Richard Boyd Barrett
Ceist:13. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [4417/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 14 February 2023
Ceisteanna (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
Paul Murphy
Ceist:14. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [4420/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Ivana Bacik
Ceist:15. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [5721/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Pádraig O'Sullivan
Ceist:16. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [5783/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Mary Lou McDonald
Ceist:17. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All quarter 4 2022 progress report will be published. [5646/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Cian O'Callaghan
Ceist:18. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6028/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Peadar Tóibín
Ceist:19. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [6736/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Ruairí Ó Murchú
Ceist:20. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6863/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Paul McAuliffe
Ceist:21. Deputy Paul McAuliffe asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6886/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Jennifer Murnane O'Connor
Ceist:22. Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6887/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Mick Barry
Ceist:23. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6919/23]
Amharc ar fhreagra
Rose Conway-Walsh
Ceist:24. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Taoiseach when the Housing for All progress report for quarter 4 2022 will be published. [6948/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraCian O'Callaghan
Ceist:25. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [7239/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraFreagraí ó Béal (27 píosaí cainte)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 13 to 25, inclusive, together.
The Cabinet committee on housing met on 30 January. The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for 9 March. The committee works to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the implementation of Housing for All. The quarter 4 2022 progress report was discussed at the most recent meeting of the committee, and was subsequently approved by Cabinet and published on 7 February. This is the sixth quarterly report under Housing for All and details further progress in the Government's commitment to increase the number of homes for our citizens.
Just under 30,000 new homes were completed in 2022, not including student accommodation and derelict homes brought back into use. This exceeded the target of 24,600 set in Housing for All and represented the largest annual delivery of new homes in over a decade. The quarter 4 progress report outlines our progress in accelerating the supply of homes, while bringing about fundamental reform in the delivery of housing in our country. The Government is now focused on the 2023 target of 29,000 new homes, and we hope to exceed that.
Through Project Tosaigh and Croí Cónaithe, we are enhancing the financial viability of homes which already have planning consent. The quarter 4 report details initiatives which will accelerate the adoption of modern methods of construction, MMC, which has the potential to improve construction sector productivity, innovation, speed of delivery, sustainability and, ultimately, cost. Over 30 sites have been identified for accelerated delivery using MMC, involving over 1,500 new social homes.
We are also making progress on vacancy and dereliction. In 2022, over 2,300 vacant social homes were brought back into active use. On 30 January, the Government published a new vacant homes action plan which will return as many recoverable vacant properties back to viable use as soon as possible, while also revitalising communities.
There are ten contributors, each of whom has up to one minute.
For a very long time, some of us campaigned for the Government to introduce a policy of using public money to buy the homes of people threatened with eviction. Very slowly, and not very consistently, the Government has started to do that. It is not doing enough. A cohort of people is not getting any benefit from this, namely, those who happen to be over the social housing income thresholds.
This is because the Government will not sanction the purchase of homes if these people are not on the social housing list. These people are not entitled to HAP and, therefore, are in many cases in a worse position. I know of a family who are going to court for an enforcement order to evict them from the home in which they have lived all their lives. They have written to the Taoiseach and the Minister and they believe they will probably be living in their car with their two children by next week. These are working people who have paid their taxes and have always paid their rent. Will the Taoiseach do something about that?
People need to know whether the Government's partial eviction ban will be extended after 31 March. We need to have a proper eviction ban such as the one we had during Covid. We know for a fact that the number one cause of homelessness is eviction from private rental accommodation. This is from Focus Ireland. We know that eviction bans work. They are not the full answer to the housing crisis but we saw the impact during Covid when the figures dropped from about 9,000 to about 6,000 before rising.
We are heading towards having 12,000 people, almost 4,000 of whom are children, homeless. Will the Government commit that those people will not be evicted and we will have a proper eviction ban as long as this housing crisis lasts while we build social and affordable housing and use vacant properties?
I have two questions on housing and planning policy. The Taoiseach will have seen the explosive allegations in the Sunday Independent by Mark Tighe reporting that ESB staff have been accused of seeking backhanders from companies to get works completed and new developments connected. We know there are significant delays in getting connections from the ESB for new developments. These are slowing down and obstructing delivery of new homes and other developments. The report said there was evidence of a payment of €10,000 agreed with an ESB engineer, among other such payments. This begs the question as to whether this is a common practice and if it extends to other public utility company. What does the Taoiseach and Government propose to do about it? Is An Garda Síochána involved? Will there be an investigation into this practice and will the Government set up a confidential reporting line so that those who may have been asked to make payments to speed up delivery of residential and other developments can report it without risking such developments?
The draft planning and development Bill is before the Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage for pre-legislative scrutiny but the draft seems to have removed the requirement for local authorities to reserve land for use as allotments for cultivation. Many of our councillors are seriously concerned about this deletion. Can the Taoiseach assure us that it will be addressed?
In recent months, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage issued a circular allowing HAP residents at risk of homelessness to remain in their homes and the local authority to purchase their homes. This has been broadly welcomed and comes as a relief to many families. However, the implementation of this circular has varied from local authority to local authority. For example, one local authority has used the new initiative but has placed a five-year stipulation on a person's tenure for it to be available to him or her. Another local authority has not availed of the initiative as much as it is already on its way to meeting its social housing targets. Is it about time that the ad hoc implementation of this good initiative was regularised with specific guidance and criteria issued?
What was the Deputy referring to?
The tenant in situ scheme.
The final progress report for 2022 does not include social and affordable rental or purchase output. This omission is incomprehensible. When will the Government publish these figures? The Daft.ie rent report for the same period shows new rents spiralling upwards to record highs. Spiralling rents are, of course, a consequence of Government failure to deliver adequate levels of social and affordable homes. At least one third of renters should not be living in privately rented accommodation and the private developer sector alone cannot deliver the volumes of homes to rent or buy at prices that working people can afford. Property price inflation will continue to rise without an adequate market intervention that meets that challenge head on. The Children's Rights Alliance has highlighted the lack of a specific focus on children or a dedicated plan that targets child and family homelessness in the Housing for All strategy. When will that be addressed? I had other questions but I do not have time to put them.
I want to ask the Taoiseach about the number of homes that were completed in 2022. Significant data were published on this today. In his previous remarks, the Taoiseach repeated the claim that almost 30,000 new homes were completed last year. However, figures published today by Construction Information Services show that fewer than 24,000 homes were actually built. This figure is based on hard data compiled from the National Building Control Office, which certifies completions. This is a gap of 6,000. Does the Taoiseach agree that the hard data compiled by the National Building Control Office are highly reliable as it has a legal role in certifying house completions? How does he explain the gap of 6,000 for which there is no paper trail?
According to Daft.ie, new rents in the past three months of 2022 were 13.7% higher than in the same period in 2021. Rents have increased to an average of €1,733 compared with an average rent in 2011 of €765. It is incredible that since Fine Gael took office in 2011, we have seen an increase in rents of 126%. The Taoiseach, his Government and his party have left a massive legacy to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people who are struggling to pay rent. In my office, I see on a weekly basis people who have to migrate westwards - people who are leaving Dublin to live in Ashbourne, then move to Cavan and then move on to Leitrim because they cannot afford the rents. They are surfing a wave of rent affordability across the country. It is incredible that local authorities are only now looking at ways to identify vacant homes for the vacant home tax. Will the Taoiseach tell us when the vacant home tax be put in place?
The Daft.ie report published yesterday shows that it now costs way more than €20,000 to rent for a year in Cork city. A generation that could not afford to buy its own homes now cannot afford to rent. After the publication of the report, Ronan Lyons said that "among the worst affected cohorts are younger adults, with the median adult age of leaving the parental home having grown almost 50% in the last decade." In other words, since shortly after Fine Gael came to power, if the median average age was 18, it is now close to 27, and if it was 20, it is now close to 30. Does the Taoiseach accept that his Government has let down the under-30s very badly indeed on this issue?
I welcome the figures in the quarter 4 report. Regardless of what figures we look at, we see last year's performance on housing was better than any other year for some time. Certainly in terms of public housing, we are back to where we were in previous decades. In my constituency, there are sites off Oscar Traynor Road, Collins Avenue, St. Joseph's Hill, Parkview, Church of the Annunciation and Kildonan, all of which involve public housing on public land. However, where we are struggling is on sites like the Ballymun Shopping Centre site where there is a necessary commercial element and retail must be provided. Dublin City Council has gone out for expressions of interest. Given the changing interest rate market, this has proved challenging and I am not sure the interest that was there last year or the previous year is still there. We need the Land Development Agency to examine this site in partnership with Dublin City Council. We need both retail and housing built on it and we need the same action on the site as we see on many other sites.
The Government finally moved on the issue of the rent tax credit and introduced a watered-down version of the Sinn Féin proposal. However, the requirement for the landlord to be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, excludes so many, including students. Will the Taoiseach clarify whether RTB registration is a requirement? This punishes renters for landlords not following the rules. Students under the rent-a-room scheme and digs-style accommodation are also excluded. This is particularly galling for parents when the Government promoted this heavily as its solution to the student housing crisis this year. The tax credit is also restricted to rentals in the State, meaning that a family in Donegal with a student studying in Derry is excluded as are students forced to study abroad because there is no place for them here. PhD researchers are also excluded as they are not recognised as workers. Parents and students are technically included but it seems that no effort was made to include them in practice.
Will the Taoiseach urgently review this?
I apologise if I did not catch everything. The Deputies spoke much more quickly than I can write, but I will try to cover as many questions as I managed to jot down.
In respect of Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan's question about the tenant in situ scheme, that is a scheme the Government supports and I know the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage supports it very strongly. We are providing funding to local authorities for it and we need to push it and promote it more. One thing we are considering is an amendment to the Housing Act to put a positive duty on local authorities to assist people who may fall into homelessness because homelessness prevention is probably the most effective, never mind cost effective, way of reducing the number of people who are homeless. If we put a positive duty on local authorities in that regard, we might see fewer people falling into homelessness and more properties being bought up by local authorities or approved housing bodies, as the case may be.
Can it apply to people over the threshold?
I do not know. I will have to check with the Minister on that.
People who are over the threshold are being evicted. They are not entitled to anything.
In regard to Deputy McAuliffe's question, I am not familiar with the site-----
You are welcome to visit it.
We might have a chat afterwards and he can let me know where it is. We can certainly ask the LDA to take a look at it.
On the rent tax credit, it does cover students who are paying rent and where parents pay on their behalf, but it does not cover unregistered landlords. The difficulty with unregistered landlords is they should be registered. They are either not registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, or are not paying their own taxes, and that has to be regularised. I do not think we could have a situation where we pay the tax credit in respect of a property that is not registered. I think that for lots of reasons, we could not do that. It does apply only to people who are renting in the State. If they are renting in Derry, for example, it would be up to the Government in Northern Ireland to bring in a rent tax credit. There was a lot of time when Deputy Conway-Walsh's party could have done that, in fairness, but it did not. The same applies, obviously, to other jurisdictions too.
In respect of Deputy Cian O'Callaghan's question, I did not see those figures out today. As I understand it, the figures that suggest we built close to 30,000 new homes last year come from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and there is no body we could say is more accurate than the Central Statistics Office when it comes to statistics. It is certainly not subject to political influence and does not spin statistics or anything like that. Where there are different numbers out there, I would tend to go with the ones from the CSO rather than from anywhere else, but the Deputy raises a legitimate question and I do not know what the discrepancy or difference is, so I will make inquiries about that.
We do not have the exact numbers for new social housing for 2022 yet, but the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, tells me it will be close to 8,000 new builds last year, which looks like it will be the highest number since 1975, and that is a very significant increase in the provision of new social housing. In most of our lifetimes, no government has built as much social housing as this one did last year, but we need to build more and we have a higher target again for this year and the year after.
As for the median age of people leaving home, I think I saw the report and, if I remember correctly, the median age now for people leaving home is 28. It was lower but it has gone up. Of course, the Government accepts responsibility for putting that right and we are doing that through the help-to-buy scheme and the first home scheme and also by increasing supply. As I have said before, just under 70% of people in Ireland own their own home, but that is not the reality for people who are in their mid-20s and mid-30s and we need to change that. At the heart of the Government's housing policy is a commitment to increasing home ownership again. We do not believe in the rent-for-life models other people believe in. We want to see home ownership increase, but for those who are renting, we want to make sure they have secure tenancies and affordable rents too.
Deputy Bacik mentioned the allegations in respect of the ESB. I only became aware of them through media reports at the weekend. I have been briefed since. I am seriously concerned about them. The ESB is a respected State company and a respected public body. I would not like to believe these things are true but they may well be true, and if they are true, it is a very serious matter. I have been briefed that the Garda is involved now, that a Garda investigation is under way and that a confidential phoneline is available for people to make reports. I encourage anybody, whether home builders, businesspeople or anybody who has information on this, to share it with the Garda because we need to get to the bottom of it very quickly.
In respect of the eviction ban, or partial eviction ban if you prefer, we will make a decision on that in the next few weeks. When we took the decision to reintroduce it, we had hoped it would see the numbers of people in emergency accommodation fall, because they did fall during the period of the pandemic restrictions. That has not happened. Numbers have continued to rise and it shows many factors are at play when it comes to homelessness.
Because it is not a full eviction ban.
Family breakdown is one and another, of course, is people being evicted from private rented accommodation. We are seeing a change in the profile of people who are homeless. It is quite different from what it would have been five, six or seven years ago and that is a factor too, but we will assess that over the next couple of weeks. It will remain the case that if somebody is not paying rent or is engaging in antisocial behaviour, that will be grounds for eviction. I do think we have a problem - it might be a small problem but it is a growing problem - of people who cannot move back into their own home. People might go away for six months or a year, maybe to Australia, Dubai or Britain, come back and find they cannot move back into their own apartment or house. That is a difficulty. It might be okay for six months but if it is extended for longer, I think it becomes a real problem.
When is the vacant property tax going to be implemented?
I will have to check with the Minister for Finance but I would have thought there would be a charge this year.
They are still searching for vacant homes, by the looks of things.
That completes questions to the Taoiseach. Before we conclude, I point out there is a 45-minute slot for these questions. I really do my best in respect of this and I ask for co-operation generally in that regard. There is flexibility, but if there are ten speakers in a 45-minute slot, it is practically impossible. If there are difficulties, take them to the Business Committee.