversary, but we debate the motion against an even starker backdrop of figures. There was another record in December of 11,632 people recorded as homeless, which is well above the 10,000 mark that was in itself seen as appalling three years ago. Of those 11,632 people, 3,442 are children. That is in 2023 in what is a prosperous country, with effectively full employment, that has run budget surpluses, as we know.

Of course, we also know that this figure, staggering as it is, does not capture those who are sleeping rough, those forced to couch surf, and all those in housing insecurity. I will speak shortly about the many individuals who contacted me through my constituency office who are in that sort of housing insecurity, without any assurance or expectation that they will be able to stay in their homes into the future. That is a very serious and dire situation for people to be in, especially those with children. Hidden among the figures are the 40% of employees under the age of 35 who are not listed as homeless anywhere and are not couch surfing but continue to live with their parents in a state of suspended childhood and dependency. This is a generation locked out of home ownership and secure and affordable tenancies. All of us have met those young, and some not-so-young, people and their parents. All of us are conscious that for them, their parents, and even parents who themselves are in secure homes, that this is an untenable situation.

This is the big social issue of our times. It has huge knock-on consequences because our social protection and pension system for those in older age has always been predicated on a presumption that by retirement and pensionable age people will have reached a mortgage-free home ownership situation. Our entire social protection system is based on that premise, yet that is no longer the case for far too many people. A constituent of mine recently calculated that after 26 years of renting in Dublin, with no prospect of home ownership, they have paid more than €341,000 in rent, which is a staggering figure. That is money which is not going towards saving for retirement or paying for a home of their own. I am also hearing from pensioners in my constituency who are still renting well beyond the point where they thought they would be able to afford to buy, who are now unable to make their rent payments and are in that sort of housing insecurity I described. People in their 70s who have paid taxes and contributed for decades are contacting my office because they are facing eviction and cannot find anywhere else to live. This is unconscionable.

I will speak about children in particular. As I said, we have seen that 3,442 of those currently accessing emergency accommodation are children. No child should be in that situation of housing insecurity. No child should be faced with having to sleep rough or sleep on the streets. No child should be sent to a Garda station in the middle of the night for want of a place to go. No child should spend months on end with only a hotel room, shared with the rest of his or her family, to call home. Yet, I am hearing, as we all are, about children who are in those circumstances. I hear from so many people who are working with children in that situation, not just parents but teachers and those who are trying to pick up the pieces for those children.

We passed a referendum to enshrine children's rights into the Constitution five years ago but it has to mean something to those most vulnerable children. In 2017, the Oireachtas voted in support of the Labour Party’s Housing (Homeless Families) Bill, which would create a statutory obligation to keep families out of homelessness. It progressed to the next Stage with support from Fianna Fáil but has been left to languish since then. We included some of that Bill's provisions within some of the constructive proposals we included in the motion.

I will speak about the rental crisis and market failure. In anticipation of this debate, I looked at properties in my constituency, Dublin Bay South, on daft.ie. The most affordable two-person home I could find in that area costs €1,300 per month. That is the most affordable. It is a one-bedroom studio - just about a two-person home - with no oven and no sofa, just a bed. One notice for a single-bedroom flat for rent went up on daft.ie this morning; it has already had more than 9,000 views. I am hearing, as we all are, from people who have looked at hundreds of homes and sought to rent hundreds of places and cannot do so. I spoke previously about a constituent who was invited to bid for rent. The landlord did not set the rent but invited offers like an auction.

That was in a rent pressure zone. The market has failed. It cannot provide this fundamental human right, so we see people left queuing for hours for house viewings, living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to save for the future.

I represent a constituency where 44% of properties are rented on the private market and so many people face insecurity and being given eviction notices. The primary cause of families entering homelessness is the landlord declaring an intent to sell the property, Focus Ireland tells us. During the pandemic we saw the impact an eviction ban can have in preventing people from entering homelessness. Because of that, we have called for a temporary extension of the ban through to the end of the year, not just for its own sake but also to give breathing space to the Government to bring forward policies and measures that will provide greater security to those who may well face eviction at the end of the ban. Avoiding a deluge of evictions means bringing in emergency measures of the sort we call for in our motion.

I have heard from many landlords in my constituency too. Many of them are what we might describe as accidental landlords who own just one property that they bought to equate to a pension for themselves. They feel under threat and unfairly scapegoated, but this is not in any way about castigating or criticising individual landlords. It is about years and years of Government policy that has led us to an overreliance by the State on private landlords, many of whom are small landlords, in order to fill a gap in State provision of social and affordable housing. This is therefore not in any way about critiquing individual landlords; it is about critiquing State policy that has created that overreliance on the market.

What are the constructive measures we propose? We want to see the tenant in situ scheme ramped up. We want to see monthly reporting from each local authority on that scheme. We want to see the Residential Tenancies Board mandated to inform local authorities when a notice for eviction has been served in order that it can act to secure the home and to stop the tenant from entering homelessness. The idea of an extension of the eviction ban is to give the Government time to plan and to put in place measures to ensure that the tenant in situ scheme will work better.

It is not just renters I hear from about this scheme. Last night I received an email from a small landlord in an urban area who wants to sell up and leave the rental market. The landlord has two tenants on the housing assistance payment. The person wants those tenants to remain in that home and has sought that the local authority would buy the home in order to keep the tenants in that home. This landlord is utterly frustrated because the local authority simply refuses to buy under the scheme. The landlord has contacted the office of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and other local public representatives. The landlord says that they are trying to do what is right and do not want to make their tenants homeless but that everyone seems utterly powerless to make a decision. It is a real failure if the tenant in situ scheme does not work where landlord and tenant work together to try to make it work.

We call on the Government to do the right thing, to ramp up the tenant in situ scheme and to adopt the other constructive measures we in Labour propose in this motion to ensure we see the introduction of an emergency public house-building programme on public land, to commence rapid compulsory purchase of vacant derelict properties and to endorse and rapidly progress Labour's Bills. We have put forward a Housing (Homeless Families) Bill, a renters' rights Bill and a Kenny report Bill. That legislation, taken together, would really help to address the housing crisis.

Lastly, we are disappointed that the Government, instead of taking on board these constructive measures, has put forward a countermotion or amendment to our motion. We regret that and ask the Government to consider withdrawing its countermotion, take on our constructive proposals for change and ensure we can work together to address this utter scourge, this most pressing social issue of our time.

Deputy Ged Nash

I am pleased to second the Labour Party motion. The housing crisis is the single biggest social and, now, economic challenge facing this society. I am on record as having made that very point in recent years in this House, that housing is not alone a social challenge but also a vast economic challenge. I predicted what IBEC has said in recent weeks, that our housing challenge is now a challenge to foreign direct investment. If Ministers or the Government are not necessarily concerned about the length of the housing list, at least if they are concerned about the direction of the economy then that should force greater action in addressing our housing lists and the housing calamity we face, which is what it is. The Minister of State is only too familiar with this issue because it occupies a huge amount of his time too as a constituency Deputy. It is the biggest issue we all face in our constituency offices day in and day out and when we meet constituents on the street. Day in and day out we deal with the harrowing cases of families who simply have no place to call home, children living in homeless hubs and people worried sick about eviction notices, often dodgy ones, hitting the mat after being threatened by a landlord. They are fearful because they simply will not have anywhere to go. When they look on daft.ie they find that there are two or three properties available in the community in which they live. The trauma of a child losing the only place they have known as home from the day they were born is very real. That stays with a child and a family throughout their lives.

The provision of housing is a highly charged political issue and it is correct that it is so because it goes to the heart of how our society is organised. Our different approaches illustrate the difference between the competing philosophies across this Chamber. The Labour Party never seeks to exploit this as a political issue for mere expediency. The issue, we believe, is far too serious for narrow point-scoring, and that would do the people who need homes a huge disservice. Indeed, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, on Leaders' Questions today recognised as much in response to remarks my party colleague, the Labour Party leader, Deputy Bacik, made that the Labour Party always seeks to be constructive in respect of housing policy and housing delivery. If a policy is working, we will say so, but the Government's policy simply is not. Housing for All is not working. The very first line of the Government's amendment, which we would prefer it did not table, reads "Housing for All ... is working". It is as if the Government believes that if it repeats that enough times, it will enter the public consciousness and will somehow become fact. In anyone's language it is not working. It is not working because this Government is a record-breaker, and not in a good way. It is a record-breaker on homelessness, a record-breaker on rents and a record-breaker on house prices. In the few months since the Government was dragged kicking and screaming into introducing a short-term eviction ban, it simply has not used that time to make things demonstrably better. There has been more wasted time and more missed opportunities as the Government carries on regardless with a policy whereby housing targets are manifestly too low and too few social and affordable homes, and indeed private homes through the market, will be built while the crisis becomes a disaster for far too many people - and it is a disaster.

The silver bullet is not working and there is no shame in the Government admitting that and changing course. In doing so and accepting that, the Government could show some humility. That kind of humility, in the context of the challenge we face, would be welcomed. Even the Taoiseach, in his role as commentator on the housing calamity, accepts that the Government's targets are too low. Why is the senior Minister in the Department dragging his feet on reviewing and updating those targets, saying in response to our motion that the review will take place only once the final official census figures are available? The Minister of State knows as well as I do that the final figures are rarely discernibly different from the preliminary data, which have been available since the middle of last year, so there is nothing stopping the Government from carrying out that review now.

Our motion recognises the logic of the expert Housing Commission's analysis. We call for what we believe to be a modest but appropriate 50,000 new builds each year. That would include a doubling of delivery of social and affordable homes. That is 20,000 homes more than what the Government is prepared to admit is required.

The single most important thing the State can do to address supply and affordability and to damp down the unsustainable madness in the private rental market is to get back into the business of building high-quality public housing at scale. I looked today at the data for my local authority. One social home has been allocated in the town of Drogheda, Ireland's biggest town, with a population of 46,000, in the month of January - one social home. That is absolutely disgraceful. The list in County Louth is at 5,000 now. The social housing builds data for last year still have not been published, but we know from estimates by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform that the target is likely to have been missed by 2,500 homes. What does that mean? It means, more than likely, 2,500 renters will still be on the housing assistance payment, still with no security and left with the fear of the eviction notice. Again, that is a plan that is not working. We call again in this motion for real action on vacancy and dereliction.

Tackling vacant homes and derelict properties, the Minister of State will admit and acknowledge, is the first place we should start when it comes to housing supply. It is the very definition of low-hanging fruit. It restores communities and re-establishes local pride. Properties can be easily reconnected to services and the environmental and climate argument, as well as economic and business case, for doing so is very compelling. However, what the Government published last week was a vacant homes plan that is really hard to take seriously. Why? The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien, published a plan to bring vacant homes back into use with no targets. There are no targets for 2023 and no targets for local authorities year on year. How can we have any confidence in a plan that is devoid of targets? If the Minister was confident of his plan and his policy approach, he would put front and centre the targets required of local authorities each year and what he is prepared to do. He would be prepared to measure it. When one looks at that alongside the tokenism in the Finance Bill presented after the budget, with the announcement of a vacant homes tax which is derisory and will not bring a single home to market and a vacant sites tax which is far from punitive, then one really wonders about this Government's commitment on vacancy and dereliction. I would advise the Minister of State, officials in the Department and the Minister to take a closer look at the remarkable work done by officials of Louth County Council in recent years in terms of compulsorily purchasing vacant and derelict properties and bringing them back into use.

In the couple of minutes I have left I want to refer to the tenant in situ scheme and the matter of the eviction ban. We are all familiar with the tenant in situ scheme. We have used it and have proposed that landlords in our constituencies would use it and that the local authorities would use it to prevent people from falling into homelessness and they have done that. My understanding is that there was a limit of 200 homes for acquisition placed on the local authorities last year but that changed towards the end of the year. It is a good scheme. It has real potential but it is not being used enough. The information I have is that there is inconsistency in the application of the scheme across local authorities. It is very much dependent on the determination of a director of housing or other staff to use it and there is far too much red tape in an emergency. I am dealing with landlords at the moment who want to use this scheme but are still waiting for answers from local authorities. These are good landlords, and there is such a thing as good landlords, decent people who want to help the people living in the properties that they own. They want to move on. They may want to sell the house and are talking to local authorities but it is very difficult to move things on. I agree with the sentiments in the motion that we need monthly reporting. Again, it is about monitoring progress and monitoring developments and having the metrics so we can measure the success or otherwise of schemes. That is what makes good public policy.

In conclusion, I want to make reference to the eviction ban itself. Put simply, it needs to be extended. Why? The reason is that the same conditions that existed when the Minister was dragged, kicking and screaming, into introducing an eviction ban in the first place still exist. We have core inflation of 8%. The Minister for Finance confirmed that to me yesterday in the Dáil. He is concerned about it, as are all of us here. One way in which the Government can assist renters in very difficult situations is to ensure that the eviction ban is extended. Government should then use that time, over the next few months, to get things right because it did not use the last few months to get things right. That is why the Labour Party tabled this motion in the Dáil this evening.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Malcolm Noonan)

I move amendment No.1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"recognises that:

— the Government's Housing for All: A New Housing Plan for Ireland (Housing for All) is working, with more new homes built in 2022, the first full year of the Housing for All plan, than any year in the last decade;

— supply is key to improving our housing system and it is increasing, with almost 30,000 homes built last year, an increase of 45.2 per cent from 2021 (20,560) and 41.3 per cent from 2019 (21,134), and 5,250 or 21 per cent higher than the Housing for All target of 24,600 for 2022;

— when verified and published in the coming months, figures will show more social housing new builds were delivered in 2022 than in any year in decades, with the highest number of first-time buyers, the first ever Cost Rental units at scale, and thousands of affordable units for the first time in over a decade;

— a record €4.5 billion in State housing investment in 2023 will ensure the substantial uplift in supply in 2022 can be maintained and exceeded, with 9,100 direct build social homes and 5,500 affordable homes, investment of €1.3 billion in support affordability measures, and the delivery of more affordable purchase and Cost Rental homes in 2023; and

— having regard to progress already made, the Housing for All action plan commits to reviewing the national housing targets and projections when the full Census 2022 is published in May this year, with refreshed targets (with subsets for social, affordable and market delivery) reflecting need and demand, and scaling-up to ensure optimal levels of sustainable supply over the lifetime of the plan in line with increased capacity in the construction sector;

acknowledges that 2022 is the first full year of affordable housing delivery in a generation, and increasing the supply of affordable homes is key to improving our housing system, which will be achieved through a mix of new or extended initiatives, including the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme, Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme, the Help to Buy initiative and the expanded Local Authority Home Loan schemes;

further acknowledges that, with regards to tackling supply and affordability issues in the rental market:

— Cost Rental housing, a new form of State-backed secure, long-term rental tenure with rents targeted at a minimum of 25 per cent below open market rates, is being delivered at scale and hundreds of Cost Rental homes are now tenanted;

— the Government will commission a comprehensive review of the private rental sector, to take account of the significant regulatory changes over the past several years and secure an efficient, affordable, safe, and secure framework for landlords and tenants, and will be completed by the end of June 2023;

— tenancy protections have been enhanced, with increased rent caps in Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs), restricted deposit amounts, extended notice periods, and tenancies of unlimited duration;

— crucially, the period from the date of receipt of a 'no fault' Notice of Termination for a tenant to submit a dispute to the Residential Tenancies Board for resolution has also been increased from 28 days to 90 days; and

— to tackle accommodation shortages, the Government is strengthening regulatory controls on short-term lets with a ban on the advertising of non-principal private residences in RPZs for short-term letting purposes, where the necessary planning permission is not in place;

further recognises that, with regard to vacant properties:

— bringing vacant homes into use is a key Government priority and real progress is being made, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage last week published the Vacant Homes Action Plan 2023-2026, which outlines this progress and details new actions that will be implemented to continue to return as many vacant properties back to use as possible, increasing the supply of housing available, and revitalising local communities;

— measures already taken by the Government include expanding the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, funding full-time vacant homes officers in every local authority, exemptions to planning permissions to convert vacant commercial premises to residential use, and enhancing the Nursing Homes Support/Fair Deal Scheme to incentivise the selling or renting of unused homes; and

— while the overall trend in vacancy rates is downwards, work is continuing to bring as many vacant properties into use as possible, with measures included in the action plan such as a €150 million Urban Regeneration and Development Fund for local authorities to acquire vacant or derelict properties and sites for re-use or sale, and to ensure homes don’t lie vacant, a new local authority-led programme is being developed to help them buy or compulsory purchase vacant homes in their areas and resell them on the open market; and

furthermore acknowledges that, with regard to addressing homelessness:

— the number of people accessing homeless supports is a serious concern for the Government, and this is being actively addressed by:

— increasing social and residential housing supply, as this is key to eradicating homelessness, and guaranteed State investment of over €4 billion a year in housing is aimed at increasing supply;

— funding of over €215 million being put in place to deliver homeless prevention measures, emergency accommodation, and support households to successfully exit homelessness, an increase of 10 per cent on 2022; and

— commencing critical initiatives, which include a new voids programme with increased funding, a reinstated delegated sanction allowing local authorities pursue appropriate acquisitions, and modifications to the Repair and Leasing Scheme, opening up more opportunities to include conversion of commercial units to residential, and increasing the number of Housing First tenancies for those entrenched in homelessness;

— while Government has legislated to protect renters facing homelessness by preventing 'no fault' tenancy terminations from taking place this winter, the long-term answer to these accommodation challenges remains an increased and sustainable supply of new homes, such as through the State-led expanded social and affordable housing programmes operating under Housing for All;

— the Government continues to closely monitor the operation of the rental market and the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004-2022; and

— Housing for All recognises the particular challenges of homelessness for children and their families and sets out actions for them to exit homelessness, and work is underway to identify families experiencing long-term homelessness that have complex support needs, to provide them with enhanced tenancy sustainment supports to help them exit homelessness and maintain their homes."

Nothing is more important to this Government than tackling the housing crisis head on. I accept that challenges remain but it is also important to acknowledge the significant progress that is being and has been made since the publication of Housing for All in September 2021. The Labour Party’s motion does not recognise this progress and that is why we have put forward our countermotion today. I accept the points made by Deputies Bacik and Nash on working together, which is important. The Government is happy to give consideration to constructive proposals to address the housing crisis and any such proposals are most welcome.

Housing for All is the single biggest intervention that has been made in housing in the history of the State. The secured and sustained levels of investment are unparalleled. They will support delivery of at least 300,000 new homes by 2030. We will build on the substantial progress of 2022 and deliver more than 9,000 direct-build social homes and 5,500 affordable homes. Some €1.3 billion will be spent on affordability measures and supporting home ownership in 2023.

Increasing supply is key to resolving the challenges facing housing in this country. This Government is tackling it head-on and by any objective measure, is doing so successfully. Almost 30,000 homes were built last year. That is an increase of 45% on 2021 delivery, or an additional 5,251 new homes beyond our Housing for All target of 24,600 for the year. There remains a very strong pipeline of delivery in place for 2023 with nearly 27,000 commencement notices received in 2022 and more than 40,000 homes granted planning permission in the 12 months to September. We are ahead of our supply numbers plan to date and I am confident that this will continue right throughout 2023, despite the many challenges which we face.

The Labour Party motion calls on the Dáil to recognise that a generation of young people are locked out of home ownership or secure and affordable tenancies. However, it is important to put on the record of the House some of the key measures that have already been brought forward to address the affordability challenges faced. We have established the First Home shared equity scheme to help people who are stuck in a rental trap to buy their own home. We have expanded the local authority home loan and also extended the help to buy scheme, with up to €30,000 available for first-time buyers. We introduced a renter's tax credit worth €500 for each renter in budget 2023. The first affordable purchase homes in well over a decade were delivered through local authorities last year and the fresh start principle has been established in State housing schemes to support divorced and separated people. We have also made cost rental a reality, with hundreds of tenants now in homes with rents at least 25% below the market price. We will see a further 1,850 cost-rental tenancies come on stream in 2023.

Of course, as I said, challenges remain. The past year has seen some extraordinary challenges arising from the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising interest rates. Although Housing for All is a comprehensive plan that covers all aspects of the housing system, the Government has to be both proactive and pragmatic when it comes to emerging issues. It was important to build in provisions to make sure the plan continues to be relevant over its lifetime and a focus kept on the core issues and challenges we face. It is a living plan. To this end, we have committed to review Housing for All annually. We published the first review of the plan in November 2022. The updated plan identifies 33 priority actions to directly or indirectly support the supply of well-built, sustainable homes for people up and down the country. It will activate and accelerate the delivery of housing supply and deliver on the fundamental reforms set out in the plan.

Housing for All currently sets out annual targets of overall housing delivery to 2030. This clearly shows a building up towards 40,000 homes per year. It is disingenuous to suggest we can simply double targets and delivery overnight. That is wholly unrealistic, misleading, and helps no one. I note the Labour Party motion suggests a target of 50,000. Nobody is suggesting 30,000 homes is enough to meet our current needs but it is a significant first step as we build capacity within the construction sector to help us meet our housing needs. We have committed to reviewing Housing for All targets. Revised targets will be informed by the full census data when it published in May this year. We will take full account of the significant changes in the economic and social landscape since Housing for All only 16 months ago.

Regarding the private rental sector, the Labour Party motion calls on Government to enact the Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill 2021. The motion does not acknowledge the legislative changes the Government has already introduced to enhance tenancy protections, including capping rent increases in rent pressure zones, restricting deposit amounts, extending notice periods, and introducing tenancies of unlimited duration. There is still more that needs to be done and I acknowledge we need to increase the supply of rental properties into the sector. To help us do this, and to secure an efficient, affordable, safe and secure framework for landlords and tenants, we have commenced a comprehensive review of the private rental sector to take account the significant regulatory changes over the past several years. The review will be completed by the end of June this year.

In relation to bringing back vacant dwellings for re-use, we recently published a new vacant homes action plan and launched a new €150 million fund for local authorities to tackle vacancy and dereliction to support the plan. We introduced a new grant of up to €50,000 for vacant and derelict properties nationwide to help people with the cost of buying these homes. We are also developing a new programme to help local authorities to buy or compulsorily purchase vacant homes in their areas and resell them on the open market.

Reducing and preventing homelessness remains a top priority for the Government. Increasing supply, particularly supply of new social homes, will be key to addressing homelessness. In 2021, 9,183 social homes were delivered. When verified and published in the coming months, figures will show that more social housing new builds have been delivered in 2022 than in any year in the last half a century.

In budget 2023, we allocated over €215 million in funding to deliver homeless prevention measures and emergency accommodation and to support households to exit homelessness successfully, an increase of 10% on 2022.

We also introduced a winter eviction ban, which the Labour Party motion calls on the Government to extend to the end of 2023. We do not take these measures lightly or without fully considering their potential impact; responsible Government simply does not have the luxury of doing so.

The winter eviction ban is a short-term emergency measure. It affords time for increased housing supply to come on stream and to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants and the residential tenancies market.

While there are currently no proposals to bring forward further legislative proposals, we continue to monitor closely the operation of the rental market and the Residential Tenancies Acts and further measures that might be required while further additional supply comes on stream.

The motion also call on the Government to endorse and rapidly progress Labour's Housing (Homeless Families) Bill 2017. Housing for All recognises the particular challenges of homelessness for children and their families and sets out actions to support them to exit homelessness. The existing system provides for the emergency accommodation needs of homeless families with children. The current homeless assessment arrangements give housing authorities the flexibility to respond to the various needs of families who present to them, and housing authorities make every reasonable effort to address their accommodation needs with enhanced tenancy sustainment supports.

The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, and I, together with my colleagues across Government, fully appreciate the scale of the challenges facing the country. However, we are making substantial progress and we will continue to do so. I can assure the House we are fully committed to addressing the challenges ahead in Housing for All and that it remains central to our success.

I look forward to the contributions from Deputies. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, will close the debate for the Government.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

It would be remiss of me not to mention today that we laid to rest a former Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, who spent many years teaching children from the Oliver Bond flat complex in the north-west inner city. This inspired her to go into politics. She became Minister for Education and delivered radical reforms in that space and inspired people like me to turn to politics. Probably Deputy Nash and I were afforded the opportunity to go to third level because of her radical abolition of fees at that time.

I was inspired by what Niamh used to talk about in terms of her school life. It was similar to my own circumstances because, when it came to education, housing was everything. Niamh could only achieve so much with the children who she taught and I could only achieve so much with the children that I taught within the classroom because there was a reality outside of the school which was the homes in which these children lived. There is a middle-class middle-Ireland assumption of how every child lives and it does not equate to the most disadvantaged of communities. Even as the President brings forward this radical suggestion of the abolition of homework and others have talked about it, there is a middle-Ireland assumption of what homework is and how homework is done. I remember, in my school days and school teaching days, the reality of homework was that a child did not have the space in his or her home to do homework. They did not have a desk in their room. They had to do it lying on the floor. Often they had to do it on the stairs because of the overcrowded reality in which they were living. This was 20 years ago, around the time that Fianna Fáil had the brainwave to stop building social housing. Today when I go into classrooms and I talk to children about the nature of education and issues in society and they talk to me about homework, I talk about how sometimes it is difficult for children to do homework because of the homes in which they live. I always see a child whose head bows because he or she knows I am speaking to his or her reality. This is not only me talking about my experiences talking to children. This is me referencing cold, hard figures. The cold, hard figures from last December are that not only do we have 11,000 people in homelessness, but almost 3,500 of those are children.

The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, can only imagine the life that one will lead if one starts off life in that insecurity of homelessness. We always talk about situations in our own constituency. Last Christmas, my colleague, Councillor Brian McDonagh, and I had to deal with a situation of a mother who was giving birth and had nowhere to go when she left the maternity hospital at Christmas time. In Ireland, one of the richest countries in the world, she had nowhere to go after she had this baby and we had to intervene. We did not do media on it, we did not send out press releases on it but the reality of my office in that week was trying to get somebody with a newborn baby somewhere to live in emergency accommodation for three months.

The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and the Government will celebrate the fact that it brought in an eviction ban. The Minister of State trumpeted it in his remarks. The Government resisted it for months. We had people in the Minister of State's position who told us that it was potentially unconstitutional and that the Government had to get the Attorney General's advice. We begged the Government for months and months to bring in the eviction ban and the Government stated it was potentially unconstitutional even though it had been done in 2015. I ask the Minister of State not come here and read out successes that the Department apparently has in terms of its housing response. We begged the Government to do it and we are begging the Minister of State today to do it because we cannot have that insecurity of children, 3,500 of whom are in homelessness, insecure accommodation or insecure rental situations whose mothers and fathers are telephoning us saying that they cannot live like this. The Minister of State will be aware that Barnardos says that 29% of parents are skipping meals to feed their children. Therefore, we have insecurity of food on top of insecurity of housing and the Minister of State is playing around with language about an eviction ban. Let us do now, today, what the Minister of State knows he will do anyway, that is, extend the eviction ban to the end of the year. I ask the Minister of State to realise the nature of the grinding punishment we are all meting out on children when they start their lives like this. It is just not fair.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

The Minister of State knows too well that this House has debated housing more than any other issue in the past couple of years. If only words could build houses. We are tabling another motion tonight because, despite all the plans, the schemes and all the announcements that have been rehearsed again tonight in the Minister of State's speech, the situation for families and individuals in all our constituencies remains dire and everybody in this House knows that.

Housing is the number one issue. It is the one issue we face every day in all our constituency offices - people facing eviction. People with decent jobs who have a decent income are coming into us but it is impossible to find a place to rent. There is fear in their eyes when they are talking to you and you know in your heart there is probably nothing you can do for them. These are people on low and fixed incomes desperate to find a place to live and knowing, looking at the rental cost around them, that would be impossible. I spoke to one retired man this week who has been a long-term renter with a decent landlord. He understood and accepted that the landlord needed to sell the house but after years of living in the house that was his home, this retired person on a pension has now been thrown into a market that is hopeless for him. He only looks at what can be afforded. He went to one place and he told me that it was like a converted shed. That was the only place that was in his price range. That is shocking.

The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, means well and what he said is genuinely an attempt to solve the problems but his approach this evening, and that of the senior Minister, in tabling an amendment here is quite shocking. It is unacceptable. It is a self-congratulatory amendment, instead of saying that we have a collective problem that we need to resolve and what can we all do collectively putting our shoulders to the wheel to bring immediate relief to as many people as possible. It is not business as usual in this.

Responding to our eight specific proposals with a self-congratulatory amendment is to deny the crisis that we all know is real for our people. All is not well. The schemes and announcements are not working.

I wish to focus on our proposal No. 4. We can see vacant and derelict properties in all our villages, towns, cities and rural areas. I could bring the Minister of State on a tour of Wexford and point them out. Some have been derelict for years on end, including large buildings like former convents. We need a sense of urgency about bringing these back into useful service as homes for our people. We need to set real targets for local authorities, with an underscored demand that they must be met - in essence, a mobilisation of the State, both local and national, in the same way and with the same intensity, zeal and focus that was brought to bear in dealing with the Covid crisis. That is what is needed as well as everything else.

The policies of the Government will, over time, bring results, but we also need to solve the problems that people are experiencing now. The anguish in the eyes of the people the Minister of State and every other Deputy, including me, are meeting in our constituencies needs to be met with real solutions and a sense of urgency. I ask that the Minister of State revert to his senior colleague and ask him to withdraw the self-congratulatory amendment that all is well and all the schemes are marvellous and working, denying the reality we know is facing many people on the ground. Instead of that amendment, the Minister should take these eight proposals from the Labour Party and a dozen more from Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and everyone else to solve the problem collectively as best we can. If that national sense of urgency and commitment was brought to bear in the same way as we faced down Covid and previous economic crises, we would have done a good day's work today.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I thank the Labour Party for introducing this motion and giving us the opportunity to have this important debate. While there might be some minor differences on the details of the policy proposals, we are more than happy to support the motion.

I do not know where to start. At an earlier stage in this Dáil, I was one of many on the Opposition benches who would have given the Minister of State the benefit of the doubt. I would have said he was a decent person who meant well, but what he is saying is not true. Even he does not believe the remarks he read out. The fact that he could hardly make eye contact with any of us as he read the script he was given demonstrates that he does not believe it. He said that substantial progress had been made. Let me describe that substantial progress. The Government has been in office for two and a half years, which will be half of its term if it goes for the full term, and the situation has never been worse. House prices are higher than they have ever been and they are continuing to rise. Private sector output exceeded its expectations last year, but commencements were down in the last quarter of the year and it is unlikely that we will see much progress this year. Rents have never been as high and are still rising, and for six years in a row, the private rental sector is contracting. There is no action or plan from the Government to address any of this.

This week, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage launched yet another glossy brochure - 32 pages long, it was issued late in the evening - telling us about all of the progress in quarter 4 of last year except for two crucial points. There was no update on social housing targets for 2022 and there was no update on affordable housing delivery. For all his sins, the former Minister, Mr. Eoghan Murphy, at least included the figures when he published his quarterly updates and he put himself in front of a committee for questions, which is something that the current Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, studiously avoids doing.

When we get the figures, we will know that it will not have been the case that the Government exceeded the historic high of social housing output of 1975, when 8,800 real social homes were added to the stock. At most, the Government hit 7,500. According to the Minister and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, it was 6,500. I suspect it was somewhere between the two. Regardless, it will have been far off the highest number of real social houses in the past 50 years.

Regarding affordable housing, it actually looks like the Government might not have delivered a single affordable purchase home last year. In my constituency, some had been lying vacant since August, but because the Department could not sort out conveyancing and legal issues with the banks, they were not purchased until the start of this year. The cost-rental scheme is in crisis. It will not have met its targets last year and will not this year either.

Not only have we the highest levels of official homelessness, but all other categories of homelessness have gone through the roof as well. Approximately 18,000 people are in various forms of emergency accommodation funded by various Departments or none at all. This is not even to mention the rough sleepers. The fact that homelessness is increasing at a time when the Government has introduced a ban on evictions should send alarm bells ringing like never before. We know the reasons for this. We are not getting a consistent approach to the tenants in situ scheme. We have not had the circular from the Minister to local authorities insisting on the presumption to buy that I called for last year. The tenants in situ scheme is not being extended to cost rental so that residents in properties like Tathony House can avoid eviction. Crucially, we are not getting an emergency response from the Government mobilising emergency powers in planning, suspending procurement rules and using new building technologies to increase and accelerate additional social housing units during the period of the ban. Mr. Eoghan Murphy was no great housing Minister, but at least when he applied a ban on evictions, it was also a ban on notices to quit. The current Minister could not even do that. Not only will there be a cliff edge come 1 April for the notices in the system, but the fact that landlords have been able to continue issuing "no fault" evictions during that period means the cliff edge will be deeper and more dangerous for thousands of people.

We need an emergency intervention. We need the kinds of measures outlined in this motion, including the extension of the ban on evictions. Crucially, we need increased and accelerated delivery of social housing. If we do not get that quickly, we will be looking at official homeless figures of 12,000 or 13,000, never mind all the other people the Government refuses to count and acknowledge in its figures.

It is time for the Minister to spend less time launching glossy brochures that tell us nothing, tinkering around the edges with existing schemes and avoiding Oireachtas scrutiny in this Chamber and at our committee and to accept that his plan is failing and we need a change in approach. Without that, the situation will not only not get better. It will get much worse.

Deputy Martin Browne

I thank Labour for tabling this motion.

Despite me pointing it out in the Chamber a number of times, the fact that the number of people who are classed as homeless is an under-representation remains unchanged. If the Government's figures are based on those who fit the criteria to be considered homeless by local authorities, it is falling short of the mark. In Tipperary alone, the county council is doing its best to provide for people in need of emergency housing, but there is a feeling that we are just treading water. Last year, Tipperary County Council was made aware of 300 notices to quit, which has been described as a large number by the local housing authority. This is the kind of pressure the council is under.

There has been no real progress in the homeless figures in Tipperary. Whatever spin the Minister may like to put on it, people are still struggling. It is fair to say that the opportunity to make an impact on homeless numbers that the eviction ban offered him has not been used effectively. There has been no improvement for people in Tipperary or nationally. The figures have continued to increase.

We have been consistent in calling for a three-year ban on rent increases and a full month's rent back into every private renter's pocket. That call stands and is needed now more than it ever was, but our policy of accelerating the delivery of social and affordable housing must accompany it. The Government's target has been missed three years in a row. Its housing targets need to be revised. Social and affordable housing targets must be increased to at least 20,000 per year. This means increasing direct capital investment to councils and approved housing bodies in order to deliver 12,000 social houses and 8,000 genuinely affordable houses per year. As part of this, we need at least 4,000 affordable purchase homes per year.

Another issue that the Minister needs to address is the anomaly in the increase in income thresholds for social housing. Tipperary is an outlier, with lower thresholds than nearly all of the counties surrounding it. This puts home hunters in Tipperary at a disadvantage. It makes no sense for one county to have a different rate applied to it than is applied to the surrounding counties. The county council wants its threshold increased.

The Minister of State will be aware of this request and I ask him to consider it again.

People need permanent social homes. We can see the result of the haphazard approach taken by the Government and its predecessors, highlighted by the fact that, despite an eviction ban being in effect, homelessness continues to increase. The Government failed to reach its initial 2022 social housing targets. For the sake of the people in my constituency and around the country, the Government must put its party political misgivings aside, listen to the solutions offered on this side of the House and act in the interest of the 11,632 people who are classed as homeless and the others we have not even included in this data.

Deputy Patricia Ryan

Despite what the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, think, there is a severe crisis in housing. Despite very low targets, councils are struggling to provide homes. There are almost 7,000 people on the housing waiting list in Kildare, with a wait of ten to 12 years. My office is inundated with inquiries from people who are couch surfing, travelling between friends and relatives on different nights of the week to get a few hours sleep. There are 52 properties for rent advertised on daft.ie today in Kildare, none of which are within standard limits for a housing assistance payment. There are ten properties in Laois and 11 in Offaly, again none of which are within the HAP limits.

We are in this crisis because successive Governments have treated a roof over someone's head as a commodity to be left to the mercy of the market. Homes should be provided on the basis of need, not greed. It is clear that subsidising landlords through the housing assistance payment is not working and landlords are finding many ways to avoid accepting HAP tenants. We are all aware of this from our offices. Social and affordable housing targets have been missed for the third year in a row. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage failed to spend hundreds of millions of euro allocated to it last year. We in Sinn Féin have solutions.

I and my colleague, Teachta Ó Broin, have met Kildare County Council. It is up for the challenge, but needs quicker funding decisions, less red tape and more certainty. There are too many subsidies for developers. It is time to change the focus to first-time buyers, those in second relationships and people who are struggling to find a roof over their heads. Social and affordable housing targets must be increased to at least 20,000 units a year. Renters need help. Rents are too high. In government Sinn Féin would introduce a three year ban on rent increases and put a full month's rent back into every private renter's pocket. We will treat homelessness like the emergency it is and accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes. We must move away from the mistakes of the past. We must again build public homes on public land.

Deputy Paul Donnelly

Despite the claims of the Minister of State and the Government that Housing for All is working, it is clear that it is not. Every metric we have heard today shows that it is not. The social and affordable housing targets, even with them being too low, are being missed. It is now the third year in a row they have not been met. We all know that is completely unacceptable. We must increase the amount of social and affordable housing. That is clear. We must increase those targets to at least 20,000 properties. We must fund local authorities to do that job. It is clear the private sector is not capable of doing it.

As has been said, Sinn Féin would protect renters. A message was sent to me a few minutes ago from a site that shows a room being rented with plastic sheeting as the wall. That is where we are at the moment. That is what the rental market looks like. People are so desperate they are renting anything because the only alternative is the streets. We need the ban on evictions to be extended. In all our offices we have people coming to us on a weekly basis, terrified about what they are facing at the end of March, beginning of April because they know there is nothing out there for them. It is critical the ban be extended.

I will give one caveat. I have a constituent who rented her home when she emigrated. She has come back to work in one of the areas we need people to come back to. A caveat is needed for people who return from outside the country. They must be outside the eviction ban, but the person who is in that kind of home should be given a special provision or support from the council to avoid them ending up homeless. A few caveats are needed, especially that one as it is difficult to deal with.

We need emergency legislation to deal with planning for social and affordable housing and to look at different building methods to ensure it can be done as quickly as possible. We are doing it currently. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman's office is using special legislation to do that. It is something we must consider for the provision of social and affordable housing. People are angry. We see people on the streets every day. They are angry about the housing situation. They are misdirecting some of their anger because it should be directed here, at those seats opposite me. That is where the blame lies for people in homelessness and for people not being able to afford to buy or rent a home. It lies with the people who have been in power for the past two and half or three years. We have been told the housing crisis has been solved. It is clear it has not. Tens of thousands of people cannot afford anywhere to live. That must be solved and it must be done quickly.

Deputy Chris Andrews

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. It is important for those living in the flats across inner city Dublin, for the people living in Nicholas Street, Ross Road and Bride Street. So many people have lost so much because of the overcrowded conditions in their homes. Flats are overcrowded and neglected by the Government. Two and three generations are living under one small roof. Dampness and mould are impacting many people. The Government is overwhelmed by the issues facing residents living in the likes of Leo Fitzgerald House and Digges Street. If it was not overwhelmed, the Government would do something about it, but it is not doing anything. There are no signs that it is committed to changing the lives and conditions of people living in flat complexes. There is very little evidence to suggest that is the case.

The Government is happy to increase the number of people living in inner city communities, but it has no interest in increasing the facilities and services available to those same local communities. Neglect of inner city communities will be the legacy of this Government. Neglect of those living in flat complexes will be the legacy of this Government. Investment in inner city communities and in the flat complexes is needed. We need direct intervention by the Government to co-ordinate and ring-fence funding for the redevelopment of the flat complexes. We also need to focus on the delivery of social and affordable homes, as has been mentioned. Not enough is being done to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable housing.

Residents are concerned about the slow rate of development of the Ringsend and Irishtown Glass Bottle site. I met the Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group last night. It is concerned that the affordable homes will not be affordable. Prices of apartments on the Glass Bottle site that have been mentioned are in the region of €650,000. That is hardly affordable. With the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, due to be dissolved in 2025, residents request that the 20% stake NAMA has in the Glass Bottle Site be transferred to Dublin City Council and ring-fenced for affordable homes on the Glass Bottle site in order to nudge the cost towards affordability. Will the Minister of State commit to this happening? It is doable and it must be done.

I also reiterate the many calls for the extension of the eviction ban. Today my office received four calls from tenants who are facing eviction at the start of April. People talk about a cliff. It is scary for people. People are at their wits' end and it will be unacceptable if the Government does not extend the eviction ban.

Deputy Dessie Ellis

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this timely motion and I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this important issue. Many renters now find themselves in a precarious position as the deadline for the end of the eviction ban is fast approaching. It is set to end on 1 April 2023.

People are feeling fearful and vulnerable and for many the uncertainty as to whether they will have a place to live after March is putting them under undue stress and anxiety. Without question, there needs to be an extension of the eviction ban. This is crucial and the Government will recognise that this has to happen, in particular at a time when unprecedented numbers of men, women and children are homeless.

We are also now living in a time of misinformation and extreme prejudice which can only increase if more families are forced out of their rental properties into homelessness should the eviction ban not be extended. An increase in the number of homeless families will only feed into the lies, misrepresentation and misinformation being spread by extreme right-wing elements. More people potentially going into homelessness and fewer properties being available to rent as landlords leave the rental sector when the ban ends will only add fuel to the fire of an already volatile situation, which will be exploited by right-wing elements. If the Government is not already aware of this, it should be and should take measures to avoid such a situation occurring.

One obvious measure is to extend the eviction ban. However, these problems have existed for a long time and the Government policy, Housing for All, is failing and missing its target for the delivery of the large-scale social and affordable projects that are urgently needed. The Government is in denial about this.

People are emigrating because of the cost-of-living and affordability crises. Perhaps the Government should take notice of that, because it is the most common thing people say when emigrating. For years, we have had a dysfunctional housing system with tens of thousands of people on housing waiting lists for up to 15 years. The rental sector is contracting by the week as landlords leave it. Those properties available to rent often carry exorbitant rents which are out of the reach of most people. Action is required to tackle runaway rents by imposing a three-year ban on rent increases. I urge the Minister of State and his party to act and address, as a matter of urgency, the serious concerns I have outlined and not bury their heads in the sand in denial.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion, which the Social Democrats will support. It contains a number of sensible proposals and measures which we are happy to support. We would go a little bit further in some areas, but that is a matter of detail.

The fact that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has not shown up for this important debate says a lot about his attitude to the housing crisis and disaster. The fact that we are not surprised he has not shown up shows how he has engaged with the Oireachtas since becoming Minister. He made a rare appearance at the Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage to deal with Estimates, but he will not come to the committee to provide updates or answer questions. On that occasion, I asked him how much money from this year was unspent and sent back to central Exchequer funds. He would not provide an answer. I submitted a written question on that, which he has not answered. Today, I asked him about it in the Dáil and he would not answer.

Thankfully, due to a report published by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, we have an estimate that €241 million from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage was unspent in 2022 and is being returned to Exchequer funds. The Department and Minister would not answer questions on that, despite the fact I asked the Minister today whether the figure was accurate. Thanks to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Parliamentary Budget Office, we have those figures. The Department and Minister should answer that question. We have the right to know about that and have accountability from the senior Minister.

What could we have done in 2022 if the €240 million that is being returned to central Exchequer funds had instead been spent on building housing? Affordable purchase homes can be constructed with a subsidy of about €50,000, which means we could have delivered almost 5,000 such homes for people all over the country, homes which are badly needed.

I will put that in context. One of the most successful affordable purchase housing schemes in this country, Marino, was built 100 years ago. It is in my constituency and is an incredibly successful and cohesive community to this day. It was well planned and designed. The money that is being sent back to the Exchequer this year which the Minister failed to spend is the equivalent of four Marinos being delivered. Let us think of the difference that would make to our housing disaster and the families who would benefit from such housing. Families would no longer worry about being evicted from the private rental sector and uprooting their children from school and then having to make new friends and settle into a new school. If the money had been spent, rather than being returned to central Exchequer funds, it would have made a significant difference.

That €241 million does not include the €340 million we know for certain was not spent in 2022 and is instead being carried over into 2023. What could we have done with that? Social homes are delivered by a mix of loans from the Housing Finance Agency and direct capital funding. The money could have provided in the region of 4,000 social homes. What a difference that would make to people in insecure HAP tenancies, those paying rents in the private rental sector they cannot afford and people living in box rooms, overcrowded conditions and in homeless emergency accommodation, all of whom could have moved into social housing tenancies. The €340 million that was not spent and was instead carried over into this year could and should have made a significant difference to all of those individuals and families. It could have taken pressure off the private rental sector and benefited everyone else.

How on earth does the Government justify leaving hundreds of millions of euro that should have been spent on housing last year unspent? There is, of course, no mention of that in the Government's counter motion or contribution to the debate, which was self congratulatory and told us how great it is. It is a slap in the face of everybody affected by the housing disaster that the money was not spent and invested in building homes that could have removed people from stress.

The Government's countermotion and comments during the debate stated Housing for All is working. How could the Minister of State say that? We have the highest ever rents, house prices and number of people living in homeless emergency accommodation. We have the highest ever number of people in their 20s and 30s still stuck in their childhood bedrooms. We have the highest ever amount of money left unspent by any Government that was allocated for housing. They are appalling records on housing, yet the Minister of State has told us Housing for All is working. How can he say that?

We continuously heard the Government narrative from the Taoiseach before Christmas, and again yesterday, that there is a housing problem everywhere and the grass is not greener for people who go elsewhere. Even yesterday, the Taoiseach said there is a problem all over Europe. It is classic deflection. There is a housing problem in other countries, but to suggest it is as bad as here is simply not true.

Not only are rents more expensive in Dublin than in any other capital city in the European Union, data published by EUROSTAT show that the highest rent increases relative to house prices over the past 12 years anywhere in the European Union have been in Ireland.

The narrative that the problem is everywhere and Ireland is the same is not true.

The answer is staring us in the face. You can walk out of here into neighbourhoods and communities close by that were built successfully as public housing in decades gone. The answer is clear in terms of what can be done regarding building social and affordable purchase housing.

The amendment to the motion tells us there will be a commission and a comprehensive review of the private rental sector. The Government has been in office for two and a half years and we have seen all the difficulties in the private rental sector so why is it only telling us now that it will look at this? Where is the action?

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

Many damning facts and statistics show the shameful failure of this Government to address the diabolical housing and homelessness crisis in this country. I will use some of my time to tell the Ministers of State about the human reality of their failures and the misery it is inflicting on people. Watching this debate at the moment is a woman called Jackie. Jackie and her husband are in their late 50s. He worked all his life and worked for a semi-State body. They have two teenage daughters, one of whom has special needs. Tomorrow they are going to be in court in front of a judge. It will probably be the first time they have ever been in front of a judge. The landlord who is evicting them on grounds of sale is seeking a District Court enforcement order to evict them. I want to underline that this eviction, and they are terrified, is happening during a so-called eviction ban. They have done nothing wrong and have paid the rent all their lives but are being evicted from the home in which their children were born and where they have lived since the 1950s. They have no options. Their income means they are over the social housing threshold so they are not entitled to HAP. They are not entitled to be on the council housing list. It is even questionable - because we have come across this and it is uncertain at the moment - whether they will be entitled to emergency accommodation because some local authorities think they are not. They have gone to the banks to see whether there is any chance they could get a mortgage to buy the home that is being sold from under them only to be told that as they are in their late 50s and will be retired when they reach 65 or 66, the banks will only give them a seven-year mortgage that they obviously could not afford to service and therefore, that is not an option for them. We rang the council to ask if there was any mortgage scheme whereby the council could help finance them to help them buy the house from the landlord who is selling it when they have lived there all their lives to be told "No". Every door is shut. They are looking on. They had hoped the senior Minister would be present. I have raised their case on multiple occasions. Jackie has just texted me now to see if there is any chance that a miracle, to use her phrase, might be found before the court hearing tomorrow because otherwise, the family will be living in their car. That is the extent of the failure.

The Government now calls it the tenant in situ scheme. It has all these names; it is great. I have been asking for this for four years. I did not call it the tenant in situ scheme but I have been calling for local authorities to purchase houses when people were threatened with eviction through no fault of their own. One of the cases that led me to make that call about three or four years ago was the case of St. Helen's Court, where a vulture fund was evicting people. The sale still has not happened despite negotiations taking place. In situations like this, it is again a case of saying sorry but as they are over the social housing threshold, there is no scheme for that so the authority will not and cannot buy. This is unbelievable. You cannot tell people in that situation that you are sorry but you have nothing for them and they can go and sleep on the side of the road but that is what they are being told, so please deliver the miracle that Jackie, her husband and her two children need because they are terrified about what they are facing tomorrow morning.

Another case I raised - I do not how many times - involves a young woman with a teenage son in emergency accommodation. They are sharing one bedroom between them. This woman works for a State agency looking after vulnerable children and has been in emergency accommodation for four years yet there is nothing for her because she is a bit over the threshold. They tried to evict her at one stage and we had to fight like billyo to stop her from being evicted from emergency accommodation. There was nothing on offer for her.

Another case involves a couple. The husband was working but then got early-onset Alzheimer's disease, so he cannot work any more. Prior to him getting Alzheimer's disease, they had a HAP tenancy and had to pay a top-up on that. When he was working, they could afford it but now he has Alzheimer's disease, he cannot work, his wife cannot afford the top-up and so they are falling into arrears through no fault of their own but will the Government scheme allow the council to increase the money to pay the rent so this couple do not fall into arrears, which they are now falling into? The answer is "No, sorry, the scheme doesn't allow it." So what is going to happen to them? You can add to that all the people who are paying top-ups. Every time the 4% or 2% happens, the tenants must swallow that up in top-up payments because the Government will not increase the payment. As the new HAP thresholds only apply to new tenancies, the gap between what people are supposed to be able to pay and what they are actually paying is growing all the time, leading to more people getting into trouble with arrears and it is a case of being told "Sorry, but the scheme does not allow it". There is no flexibility.

The question is very simple. Does the Government have a commitment to stop people ending up homeless? It really is as simple as that. It can be as simple as deciding that we are not going to allow this to happen. It is not just about the eviction ban, which should be a no-brainer, although I have just told the House about the many people to whom it does not apply. The Government's position and the instructions to local authorities should be very simple. It should be that we are not allowing anybody to end up homeless and we are going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that does not happen. Nobody should be put through this misery.

I have a pile of cases involving people with extreme medical conditions. There are people whose children have desperate medical conditions and who are seeking multiple consultants and are dealing with the most horrendous situations you could imagine but when they put in for medical priority, it takes ages. Do you know how long it takes to process medical priority applications in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown? It takes about nine months. The suffering people are going through is incredible. The Government could do something about this but it is not doing it. I appeal to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, to do something about these cases. The Government should stop people being evicted into homelessness, control rents and do something about empty properties. The Government could do these things if the will was there but sadly it is not.

Deputy Seán Canney

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important subject, which is affecting everybody across this country. I will first declare an interest by saying that I am a landlord. The biggest issue with housing at the moment is supply. If we are going to build more houses, we need to beef up the local authorities because that seems to be the way we are going - local authorities will deliver housing. We need to beef up their resources so they can get on with acquiring the lands locally, developing the projects and getting them built.

The Minister of State is new in the position and I congratulate him on getting it. It is important also he remove some of the approval processes. If a local authority comes up with a scheme, that scheme should be devolved to the local authority to be allowed to get on with it. The Department should let it go from A to Z to tender without having to come back to the Department every time it makes a move, appoints a design team that has to get approval, or applies for the planning permission to get approval to go to the next stage. That is farcical. It was needed at a time when we were trying to slow things down because we had no money. We now need to get on with it. Money is not the problem.

The housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, as it stands, is not fit for purpose. It is not providing enough money to the tenants given rents are rising. Once somebody goes onto HAP, he or she leaves the housing list, which is not right or fair. Moreover, the landlord is then left in a situation where if the tenant does not pay the money, the landlord will not be paid at all. I have dealt with cases where landlords have been left for years without getting rent because of the farcical way in which evictions can be carried out. I do not agree there should be an eviction ban because it is not landlords who are the problem. The problem is the lack of supply, and we have to get our heads around that and take off the shackles of all these processes if we are to deal with this as an emergency.

We have to accept this situation with housing is every bit as bad as Covid. It is causing mental stress and significant problems throughout the country. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has been given the task of delivering on the national development plan. If he and the Minister for Finance will agree with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to remove all these gateway approvals for housing, and for health facilities as well, we will go some way towards speeding up the process to get more houses built. Galway County Council is doing a great job and building houses, but it could build a lot more if it had more resources in terms of staff and moneys being devolved to it in order that it could get on with it. A housing scheme that is about to go out to tender for a design team will not see construction start for at least three years. That is no good and it does not work.

It is important we agree that whatever we do, it will be back to supply. We do not need blame games. Too many people are suffering because of what is going on. I do not agree with everything stated in the Labour Party motion but it gives us an opportunity to speak about housing. Likewise, I do not agree with the Government amendment, because I think it is just saying the Government is doing a great job. This is an emergency and a crisis, and while Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers are coming in at the volume they are, we have an issue with accommodating all the people we have here. We also need to expand Croí Cónaithe.

I will leave it at that because I am out of time.

Deputy Verona Murphy

I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment. I have not had the opportunity to address him in his position. He is a man of some knowledge, having spent a long time in the political sphere.

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion, even though I do not agree with much of it. Nevertheless, we are discussing a very important topic. The reason I do not agree with most of the motion is that, like so many of our debates on housing, it does not address the underlying problem that is the biggest part of why there is not enough housing, namely, planning policy. Every councillor in the country, including Labour Party councillors, has either drafted and passed county development plans or is in the process of doing so. What we have in this country is a one-size-fits-all planning policy, but outside the M50 a high-density planning policy does not suit rural Ireland. That is where our viability issue is.

I asked the Secretary General in the Department how much it costs to build a two-bedroom apartment. All we get at minimum densities, which are high density in the countryside, at 35 dwellings per hectare, are terraced housing and apartments. We need front and back gardens and we have the room for them. We have the space to live but this is the policy that is being dictated. The Secretary General did not know the answer by the way, but without site costs it costs €250,000 to build a two-bedroom apartment, versus just €150,000 for a two-bedroom house. How does it make sense that we insist on this policy in the middle of a crisis when the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, is now saying it is unlikely to be able to build the 1,214 houses it has prepared for because of commercial viability. The issue of viability has developed because of all the planning policy and all the neglect for the past ten years when houses were not being built. Our planning policy, our entire procedure, is a mess.

That is not the Minister of State's fault - he is new in his position - but it has developed over successive governments. I hope he, as a new Minister of State, is going to address this issue. I assure him we can afford the land, particularly in Wexford, to have front and back gardens. Why would we build four-storey apartments with no lift shafts? Fifty-six-year-old people will turn into 76-year-old people, their hips or knees will go and then they will not be able to climb stairs.

The two young departmental officials sitting beside the Minister of State will probably never own houses because if it costs €250,000 to build an apartment without site costs, it probably will not be able to be sold for less than €350,000. Who will get a mortgage for a two-bedroom apartment at that level? That leaves only one entity to buy those apartments, namely, the county councils, which means we will just corral those in society who cannot afford to buy their own home into high-density settings that will become ghettos because the county councils are well known for not maintaining their properties, especially at this juncture.

I do not want to get into our history of high-density settings. We pulled them down and now we are building them back up. We are making the same mistakes again. The Government is not listening. It is not trying to resolve the problem but is throwing money at it. Eight hundred modular homes, at a cost to the State of just short of €1 billion, will not cut the mustard. It is a dereliction of duty on the part of the Government. We could build houses more cheaply. We will never produce those modular homes in this country. It is insane that we would go down that road when all we have to do is look at our planning policy and make the changes that will incentivise development and ensure the commencement of planning that has been granted.

Deputy Thomas Pringle

I thank the Deputies from the Rural Independent Group for allowing me to use their allotted time given they are not using it during this debate. I thank also the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion. I fully support its calls to begin an emergency public housing building programme using the full resources of the State and to commence a rapid compulsory purchase of vacant properties by local authorities. We all know, however, that is not going to happen. Unfortunately, these proposals always falls on deaf ears when they reach the Government's side of the House.

Some Deputies have suggested the Government is not doing things right but I think it is. It is doing things right as it sees it, and that is the crux of the problem. It does not see itself as having a role to provide housing for people who need it or who have incomes that put them above the limit. If it did, it could change those limits and include those people in the housing need, but it is not interested in that. It is interested, however, in providing money for private developers to build houses and so on, which is what it does, but it is failing even at that at the moment because they gave those huge sums back to the Minister last year because they had not been spent. The Government is failing miserably, in the most horrible way, given it significantly affects everybody's life. All we had to do was listen to what Deputy Boyd Barrett had to say, the cases he cited and the examples he gave. It reflected a lack of empathy and care that has allowed that to happen, and that is the difference. It is why we are in this situation and that is sad, but that is the reality. Until we get rid of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael from government, there will be no change in that situation.

That is the reality.

The housing situation in this country has become so dire, it is no wonder that so many young people are making the decision to move away. The Financial Times recently reported 495 homes were available to rent in Dublin on 1 July and only 35,000 nationwide. This is half the level that was available in 2016. This problem has been around for a long time. It has been known what to do but the Government is not doing anything. Nationwide rents rose by an average of 14.1% in the third quarter of last year compared with the same period in 2021, according to Daft.ie. This is the highest increase since it began tracking rents in 2005. Again, the Government knew this was happening and the Government did nothing.

In parts of the west of Ireland, property prices rocketed more than 16% in the year to October. It is devastating to see how this housing crisis is affecting parts of Donegal. I have constituents coming to me week after week unable to buy and left with nowhere to rent. People are in housing that is in no way adequate for them. There are disabled children or people with large numbers of children. There are people earning €28,000 a year and they cannot get on the housing list. The Government should be ashamed of itself. Those people are being left behind and I have to sit there in the office and say to them that there is nothing I can do. There is nothing I can tell them. Go away. That is a fucking disgrace but that is the reality of the situation.

There is no doubt that Housing for All has failed, and very badly failed. The announcement by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, that the return of these 78 vacant homes in Donegal has a positive impact on communities is completely misleading, as written here, but really I think it is bullshit. These vacant homes did not go anywhere, they were still owned by the council, they were just left inactive which never should have been the case in the first place. In reality, 78 houses will make no difference when there are 2,600 people on the housing waiting list. And that figure is conservative because the council massages the figures down to make it look a bit better for the Government. If the people who could not afford houses and could not afford to provide themselves with housing were actually included in the list there could easily be 10,000 on the housing list in Donegal. That is the sign of the failure of this Government and successive governments to deal with the issue. This goes back to before the troika came into Ireland. The troika and the bailout programme accelerated the problem but they did not start it. The problem started in the 1980s with the sell-off of houses and the move out of the direct supply of housing. Every party that was in government since that time has participated in that and has allowed it to happen. It has only been accelerated because of the financial crash.

All that is needed is a change in emphasis and a change in the thought process to change how it will be dealt with. Nothing will be dealt with or these issues cannot be sorted out over night or anything. Nobody is saying that they will be, but the emphasis of how we deal with things would change and it would make a huge difference to people’s lives. It would make a very real difference to people’s lives. This is costing a hell of a lot more than just not providing houses. What about the mental health difficulties of those people suffering? What about the health difficulties? That all adds a cost onto the State as well. However, the State is going to privatise the health services anyway so that will not be important for the Government either so it is working out okay.

The problem is that the Government does not recognise that there is a problem. That is just the way it is. That would be fair enough if it even had the decency to come out and say that, and that there is not a problem. At least then it would be standing up for its own policies and how it looks at things and how it sees they can be done but the Government does not even have the courage to do that. It does not have the courage to stand over its own policies. It feigns caring all the time but we know that it does not because if it did care, then it could actually change it and do it very quickly and it would make a huge difference.

This only reflects the number that meet the incredibly low social housing income level thresholds. It does not reflect the thousands more that are desperately searching for somewhere to live in the county, or the thousands more that will be looking in the near future as houses with defective blocks continue to crumble in Donegal and around the country as the issue comes home to roost. Again, the Government policy was to facilitate developers and builders and to sacrifice citizens and that is what it did. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. The Government is saying that the lack of regulation was a lot cheaper but in fact it was not because we are paying for it now, that is for sure.

There is no doubt that the current housing targets of the Government are far too low. Donegal County Council is planning to deliver just 1,300 housing units by 2026, half of the current demand and we know this will only continue to rise.

The CSO says that property prices nationally have increased 130% since early 2013, yet the Minister fails to do anything to help those looking to buy and rent in this country. It is time something is done and this is why I am supporting this motion. Unfortunately, it is time for the Government to move off. That is the only thing that will start a change to the process and a change that would allow people to have houses and to get houses.

Deputy Joan Collins

The housing situation is a crisis for everyone in the country. More and more people are feeling it. It is just getting worse. Doctors and nurses cannot find homes. Some 70% of young people are considering having to leave the country. High rents and mortgages are affecting families all over the country and we have over 11,500 people in emergency accommodation. That is the highest figure ever recorded. The number of people in emergency accommodation is an absolute scandal. How can the Government say that Housing for All is working when those figures have gone up, especially when we had an eviction ban in that time?

Lack of housing is first and foremost a class issue. It always affects the people in society with the least and who are the most vulnerable. Working class people and communities feel it first and feel it worst. This is while the Government gives away billions of euro in HAP payments to private landlords and sells our public land for a few meagre social housing units in return.

I listened to Deputy Bacik criticising €1 billion being used for HAP but I have to point out to the Labour Party that it was one of its own Ministers, Jan O’Sullivan, who introduced the HAP payment in the first place.

The only impediment to fixing this crisis is the lack of political will. The Government parties cling to their failed idea that the market will provide affordable housing and it refuses to stand up to elites who have made billions of euro from ordinary people struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

When this country was broke between the 1930s and the 1960s, we built thousands of houses. These houses were built by workers for workers. We had the political will then and we need that political will now. I do not believe that the Government will do it. It needs to allow the people to go to the polls and to vote for those who they think will do it.

There is an immediate need for a referendum to create a constitutional right to suitable and affordable homes for all according to their needs to ensure that we never get into this situation again. The State should immediately start building homes which should be a mixture of traditional social housing, public housing and affordable cost rental units and affordable housing. Public housing has been successful all over Europe for the last 100 years from following three things: quality; affordability; and fixity of tenure. We need that here.

The social housing threshold should be raised to €50,000 for a single person and at least €75,000 for a couple. It should cost no more than 15% of income. That would allow ordinary workers to access public housing. To facilitate the building of new public housing, the Land Development Agency, LDA, should be expanded and tasked with beginning the construction of public housing on all appropriate land owned by the State or semi-State bodies. It should be given increased powers to use compulsory purchase orders on derelict and vacant buildings. Approved housing bodies should be nationalised and incorporated into the LDA. Furthermore, we need to create a new national housing agency that is publicly funded to build on public land employing unionised workers and apprentices. People renting privately need to have their rights strengthened. We need better security of tenure. There should be new legislation to ensure that tenants are not affected by the sale of a property, such as with commercial properties.

The eviction ban needs to be extended to permanently ban economic evictions into homelessness. Over the last two or three weeks, we have seen a steady increase of people contacting the office with notices to quit. We have noticed in particular, that landlords are now using the Part 8 to the six-year time to tell people that they are letting them go and taking back the accommodation. One person told us they had been given a notice to quit under Part 8. The agency told them that it had another apartment available to them if they wished. This person's rent is €1,240 at the moment.

The apartment they are offering them would be €2,240. It is a convenient way to get people out of the low-rent aspect that they have. We know they cannot legally do that because a landlord or agency has to offer a person the same rent as the person who had left that premises.

We are also seeing an increase in men coming into the office. One guy came in on Friday in a terrible state. He had been couch surfing and had worked abroad over the years. He is a carpenter. He had a deposit for rent and has been on daft.ie for weeks trying to get rented accommodation. In the end, he used his deposit and down payment to buy a car to sleep in. That is the Ireland we are living in. That is a genuine case. That young man had been on the housing list, as he thought, for 25 years but we explained to him that would not be the case now. He was taken off the housing list in 2008. We are trying to get him back onto it again so he can get homeless HAP. If he gets it, what is it worth to him? He cannot get rented accommodation anywhere. People are trying to grasp some sort of hope they will get somewhere along the line and the Government is standing over it. It has been part of the process over the past 20 or 30 years.

Just before the eviction ban, everybody saw in their constituency offices an increase in young families, including people with children with autism, getting eviction notices. The eviction ban put that pending eviction off for about three or four months. They will all come back into an eviction situation if the Government does not extend the eviction ban. Imagine what it will be like then. Just before the eviction ban, we were told Dublin City Council and the homeless section had nowhere to put people. The only place they could go was overcrowded, if they had a family to go to, or the streets or a car. That is the reality in Ireland because of Government policies.

The only impediment to making these changes is the lack of political will. That will existed in the 1930s and the 1960s, when this country was broke. We are now one of the richest countries in the world yet supposedly cannot provide homes for people who need them. We can afford it. Build the houses.

I support the motion but have serious reservations about the Labour Party. It was in power between 2011 and 2016. The then Minister, Willie Penrose, announced the transformation of housing policy on 17 June 2011. That was some transformation of housing policy. The Labour Party had a Minister who brought in HAP and presided over a situation where practically no houses were being built at that time. That is why I have reservations but I will support the motion, particularly because the Government has tabled an amendment to it.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Kieran O'Donnell)

I have listened to the entire debate, though I was not here physically for it all. Many constructive points were made. I may not agree with them all but they had merit. Before I go through the script, I will deal with a number of points raised.

Deputy Bacik and Labour referred to HAP. “Tenant in situ” is a term used by Dublin City Council. In layman’s terms, it is for an acquisition of a property where there is a notice of termination to quit. The local authorities have been given deferred sanction. They have flexibility to make decisions on the purchase of houses where people have been served with an eviction notice and are about to be made homeless without being offered a place to live. I have checked. Circulars have issued. I will follow up on it again.

Deputy Howlin spoke about CPOs of vacant homes. In Housing for All and under the action plan, there is a determination to have 2,500 houses processed by way of CPO by the local authorities to provide them on the open market for resale. That issue is getting further clarification in the new planning Bill that is going through. It is something I feel strongly about. There will be vacant home officers in all local authorities and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, gave a commitment to people that if local authorities have a business case for additional vacant home officers, they should make the case to the Department if a particular town requires it. We want to bring these vacant homes back into action. Under the Croí Cónaithe scheme, for towns and villages alone we are looking at 2,000 houses coming back in. That is a €30,000 grant, and a €50,000 maximum grant if the house has been derelict.

Something that may have been missed is that the fair deal scheme has been changed. People often speak about that scheme and say many houses out there are not being used for rental purposes. The disregard is now 60% of rental income rather than 20%. We hope that will bring 1,200 properties back. The short-term letting scheme Bill is coming in through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. We hope that will bring 12,000 houses back into use for families and single people to live in. That is something that can be worked on.

I join Deputy Ó Ríordáin in sympathy on the passing of Niamh Bhreathnach. She brought phenomenal change in the area of education when she was Minister.

Deputy Boyd Barrett is gone. I do not know the detail of the case of Jackie and her family but people will be aware. I did not know when the tenancy was to be terminated. If it was to be terminated between the end of October of last year and 31 March this year, they cannot be evicted. I do not know the circumstances. I ask the Deputy to bring it to us so we can follow up on it.

Deputy Canney stated it is about supply and I accept that point. However, we have a plan. The plan is Housing for All and in the past year we have delivered nearly 30,000 homes. People can say it is not enough. We want more homes but it is a serious start. Many Opposition parties go on about new social housing builds. We expect new social housing builds in 2022, when the figures are finalised, will be the highest in the last half-century. That is something many parties have made a point about.

Deputy Canney also referred to coming off HAP and maybe it is something he will take up. I have tenants on HAP. I pursued the local authority to get them social housing. They are not differentiated, from my perspective, at a local level. I would like to follow up on it with the Deputy. He has been a champion of looking at ways to streamline our system in terms of public procurement and I accept that. The simplest way to build houses is to look at the current permissions that are there. There are over 70,000 houses. I do not say all of them can be built on, but we have to look. They are the ones that can be fast-tracked. With the best will in the world, for a private developer starting out on a greenfield site who has to get planning, it will take a hell of a lot longer than if that developer has an existing permission which can be activated. That is a space we in government are looking to go into.

I do not accept that we lack empathy, to which Deputy Pringle made reference. We recognise the problem. That is why we have a Housing for All plan and are bringing in various measures. The record needs to be put straight. We are bringing in a range of proposals. Deputy Verona Murphy said one size does not fit all. We are looking at the densities and taking on those points. I feel strongly that one size does not fit all.

The Planning and Development Act is coming through. We will look at densities. We will also look at what works and what will be built. We need apartments, but we need a range in that regard.

I will go through the issues. In the context of the vacant homes action plan, we are seeking to bring vacant residential and commercial properties back into use. The Labour Party made reference to isolating the number of properties that are vacant. We are engaged in a data collection project, which is something I will pursue with local authorities. We need action on the ground in order to compile a list of all of properties to see how we can use them. We have allocated €150 million from the urban regeneration and development fund specifically to bring vacant houses and units back into use. It is not about the public realm, although it was previously. This money is specifically for that purpose. I encourage Deputies to talk to their local authorities. This is about local authorities coming forward with plans. This will be based on their range of population. It is about all the local authorities getting there. That should be acknowledged as well.

People will talk about the 7,500 first-time buyer mortgages drawn-down in quarter 4 of 2022, which was 12.9% increase on quarter 3. We accept that landlords are leaving the market. In many cases, the properties they are selling are being bought by first-time buyers. The question for us is about how we deal with that. The cost rental scheme is one I feel very strongly about. The rents relating to it are below 25%. Deputy Boyd Barrett made reference to Jackie and her family. The example he gave would certainly fit in with that perspective.

With the demands on tradesmen and everything else, in to double output overnight, we must be realistic and do it in a way which ensures that we have the manpower. We have gone to 30,000 this year. We are seeking to increase that figure over that for last year, and we will do so. Deputy Nash made reference to the CSO figures. Once again, we are doing the work. We have to operate on final figures. That will be done pretty shortly because the figures will be finalised soon. We have seen in a positive way that in quarter 3 of last year, there were 171,000 people in the labour workforce in construction. That was a 75% increase on last year's figure of 25,000. The numbers are going up. We are ratcheting up the limit.

The Labour Party's motion makes reference to the Acquisition of Development Land (Assessment of Compensation) Bill 2021. We ask Deputies to look at the Bill we are bringing forward in respect of land value sharing proposals. Ours is basically a plan-led system. Looking at what the Labour Party is bringing forward, we are of the view that it will be very much centred around a transaction. The State would look at the uplift in the value. We ask Deputies to look at the details of the forthcoming legislation to which I refer.

Deputy Bacik referred to the RTB, which is a matter I followed up on. People can claim the tax credit without including the RTB number. That is a matter on which we are following up with the RTB and Department of Finance in the context of the scheme.

We are putting rental inspectors into local authorities at a cost of €10 million. No one has a monopoly on wisdom on housing. We all have to work together to find the best solution. We have a plan that is working. I look forward to further debate of this matter.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan)

Deputy Duncan Smith will reply on behalf of the Labour Party. He has ten minutes.

Deputy Duncan Smith

The Minister of State made the comment that nobody has a monopoly on wisdom. That is true, which is why we wanted the provisions in our motion to be accepted and worked on by the Government, in conjunction with us, instead of a countermotion being presented. The latter, quite frankly, has angered many Deputies in opposition. Before I go on, I thank everyone for contributing to the debate on our motion, both those who agree with it and those who do not, which is fair enough.

I will pick up on one point made by Deputy Joan Collins regarding HAP. The Deputy agrees with and supports our motion, but she could not help but throw a couple of digs at the Labour Party. I imagine that there is diminishing currency in that regard, although there may be currency nonetheless. She mentioned how we brought in HAP. We never brought HAP in to be a permanent housing solution. It must be remembered that HAP was brought in to replace rent supplement, which was the biggest poverty trap this country has ever known. If people were using rent supplement as the primary means of paying their rent, they could not work and it kept them in poverty for years. HAP was brought in to bring it over to the local authorities. We were actually starting to build local authority houses as well towards the end of 2015 and 2016, with a large number of Part 8 developments and Part V requirements. That stopped after 2016.

One thing happened this week which, on the face of it, may not seem important in terms of the housing crisis. However, symbolically, it is really important to the people who are still sleeping in the boxrooms in which they grew up or on their parents and friends' couches. I refer to the return of Bertie Ahern to Fianna Fáil. This event has been heralded and trumpeted by Fianna Fáil. I know Fianna Fáil is not the Minister of State's party or, indeed, the party of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. It is the party of the senior Minister, however, who is not here tonight for this important debate. I do not know where he is. Maybe he is making the sandwiches or doing the teas and coffees at the cumann in Drumcondra to welcome Bertie back. I do not know but he is not here where he should be on this debate. I was contacted by a woman earlier who stated that she is disgusted that Bertie Ahern is, in her eyes, back in politics. She believes he is the reason that she will never be able to afford a house. That woman has joined the dots in respect of what has got us to where we are now. I refer here to a three-term Government that took a system that was moving in the right direction and facilitating the building and delivery of public housing in the 1990s, hollowed out our local authorities in terms of the delivery of public housing, gave everything over to developers by means of weak Part V provisions in the Planning and Development Act 2001, engaged in deregulation and, in the context of the reduction in standards, accelerated the work done by Fianna Fáil in the late 1980s. The latter has given rise to consequences relating to pyrite, mica, poor building and fire safety standards and all the crimes that were committed under that Government in the era of the Celtic tiger. Fianna Fáil believes that the return of Bertie Ahern as a great peacemaker into the party is going to remind people of that or give them a warm glow when they remember the 1990s and early noughties. The opposite is happening. People are absolutely furious. Mr. Ahern's return reminds them of why we are where we are. It reminds them why workers are unable to afford to live, be they renting or buying, and why core front-line workers in our health and transportation services, such as bus drivers, are unable to afford to live, not just in our major cities but anywhere in our country. That is why we need the eviction ban needs not only to be extended but also strengthened. Even though it has been brought in, we are still seeing homeless figures go up. The current figure is 11,500. Bertie Ahern is returning to Fianna Fáil at a time of record figures for homelessness. It is incredible. Fianna Fáil cannot resist that. The eviction ban must remain in place.

The tenant in situ scheme we are discussing, which has to be accelerated and used, is not actually a good scheme; it is a necessary scheme. It is an admission of the failure of housing policy. There should be a supply of social and affordable public housing in order that people can transition from rental accommodation into that. Some people in rental accommodation do not want to be council tenants. They want to purchase their own homes through an affordable scheme. The tenant in situ scheme is the biggest admission of housing catastrophe in this country that there has ever been.

Unfortunately, that is the situation we are in. The only way we can successfully keep people out of homelessness is by purchasing the houses. While we are talking about purchasing and the absolute squandering of public money, there was article in the Sunday Times by Ms Sharon McGowan last week. The article came about on foot of a freedom of information request that was submitted by the Workers' Party to Dublin City Council. It states that €221 million has been spent by Dublin City Council to buy back properties that were built by the State. We are paying twice for these properties. We paid to build them, we sold them off and now we are buying them back.

That goes down as new stock. That is not new stock; it is recycled stock. This is stock we had years ago and sold away. We must stop that. Any thoughts of tenant purchase has to stop. This recycling of existing stock and the squandering of money over the course of many decades is an absolute and complete madness. It is a huge amount of money.

We are talking now about housing for migrants in Ireland. It is much-needed housing that we are unable to deliver as a State. Even given the state of our resources and our riches, we are unable to deliver this at the moment. If you talk to the migrants who are here and have been here for years and talk about the housing they are living in, it is overcrowded. If you talk to the people who are cleaning our buildings and who are contract cleaners or talk to the people who are delivering our food or who work in our coffee shops and service industries and ask them, as I have, the circumstances of where they live, they are living in overcrowded places and paying rent for poor standards of accommodation. We have seen it. We have had the exposés on various TV programmes. This is how we are failing not only the migrants who are arriving now but also the future workers of this country who we need to provide the many skills and professions they bring here. We need to make sure we can deliver the housing so these people are able to start working and contributing in the many skills shortages we have.

With regard to the people who are living here now, including migrants, who are living in poor conditions, we do not have enough housing inspections. I have been on to my local authority about a particular property that has more than 30 migrants living in it with absolutely disgraceful conditions. That is just one case I am dealing with this week. Anybody who is working on the front line dealing with housing cases will know we have no housing inspections. The housing inspections must be done through the local authority, and the local authorities are still under-resourced to inspect their own properties. We therefore have the private properties in deplorable conditions getting away with absolute murder.

We talk of a plan for tradespeople in this country to have enough workers to be able to build the houses we need. To stop this boom and bust cycle, we need to continue to build houses, no matter who is in government and no matter what the economic situation in the State. We need to build, continue building, and build some more, and continue to drive down the cost for citizens in paying rent or being able to afford housing. We need to continue to do that. We feel a million miles away from that.

This motion does not capture the Labour Party's housing policy. This motion is an emergency housing motion for the emergency we are in right now. We constructed the motion in such a way that we believed or hoped that something would be taken on board and that the Government would at least give some kind of sense that it wants to work with Opposition parties. We have seen here that the majority of the Opposition supports this, while we may disagree on the finer points of details. The thrust of what we offer in this motion is what we believe can be delivered soon, which will keep a roof over people's heads and give the State time to build houses. The Government will not and we will go for a vote on this next week, which I believe is incredible. The people who are contacting Deputies Bacik and Nash, me, and all my colleagues in the House about housing are going to remain in insecure and highly expensive housing. Many of these people have notices to quit hanging over their heads and they are counting down the days for the eviction ban to expire. I have made a Hail Mary pass at our local authority that perhaps a tenant in situ rescue can help to keep them in their homes. As Deputy Nash has said, we are finding an inconsistency of approach in an emergency scheme that is needed to be run at full throttle to keep people in their homes. I will leave it at that.

Amendment put.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan)

In accordance with Standing Order 80(2), the division is postponed until the weekly division time on Wednesday, 15 February 2023.