Housing and Homeless Prevention: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes:

— with escalating alarm, the ever-deepening homelessness crisis;

— that in November 2023 13,514 people, including 4,105 children, were in Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage funded emergency accommodation;

— that when all hostels and rough sleepers are included the true level of homelessness is closer to 20,000 people;

— that these figures do not include the tens of thousands of people sofa surfing or living in inadequate and inappropriate accommodation; and

— that the increased activity of investment funds, such as bulk purchasing of properties and increased rents, is driving further numbers of people into homelessness from the private rental sector;

further notes with concern that:

— the most recent report from the Health Research Board stated that 121 people experiencing homelessness died prematurely in 2021;

— the recommendations of the 2020 Interim Report on Mortality Amongst Single Homeless Population remain mostly unimplemented; and

— homeless charities are raising the alarm that homelessness and deaths of people experiencing homelessness are likely to rise in the time ahead;

condemns the fact that:

— since Fine Gael took office in 2011 homelessness has increased by 254 per cent and child homelessness by 540 per cent;

— since the current Government took office homelessness has increased by 61 per cent and child homelessness by 74 per cent; and

— the Government will not meet its obligations under the Lisbon Declaration to end long-term homelessness by 2030; and

agrees:

— that the Government bring forward measures to effectively ban investment funds from bulk purchasing homes that would otherwise be available to home buyers, local authorities or Approved Housing Bodies; and these measures must include increased stamp duty on such bulk purchases;

— to increase targets and accelerate the delivery of social and affordable housing;

— to the use of emergency planning and procurement powers and new building technologies and vacant homes to deliver an additional stream of social housing specifically for those in emergency accommodation or at risk of homelessness;

— to end homelessness amongst those aged over 55 years and significantly reduce family and child homelessness;

— that the annual target for the delivery of Housing First tenancies must be doubled to 500;

— that any funds saved from reductions in the numbers of people in emergency accommodation should be redirected to homeless prevention to further reduce the numbers of people experiencing homelessness;

— to expand and accelerate the tenant-in-situ schemes for social and affordable housing to reduce the risk of homelessness;

— to increase funding for the provision of domestic violence refuge places; and

— to reintroduce the temporary ban on no fault evictions until there is a meaningful reduction in the numbers of people in emergency accommodation.

- (Deputy Eoin Ó Broin)

Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Darragh O'Brien)

I move amendment No. 1:

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

"notes that:

— supporting individuals and families facing homelessness is a key Government priority; increasing housing supply across all tenures is critical to addressing homelessness; significant progress is being made in increasing overall supply;

— a record 22,443 homes have been completed in the first nine months of 2023, an 8.9 per cent increase on the same period in 2022 and the highest number of completions recorded for the first three quarters of any year since the Central Statistics Office (CSO) data series began in 2011;

— there are very positive signs that the uplift in new home delivery will be sustained in 2024 and over the coming years, with almost 33,000 (32,801) new homes commenced in 2023; this is the highest number of annual commencements on record, an increase of over 21.5 per cent compared to 2022 (26,957) and is the highest number of annual residential commencements since records began in 2014;

— Budget 2024 provides an allocation of €242 million for homeless services to support increased provision of prevention and tenancy sustainment along with support services, and ensuring pathways out of homelessness as quickly as possible;

— Q3 2023 saw a significant increase (16.3 per cent) in the number of households who were prevented from entering emergency accommodation compared to the same period last year;

— over 1,700 acquisitions were completed in 2023, with the majority of these properties acquired under the Tenant in Situ Scheme; the Government has also approved an increase from 200 to 1,500 for Social Housing Acquisitions for 2024; and there is a strong pipeline for 2024 with over 1,600 proposals already being evaluated for purchase;

— the Cost Rental Tenant In-Situ Scheme (CRTiS) was introduced on 1st April, 2023, for tenants in private rental homes who are not eligible for social housing supports but who are at risk of homelessness; by the end of Q3 2023 47 CRTiS acquisitions have been completed; and

— an additional 1,319 supported tenancies are to be delivered nationally under the Housing First National Implementation Plan 2022-2026 which provides the most vulnerable of our homeless population with a home for life as well as key wraparound health and social supports; the Housing First targets are based on an analysis of need, this analysis involved all key stakeholders and was supported by the Housing Agency;

further notes that:

— social and affordable housing supply is increasing, under this Government (from July 2020 to the end of September 2023) 30,581 new social homes have been delivered, including 19,590 new builds, 4,216 acquired homes and 6,775 leased homes;

— the social housing pipeline is strong with over 23,600 homes either onsite or at design and tender stage at the end of Q3 2023;

— since affordable housing schemes were established in 2022 to end of Q3 of 2023, over 3,863 households have been supported, including 482 affordable purchase homes, 2,594 First Home Scheme properties, and some 800 Cost Rental homes;

— in Budget 2024, the total Exchequer funding being made available for the delivery of housing programmes is €4.25 billion; the Capital provision of €2.7 billion will be supplemented by Land Development Agency investment and Housing Finance Agency lending resulting in an overall capital provision of over €5 billion;

— a review and refresh of Housing for All - a New Housing Plan for Ireland targets is underway, including for social and affordable housing, with revised targets to be agreed and published in 2024;

— sufficient provision is already made within planning legislation for the delivery of local authority housing through a temporary time-limited planning exemption to enable local authorities to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable (including cost rental) housing on State owned land;

— Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) has been identified by the Government as a key measure to address the different housing needs in Ireland; methods to support the development of MMC in Ireland are set out in Housing for All and include an accelerated social housing pilot programme to deliver over 1,500 MMC units; and

— under the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) Activation Programme, launched in April 2023, local authorities are being supported to use the CPO process to bring properties back into use as social and affordable housing as well as selling these properties on the open market;

notes that, regarding bulk purchasing of homes:

— in 2021, the Government introduced a series of measures designed to prohibit the bulk buying of houses and duplexes, including Section 28 Guidelines which aim to provide an 'owner-occupier' guarantee by ensuring that new 'own-door' houses and duplex units in housing developments can no longer be bulk-purchased by institutional investors;

— a 10 per cent stamp duty levy was introduced for the cumulative purchase of 10 or more residential houses in a 12-month period, aimed at ensuring a level playing field for traditional family home buyers, including but not limited to first-time buyers, while facilitating vital investment in high density apartments;

— since the introduction of these measures the increased level of stamp duty has applied to less than two per cent of total new dwelling completions; and

— by the end of Q4 2023, planning permissions which had the 'owner-occupier' guarantee attached amounted to 39,900 homes with an owner occupier guarantee since the guidelines were introduced in 2021;

notes that, regarding the provision of domestic violence refuge places:

— the Government has established Cuan, a statutory agency under the remit of the Department of Justice, dedicated to tackling and reducing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence (DSGBV); the Agency will support and oversee the delivery of safe and accessible refuge accommodation, and ensure the delivery of services to victims of DSGBV; and

— a key priority under the National Zero Tolerance strategy is the doubling of the number of refuge places over the lifetime of the strategy to 280 spaces;

notes that, regarding no fault evictions:

— the Government agreed on 7th March, 2023, that the 'Winter Emergency Period' under the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Act 2022 would come to an end on 31st March, 2023;

— extending the emergency period would be detrimental to the medium and long-term supply of private rental accommodation, local authorities are instead focusing on implementing the additional measures announced last March to increase the supply of social and affordable homes; and

— under Housing for All the Government is committed to increasing supply and protecting renters while trying to keep small landlords in the system; the Government is currently undertaking a review of the Private Rental Sector which will inform the measures which need to be taken to ensure a well-functioning private rental sector in Ireland; and

agrees that continued implementation of Housing for All represents the most appropriate response to deal with the housing challenges, which Ireland is now facing.".

We are back in the House discussing housing, which is the number one priority of this Government. There are unquestionably issues remaining to be resolved with housing, but real progress is also unquestionably being made on supply and delivery. Some Members will not want to acknowledge that for political reasons and that is fine. Sinn Féin will come in week after week and bring forward motions. We are a year on from its housing spokesperson promising a Sinn Féin housing plan. That has yet to be produced.

I have listened to a number of Sinn Féin Deputies talk about homeownership. I will touch on a few matters around homeownership and address other issues that have been raised here. This Government, and I as Minister, support homeownership 100%. Fortunately, every week we are seeing about 600 first-time buyers buying their homes across the country. Many of those first-time buyers are using the supports this Government has brought forward, including over 42,500 households availing of the help-to-buy grant, which is €30,000 of their own tax that they have earned back in their pocket. Listening to Deputy Ó Broin and his colleagues, I wonder what is wrong with individuals getting a rebate of the tax they have worked hard for to use towards the deposit to be able to buy a home. Sinn Féin has repeatedly said, though there is some contradiction on its position on this, that it would abolish the €30,000 help-to-buy grant that is helping many individuals and families to buy new homes that are being built across the country. There has been a contradiction between the position of the party’s housing spokesperson, who said he would abolish it straight away if - God forbid - he was in government, and that of his party leader, who is trying to assure people there will be no cliff edge in this regard.

The first home scheme is another measure the Government has bought forward to bridge that affordability gap, which is a real gap that is there for many people across the country. As of 15 January, some 7,595 individuals have registered for that and there have been over 3,300 approvals. That is the State stepping in to help people to bridge the gap between the finance they have, including the deposit. Many of them will be using the deposit through the help-to-buy grant, which again is tax back that they have earned in their pocket, and then accessing the first home scheme to be able to buy the homes. I have met individuals and families across the country who have been able to buy homes through that scheme. Why would a party decide to abolish a scheme that is working? It is working for people and supporting homeownership. Some parties talk about homeownership and say that they apparently support it, but then in the policy approaches they bring forward, the motions they bring forward and their public utterances, they talk about abolishing these supports. Maybe in the summation of the Sinn Féin motion, its housing spokesperson will for the first time say what Sinn Féin would replace those supports for people with.

Moving to the delivery of affordable homes through our local authorities and the Land Development Agency, last year, for the first time in a generation, we saw affordable homes being delivered through local authorities and the agency. This Land Development Agency will invest about €1 billion this year in social and affordable housing right across the country. By the way, the main Opposition party is on record as saying it will abolish the agency. It says it would get rid of the agency; it does not want an agency that develops State land and delivers homes for people. Again, we have not seen what the alternative is. The Land Development Agency is developing cost-rental homes at scale and will deliver more cost-rental homes this year for our people. We do not see what would replace that.

On supply and delivery, the housing completion figures for 2023 will be published by the CSO on Thursday. For the second year of Housing for All, we will see that its targets have been exceeded and exceeded substantially. We need to deliver more social homes. In 2022 we delivered more social homes than we have in 50 years. Yes, we are playing catch-up. We have ten years of very significant undersupply in public homes, but as I speak there are over 24,000 social homes at various stages of construction across this country because of the €5 billion-plus we are investing in housing this year on behalf of our people under a published, detailed, Housing for All plan. It is a plan incomparable with that of any other party. There is a complete absence of a plan from the main Opposition party. What would it replace the LDA with? What would it replace the help-to-buy grant with? What would it replace the first home scheme with?

With vacancy, we see that over 6,000 applications have been made to help individuals and families to defray the cost of bringing vacant homes back into use, which I take it we all want to do.

Again, Sinn Féin's alternative budget, published a month after the budget, made no provision whatsoever for vacancy grants and the continuation of same. This leads me to believe that Sinn Féin will abolish those grants if it is ever in government. These are schemes that are working for people. What we have to continue to do is increase the supply of public and private homes across the board, stabilise the private rental market and continue with the delivery of cost-rental homes.

Unquestionably, the number one challenge remains homelessness and ensuring that those who do not have homes can have permanent homes for themselves and their families. Since 2020, 21,212 single adults and families have either been prevented from entering into, or have exited from, homelessness and into permanent homes. About 14,000 HAP tenancies have been transferred out of the HAP scheme and into permanent social homes. That is what we have to continue doing.

On bulk purchasing, I changed the planning regime in 2021. I brought forward legislation that amended our planning laws to ensure there was a ban on bulk purchases of family homes, including houses and duplexes. Since May 2021, 42,000 planning permits have been granted for homes with that absolute condition attached. There is a ban on the bulk sale of those homes and the Deputies opposite know that. The issues that we are dealing with are legacy issues related to planning permission granted before that date. The legal advice was very clear on that and maybe some Deputies opposite would accept that one cannot change planning permission that was granted before the date of the law that came forward. The reality is that out of approximately 125,000 property transactions since that legislative change, less than 1% of homes have been the subject of bulk purchase in that period. That said, it is still something that I do not want to see.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

That is not true.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

It has been confirmed to the main Opposition spokesperson as well, that the Government will review the-----

Deputy Pearse Doherty

On a point of order, the Minister has named me here in the debate but that is not true and he knows it is not true.

The Minister is avoiding the issue. Will he correct the record?

There is a complete absence of any alternative from Sinn Féin, particularly in relation to first-time buyers. Deputy Ó Broin should go and tell the 42,500 households that have claimed the help-to-buy grant that they do not deserve it and that anyone applying for it does not deserve it. He should also tell it to the nearly 7,500 households who have registered and been approved for the first home scheme which will enable them to buy their own home. These are people who are stuck in a rental trap who are now able to own a home. That is what is happening with this Government and with Housing For All.

Deputy David Stanton

There are nearly 14,000 in homelessness.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh)

It would be better for the conduct of the debate in general if Members could make their contributions without interruption.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

We were very restrained today.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh)

Deputies will have ample opportunity to make their contributions.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

Yes, more restrained than they are usually.

Deputy Chris Andrews

Housing remains the number one issue for ordinary people. Prospective home buyers are being picked off by the vulture funds, and this Government's failures in housing have only increased the concerns of local communities. People who have grown up in their community want the opportunity to continue to live in there, near their support structures but without affordable housing, communities will continue to be pulled apart. The Irish Glass Bottle site gave hope to so many in Ringsend and Irishtown. It gave them the hope that they would finally be able to buy affordable homes in their community, as promised. However, with each passing month, concerns about affordability grow. The Irish Glass Bottle site will have 950 homes on it, a mix of social and affordable homes. However, it is hard to see how the how the so-called affordable homes on the site will actually be affordable. The well-informed speculation is that the homes on the site will come in at between €600,000 and €700,000 each. Even with the Government subvention, that will not be affordable for ordinary families. The only people that will be able to afford the homes on the site are vulture funds and the extremely wealthy. I ask the Minister to give an assurance to the community that vulture funds will not be allowed to buy up all of the homes on the Irish Glass Bottle site.

The Government needs to put the construction of the new Dodder bridge on hold until these apartments are made affordable. If that is what it takes to make them affordable then it must be done. There is still no affordable housing scheme in place. The community has waited far too long for these new homes. The residents of Seán Moore Road are enduring construction noise from 7 a.m. each day, and the construction works are so extensive that they are concerned for the structure of their own homes. I ask the Minister to meet the developer to get answers for the local community.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

The Deputy's party leader knows the developer.

Deputy Chris Andrews

I also ask him to meet with the residents who live beside the Irish Glass Bottle site.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

I have met the residents and am happy to meet them again.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly

The Minister said that he believes real progress is being made. I genuinely do not know how he said that with a straight face. Behind all of his policy failings - sky-high rents, unaffordable homes, rampant vulture funds and 13,500 homeless people, 4,000 of whom are children - are real people. Families are having their lives destroyed. Sometimes I think that if the Minister knew how bad the situation was, he might actually change tack but maybe I am wrong. In his own constituency, which is also mine, I have two offices and I run very busy clinics. I had a look at my diary and took a sample from one day. My first appointment was with a lovely woman who is waiting on the tenant in situ scheme to decide whether it will purchase her home. She has to be out by April and is absolutely frantic because she does not want to take her kids out of their school and so on. Next, a mother and father who have two kids. The mould in their apartment is exacerbating their asthma. The impact on their health, both mental and physical, is indescribable but they are stuck there because there is nowhere else for them to go. Next up was a man in his 50s. Relationship breakdown has left him homeless. He is couch surfing but he tells me that he is very close to giving up hope. Imagine the indignity of having to do that in one's 50s. Next was a woman in her 60s who has been on the housing list for 13 years. She is sleeping on a relative's floor. I cannot describe to the Minister the impact of this on her physical and mental health. Next, a father and daughter who are both homeless and desperate to rent somewhere close together. They are living in different parts of the city, one sleeping on a floor and the other on a couch. Finally on that day, a woman with three kids in a domestic abuse shelter which she is due to leave at the end of this month. She cannot go back to her family home for obvious reasons and is sick with worry at the thought of joining the 13,500 people in emergency accommodation. Her situation is already bad enough.

These people should be the Government's priority, not the vulture funds but real people who need help now.

Deputy Brian Stanley

The fact is that the housing situation continues to get worse under the Government's watch. The fact is that rents are at an all-time high and rising. The Government has missed its social and affordable housing targets for three years in a row. It is a fact that in County Laois new rents have increased by 11.4% in 12 months. In fact, it is almost impossible to enter the private rental market. Sky-high rents are placing a massive financial and mental burden on low-paid workers. There is not one single home to rent in the Portlaoise-Abbeyleix municipal district under the HAP limits. At present, there are no cost-rental projects in Laois and no sign of a scheme being developed at this point. We have no affordable-to-buy housing units. Some 30 homes are being planned but these are very much in the long term. Portarlington, Mountmellick, Graiguecullen, Mountrath and Portlaoise all need affordable housing.

The Government's refusal to intervene to prevent investment funds from pushing up house prices and snapping up family homes from under the noses of workers and families is compounding the crisis. Of the more than 13,500 people in emergency accommodation, and there are hundreds and probably thousands of other homeless people who are not in such accommodation, more than 4,000 are children. Since Fine Gael took office in 2011, homelessness has increased by 254% and child homelessness by 540%. We need to increase house targets, accelerate the delivery of social and affordable housing to buy, and expand and give priority to the tenant in situ scheme. I again appeal to the Government to reintroduce the temporary no-fault ban on evictions until there is a meaningful reduction in the number of people in emergency accommodation. These measures are sensible and achievable. We can do this, as can the Government. We can introduce these measures to house people and stop the tide of people going into homeless accommodation.

Deputy Maurice Quinlivan

The most recent homeless figures in November were startling. They showed 13,514 people in homelessness. Of those, 4,105 were children. Of course, these figures mask the real nature of homelessness in the State because they do not consider those in hostels and rough sleepers. When those people are added, there are probably more than 20,000 who are homeless. In Limerick, 361 adults are availing of the department of emergency accommodation. Across the mid-west, 91 families with 149 dependent children are availing of such accommodation. These are startling figures.

Homelessness is something the Government has failed to prevent. It can be said that its failed housing policies have exacerbated this crisis. Since it took office, homelessness has increased by 61% and child homelessness by 74%. It is shameful that the Government has allowed things to get so bad for our citizens. Under its stewardship, there are record house prices, record rent increases and a record level of homelessness. In Limerick city, property prices are beyond the reach of many working families. We have seen a year-on-year increase of almost 10% in property prices with the average house now costing approximately €300,000, which is unaffordable for most working families. For those who try to rent in Limerick, there was a 21% increase in rents in quarter 3 of 2023, with the average two-bedroom property costing €1,400 per month. With these costs, is it any wonder more and more people have to seek emergency accommodation?

There are things that can be done to stem the tide of homelessness. These are things that should have been done long before now. The Government could increase and deliver Housing First tenancy targets, reintroduce the temporary ban on no-fault evictions, the lifting of which has catastrophically increased homelessness numbers, and it could expand and increase the tenant in situ scheme, which, to be fair, is a good scheme.

As the Minister of State knows, the weather in Limerick is pretty bad, as it is throughout the country. Homelessness services told me today that they are turning away people from emergency accommodation because there is nowhere for them to sleep. They are doing that every single day. Something needs to be done. There needs to be an intervention specifically on that issue.

Deputy Dessie Ellis

The homeless figures released before Christmas showed a shocking increase in both adult and child homelessness. They showed that there is no respite in the growing number of people becoming homeless. The reality is these figures do not reflect the true number of those who are in homelessness. These figures do not tell us how many people are couch surfing or how many rough sleepers there are. The crisis in the rental sector has led to a growing number of people being made homeless or who are in danger of becoming homeless. The exit of landlords from the rental sector and evictions from private rental accommodation increased substantially since the no-fault eviction ban ended last year.

I regularly meet people in my constituency office who have been served with eviction notices and struggle to find alternative accommodation. The Government is not delivering social housing on a scale that will alleviate the housing and homelessness crisis. There is a clear contradiction between what members of the Government say in the House and the reality on the ground. The Government's housing polices have failed and are failing. It has suggested that the bulk-buying of properties by investment funds represents a small percentage of the housing being built but a vulture fund has bought up to 125 apartments in Hampton Wood, Ballymun, while another has acquired 435 apartments at Royal Canal Park, Ashtown. These are not insignificant numbers. These bulk purchases are particularly noticeable because they are happening in areas of Dublin where additional housing is urgently needed and people are at greater risk of becoming homeless.

The Government is over-reliant on the private sector to provide housing and rental properties, and has spent huge sums on private rent subsidies and HAP, yet homeless figures keep rising to record levels. This will not change while the Government continues to pursue policies and strategies that have failed in the past and are failing now.

Deputy Ged Nash

I sincerely thank Deputy Ó Broin and Sinn Féin for bringing the motion before the House. It is unfortunate and, frankly, troubling that we have to discuss housing and homelessness so often in the Chamber but, as we are all aware, this is the sad reality. This is the issue of our time. It is very rare that you can point to a single issue and say that is what is uniquely holding our country back. However, as the President put it a couple of years ago, the disaster that is housing in Ireland is the single biggest barrier to making real progress in this country. The lack of affordable housing is preventing us from having enough teachers to fill our schools, nurses to staff our hospitals, and carers and educators for our childcare services. It is the principal reason and impetus behind our kids fleeing to Australia and Canada, or wherever else, in search of greener pastures. Young people who grew up here, were educated here, and would love under better circumstances to stay, contribute and make a life for themselves here, fairly ask why they would do so. What is here for them?

Thanks to the housing issue, the concept and principle of the social contract have been shattered and irredeemably broken. When I speak to young people, I am always struck by the hopelessness they feel regarding their prospects of ever owning a home. So many of them have already effectively given up. They are fatalistic about this and I can understand why. Even those with well-paying jobs who scrimp and save as much as they can are being priced out of the market. In some cases I have encountered in recent times, they are being priced out of the market because they are bidding against a local authority. At best, they are miles away from their family, friends and places of work, if they can afford a house that is quite distant from their family network in the first instance.

Secure housing is the bedrock of any sort of decent life. We need to reconcile the fact that more and more people are renting. How can we claim that any young person renting in Ireland has secure housing when his or her landlord can decide to sell and give him or her the boot at the drop of a hat? We simply do not have a secure, social democratic, European-style renting system. It used to be that someone would move out of the family home, would maybe rent for a couple of years, save up for a deposit, and then buy a place of his or her own. That was the expectation. It was a realistic expectation for most of our history of statehood. It was a modest but realistic ambition. Even that is now an unrealistic prospect for the majority of people. If they are not priced out of the rental market entirely, they are certainly paying such extortionate rent that saving for a deposit is virtually impossible. It is not just young people, as the Minister of State well knows. People well into their 30s, 40s and 50s are stuck in a rental trap with little prospect of ever having the security of a home of their own. As I said, the social contract is broken. The threads that hold that fabric together are being pulled away.

There is then the hidden homeless or those forced into couch surfing or living with their parents. How are these people meant to have any sort of decent and dignified life, if they have not got the security of a place they can truly call their own and are infantilised by living at home with their parents?

Their development is arrested. Their sense of progress, their dignity and their own self-respect is hammered. Homelessness is a product of this insecure system. It stems not just from a lack of supply of housing but a lack of affordable housing and a lack of secure housing.

Most damning of all, however, is a figure contained in this motion that we are all too familiar with, which is the 74% increase in the number of children living in homeless accommodation since this Government took office. That is the legacy of this Government. How could anybody in their right mind claim that Housing For All, the only show in town, is a success when we have so many children living in homeless accommodation? It is a shame of this Government. The homeless figures for December will be released on Friday and I dread to see the number of children who were in homeless accommodation last month. How many of them spent Christmas without a home? How many kids are doing homework on the floor of a homeless hub or a hotel in Dublin, Drogheda or Dundalk and right across the country? That figure of 74% represents an utter failure in the State's duty towards our children. This Government has failed on the basics. This motion does not ask for any more than the State to address the basics. It asks, for example, that we bring forward measures that would effectively ban investment funds from bulk purchasing homes. This is a reasonable ask and a reasonable request. Of course the funds themselves are behaving virtually unobstructed certainly from a tax point of view. We know - we have debated it here last week and ad nauseam over the last three years - that the 10% stamp duty surcharge was never going to have an impact and was never going to dissuade funds with deep pockets from engaging in the kind of activity they do.

The motion also asks that the Government amends its housing targets to reflect the real housing needs. We in the Labour Party have been sneered at for calling for an increase in the targets and for 50,000 houses a year for the next decade. That is not a figure that we just plucked out of the air. It is based on an unpublished report from the Government's own Housing Commission in 2022, which estimates that we require new builds of 40,000 to 60,000 a year. The Taoiseach has conceded that the housing targets need to and will be revised but he has intimated a 5,000 increase on the yearly target. This is insufficient and is a paltry increase given the scale we need. Less than two weeks ago the Economic and Social Research Institute concurred that targets need to be significantly increased by far more than the Government is now proposing, while the Irish Institutional Property organisation, hardly a bunch of unreconstructed lefties, estimates that the target needs to be closer to 60,000. What is more, the Construction Industry Federation has said that we can achieve that number.

I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, that none of us takes any pleasure in watching the housing disaster unfold. That would be wrong, unseemly and unbecoming of us all. We all care about our housing policy. We all care about a housing strategy and we all care about the situation in which too many people in this country find themselves. We do not take any pleasure from this disaster unfolding: the month-on-month increase in homelessness, working people locked out of the housing market and our young people leaving the country in such numbers. They used to leave the country not that long ago in search of work. The problem then was an absence of work. We fixed that; we fixed the unemployment problem. We have created the conditions to create the kinds of jobs we have currently but the problem now is housing. The resources are there but the problem is that a realistic, sustainable strategy and policy simply are not.

The Opposition is trying to help. Let us look beyond the Punch and Judy stuff. We are trying to help and we are trying to be constructive. Nobody takes any pleasure whatsoever in the number of people who are homeless, the number of people who are on housing waiting lists, and the number of people who are waiting to buy their own affordable homes. We are trying to be constructive. Every other week there is an Opposition motion or an Opposition Bill seeking to be constructive to work with the Government on improving the disastrous housing situation. For our part, the Labour Party brought forward several motions and Bills in recent times. There was a Seanad motion to tackle vacancy and dereliction. There was a Dáil motion setting out how the Government could have used last year's winter eviction ban to ease the pressures of the housing sector on families. There was the Housing (Homeless Families) Bill to ensure that children are prioritised in emergency accommodation settings. I could go on. At every turn we have been met with resistance, in some cases with hostility, and outright refusal mostly.

I do not doubt that the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, are serious in their commitment to solving the housing disaster, but they have tunnel vision on a failed housing policy. It is no shame to change tack and to change direction. It would be to the Minister's and Minister of State's credit and their Government's credit if they did. Homelessness continues to rise. Adults continue to be forced to move back in with their parents - if they were ever able to move out in the first place. Our young people continue to leave this country in considerable numbers principally because of housing.

We in the Labour Party also take seriously the solving of this housing crisis. I know that colleagues in other Opposition parties do so as well and there is no shame in changing course and taking on some of the measures that have come from the Opposition. We want to help and we want to be constructive but the Government has thus far refused to allow that to happen. This is a good and sensible motion containing measures that would, in our view, have a real and positive impact on the housing situation. I urge the Minister of State to take these measures on board.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for putting forward this very important motion. It is not an unrealistic expectation that the Minister would engage more seriously when these motions are put forward. I do not mean the Minister of State currently present in the Chamber: I mean the senior Minister who has left. In a situation of record homelessness that is higher than ever seen before in the history of the State I would expect the senior Minister to come in and acknowledge that, acknowledge the absolute trauma this causes for people, and then tell us what specific actions he will take to reduce the highest ever number of people in homelessness and in emergency accommodation. I do not expect him to be able to work miracles overnight but I do expect him to tell us what specific measures he is taking now to get those numbers down so that month after month we are not getting record levels of homelessness. People would be realistic about the time it would take to get the numbers down. Instead, each time a motion like this is proposed the senior Minister spends most of his time attacking the Opposition parties and blaming them for the housing disaster that we have, while not giving us a serious analysis and commentary on what he will do to tackle this issue. That is not too much to expect. That is what most people in this country expect from our Cabinet Members. Of course the senior Minister is not here in the Chamber and he is not hearing these comments. The junior Minister of State is here.

I will talk about what needs to be done and what can be done to get us out of this terrible housing disaster. For those without a home it is a disaster. Homelessness is at record levels with 13,514 people in emergency homeless accommodation in November. This includes 9,409 adults, 193 pensioners and 4,105 children. Homelessness has been rising for 22 out of the past 23 months. This does not include - as others have said - hidden homelessness. It does not include those who are sleeping in cars, in doorways and in tents. It does not include the 118 people who are sleeping rough in Dublin this winter. It does not include the more than 600 international protection applicants who have been sleeping rough recently during freezing winter conditions and storms. The number of children in homelessness has increased by 55% since the Government has taken office and the number of adults in homelessness has increased by 56%.

This Government has missed all of its targets for delivery of social and affordable homes in 2022 and in every year since being in office. Housing For All in 2022 promised 9,000 social homes and 4,100 affordable homes. Only 7,433 social homes were delivered. Only 323 affordable purchase and only 684 cost-rental homes were actually delivered in 2022. We have the figures for the first three quarters of 2023 with 9,100 social homes promised and 5,500 affordable homes promised. In the first nine months only 2,642 social homes, 159 affordable purchase homes and 56 cost-rental homes were actually delivered.

At the same time, since the Government took office, more than €1 billion allocated for housing to build homes that we desperately need was left unspent, allocated elsewhere or returned to the Exchequer. Last year alone, €220 million allocated to build local authority social housing was allocated elsewhere and €70 million allocated for affordable housing was allocated elsewhere. At the same time, more than 500,000 adults are stuck living in their childhood bedrooms. Those aged between 25 and 29 in Ireland are 15 times more likely to be living at home than the same age cohort in Denmark. Home ownership is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. If we look at us compared with 1991, when Ireland had one of the highest levels of homeownership rates in the European Union at almost 80%, and fast-forward 30 years, we see home ownership levels fell to 66% in 2022 and they continue to fall.

What needs to be done? It is quite simple and straightforward. I am not saying it is easy or does not require a lot of work, because it does, but it can be done. What the Government, the State and local authorities should be doing now is using compulsory purchase orders to buy land so we can build affordable and social housing at the scale that is needed. They should have a master plan for the land as a strategic development zone, plan the amenities and community infrastructure, and then get on with starting to build the thousands of affordable and social homes to rent and buy that we need rather than the Government missing its targets every year, hoping the delivery mechanisms will come through, which they never do, and get on with doing this. This was recommended 50 years ago when the Kenny report was published.

Along with this, the Government needs to invest in upgrading infrastructure, including water, wastewater and public transport, to service the CPO lands. It needs to sort out capacity constraints. For example, it should adopt the proposals of the Law Reform Commission on how to speed up the CPO process. This would help. We need to get more people into construction apprenticeships. A very good start for this would be to pay them at least the minimum wage. This would be a good start if the Government were to take this seriously. It should ensure in terms of State construction contracts that at least 10% of the workforce would be apprentices. This is done in other countries where they take this seriously, unlike the Government. It should take measures to get more women involved in construction apprenticeships. In the UK the number of women in apprenticeships was tripled because it took proactive measures to do so. In some countries half the workforce in some areas of construction is made up of women. Our labour participation rates are off the charts compared with some other European countries with regard to how poor they are in terms of women.

Where gaps in construction cannot be filled we should of course expand the critical skills list. This includes planners. They are not on the critical skills list even though we have a crisis. An Bord Pleanála is hiring more planners, which is welcome, but it has taken planners out of local authorities where there are also needed. We are not training enough each year. There need to be more trained planners coming out of the education system. Pending this we should have planners on the critical skills list, as they were previously, when planners in countries with similar planning systems, such as New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, were able to come and fill empty posts. This needs to be done. The cumbersome first stage approval process should be abolished. Early stage finance for affordable housing projects should be provided to help get them off the ground. This is a critical barrier that needs to be tackled.

This is not a radical plan that I am advancing. It is simply what needs to be done. It is simply what was done before in this country when we had very few resources. Ireland in the 1950s was not some sort of economic powerhouse but this is exactly what was done. Look at what Dublin Corporation did in terms of putting in a large amount of social and affordable purchase housing in my constituency on the northside of Dublin. It completed the northern sewage system to create the wastewater infrastructure to allow for that housing. In 1954, it used CPO to acquire 602 acres. This is how we got a large number of social and affordable purchase homes built and provided in areas such as Kilmore, Bonnybrook, Edenmore and Coolock. Along with this it reserved sites for shopping centres such as Edenmore Shopping Centre and Northside Shopping Centre. With hindsight we can absolutely say the densities were far too low and it could have done much better with far more housing, but it was successful delivery of housing through the use of CPO and getting on with it.

In 1963 in my constituency,, the corporation put in a CPO for 329 acres in the Swan's Nest area of Kilbarrack. It was very successful in delivering much-needed homes. In fact, it was quite a controversial CPO because it involved land owned by private developers with existing planning permission. It still went ahead and did it because it was needed. It completed homes that went on to provide the basis for people having very successful lives and getting involved in their communities and building their families.

How could this be paid for? Of course there is no shortage of funding from the European Investment Bank. There are a range of European Union funding streams for housing that the Government is failing to maximise, such as InvestEU. Its social window could be used to fund social and affordable housing. The European Social Fund Plus can be used to fund social housing in areas with a high risk of homelessness. This is very relevant here. The European Regional Development Fund can be used for investment in social housing. Horizon Europe can support investment in social housing through research and innovation projects aimed at improving housing conditions. There is no shortage of things the Government could be doing now to get more housing, which we need built and delivered.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion on housing. I do not think we need to pore over the litany of failures of the Government. The facts and reality speak for themselves in terms of the catastrophic situation we are now facing with the human misery the housing and home crisis is inflicting. There are record numbers of people in emergency accommodation. People are absolutely crucified with rents that are off the Richter scale and unaffordable. House prices are at shocking, unaffordable and record levels. So many of our young people are now leaving the country as soon as they get through college or do their apprenticeship. They are leaving the country in their tens of thousands because they cannot afford to live here. This is the simple reason.

Recently I was in London. I worked in London in the late 1980s when there were an awful lot of Irish people there. In recent years I did not see as many young Irish people in London. I did not notice them. In the past year or two this has dramatically changed. I could not believe how many young Irish people I met in London. All of them were saying the same thing, which was that they are over there - and London is expensive - because they cannot find anywhere affordable to live in Dublin. They are leaving for England, Australia and the Middle East because they cannot afford to live here. They are the very people in many cases that we need to fill the skills shortages we have, build the houses we desperately need, work in our hospitals, teach in our schools and colleges, drive the buses and work in all of the other areas where we are suffering chronic skills shortages. The people are leaving because we cannot put an affordable roof over their heads. The Government has failed to do so. We could do it but the Government has failed to do so.

The vulture funds issue, which has been focused on recently, is a substantial part of the reason for all of this. The decision to unload all of NAMA's property assets into the hands of investment funds, give them massive tax breaks and give them control of the land bank and all the new development has been a disaster. It has not been a disaster for them as they have had extraordinary profits. The consequence is that they drip-feed the housing development that is made available. When it is made available, it is at record house prices that are unaffordable for ordinary working people and at extraordinary rents. In my area the average house price is now €610,000. The average rent per month is €2,500. This means people need €30,000 in after-tax income to pay the rent. This is 100% of the after-tax income of the average worker. People might think there are rich people out my way, and there are some, but I can tell you the vast majority of people are ordinary working people and they cannot afford it.

They are effectively being socially cleansed out of their own community because they cannot pay those rents or afford those house prices. They are in jobs, have kids and are trying to struggle their way through and contribute to our society, yet they end up in flipping homeless accommodation. It is shocking.

Those vulture funds should be banned. No ifs, no buts. They have contributed nothing. Get them out. Give them six months to sell their properties to the State or they will be taken off them. End all of these tax breaks and take those properties off them.

There is something practical I want the Government to do, although the Minister of State will not agree with much of what I am about to say. Most of what the funds are delivering through their increased construction are two-bedroom and one-bedroom units, as they can make more money from them in apartment developments. This means we are seeing a significant uptick in family homelessness. Nothing is being delivered for someone who has several kids and needs three or four bedrooms. This needs to be addressed. I guarantee people that, if they look at the trajectory of homelessness, they will see more families there. While there is some increased delivery of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units – it is not enough, by the way – there are none of the three-bedroom and four-bedroom units we need for families.

We have submitted an amendment to the Planning and Development Bill. Currently, the State gets 10% or 20% of every new development for social housing. It is 20% if the development was started under the new regime that was introduced a while ago and 10% if the development started before then. The new Bill will dilute this obligation. It used to be the case that someone had to give a minimum of 20%, but the Bill will change that to a maximum of 20%. Why is that? This change needs to be addressed. The rate should be 50% or 60%. That is not radical or off the charts. It is what is done in places like Vienna. To put it sharply, what is the point in new developments where 80% of the units being delivered are unaffordable? That is the reality. If only 20% are social and affordable in the current market conditions, then 80% of those developments are unaffordable for working people. This was confirmed today by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, but everyone could see it anyway from just looking at the prices. That level is pointless. Only the investment funds can afford those units. They are buying them because no one else can, or people are paying ridiculous prices and we are creating the potential for the sort of crash we had before, with people taking out mortgages they cannot afford. We need the State to ensure an obligation that at least 50% - I would say 60% - of all developments be social and affordable housing. This obligation should be inserted in the Planning and Development Bill.

It cannot be set up overnight but we need a State construction company. One of the major blocks to the fast delivery of social and affordable housing is procurement, with regulations forced on us by the EU. We should do something about that as well. Consider the delays in the delivery of social and affordable projects. When the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, was searching for the real problem with the delivery of housing supply, it stated that procurement was a major issue. Another issue it identified was what it said looked like land hoarding and speculation. It did not point to problems with planning permissions, as there are loads of planning permissions. We need to short-circuit the speculation and procurement issues. A State construction company could do so. I do not care if it breaks state aid rules. Europe is breaking all of its own state aid rules anyway. We should say that, to deliver the social and affordable housing we need for an emergency, we should not have to jump through all those hoops and the State should build up its own construction capacity as fast as possible. In the short term, we need a quicker process to enlist contractors and they should be required to deliver at least 50% social and affordable housing.

We immediately need to reinstate the no-fault eviction ban. The Government goes on about how the ban did not work, but the homelessness and housing situations have grown much worse since the Government removed it. Some of us, including Deputy Cian O’Callaghan and me, have pointed out time and again that, if someone elsewhere in Europe pays his or her rent and does nothing wrong, he or she cannot get evicted. Why would it be any different here? Why should someone who pays his or her rent, is a good tenant and does nothing wrong have to live in a permanent state of insecurity? I have heard the Government speaking about the need to have a better and more professional rental sector and blah, blah, blah, but it wants to leave tenants in a permanent state of insecurity because it refuses to give them security of tenure, which is a basic thing the people of this country have been fighting for for hundreds of years. It was one of the main motivating factors in the resistance to colonialism in this country, for God’s sake. We need to introduce security of tenure.

There should be use it or lose it provisions where developers are sitting on planning permissions or zoned residential building land. That sort of activity is rampant, so use it or lose it provisions need to be introduced through the Planning and Development Bill to stamp it out. If developers speculate or hoard or bank land, they should forfeit it to the State for the provision of the social and affordable housing that we need.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

There are 9,409 adults currently homeless in the State, and 4,105 children are accessing emergency accommodation. That is equivalent to the full population of the town of Midleton in Cork. It is a significant number of Irish citizens who are currently in a state of homelessness. There is the equivalent of 117 classrooms of children homeless at the moment. It is an incredible situation. There are 60,000 people on local authority waiting lists in the State. Eurostat has found that there has been a 100% increase in rents since Fine Gael was elected to government in 2011. House prices are out of reach for all but the wealthiest in society. It was reported today that the combined earnings of a nurse and a garda would not buy a three-bedroom semi-detached house in the greater Dublin area. If someone was one of two important public servants in this country and carrying out critical roles in the delivery of health or security, he or she could not live within the greater Dublin area. That does not just mean County Dublin but also Louth, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow. That person is condemned to commuter hell just to provide his or her services. This cancer of a housing crisis that has been allowed to exist for the past ten years is affecting every element of society and of the delivery of Government services.

The Government’s targets are half what they need to be. According to the ESRI, we need to be building 60,000 homes annually. Regarding the social housing targets, the first nine months of last year saw 2,642 new social homes built. The target was 9,100 for the whole year. Two thousand affordable homes were delivered in the first three quarters of last year, far fewer than the 5,500 targeted. Fine Gael has been in government for 13 years: Mr. Phil Hogan, Deputy Alan Kelly of the Labour Party, Deputy Simon Coveney, Mr. Eoghan Murphy and now Deputy Darragh O’Brien from Fianna Fáil. Every year, this crisis has steadily worsened.

We need to focus on a number of issues, the first of which is the number of deaths among homeless people. In recent years, we in Aontú have been to the fore in highlighting the number of people dying in homelessness every year. We have found out that, in the past five years, more than 400 Irish citizens have passed away in homelessness. That is an incredible record, yet it is just the number that have died in the capital city. No other local authority collects that detail at all.

That figure, therefore, is a multiple of 400 in its entirety for the State regarding those who are dying in homelessness currently. Those figures have got steadily worse since 2018. In that year, 47 deaths were recorded, while there were 49 in 2019, 76 in 2020 and 115 in 2021. It is heartbreaking to see this happening because if we look at the age profile of those who died, about two thirds of the people currently dying in homelessness in the State are younger than I am. These are lives that have been stolen from people who had enormous potential and should have had a significant proportion of their lives to live in front of them. It is an incredibly sad thing to see.

The Government commissioned a report from Dr. Austin O'Carroll, the north inner-city GP specialising in healthcare for marginal groups. He found that people homeless for 18 months had a mortality rate eight times that of people homeless for six months. Homelessness, therefore, is a cause of death. It is a significant element of the reason people are dying on the streets. This is an issue that is not being focused on and, indeed, when we have raised it, we have actually seen the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, try to downplay the statistics we have brought forward. In one response, he said some of these people were actually dying because of car accidents, for example. It is exceptionally important to recognise that homelessness is a cause of death and it needs to be tackled in this context.

About 100,000 people are in housing distress across the country now. Many people are paying the majority of their earnings either in rent or mortgage repayments. Tens of thousands of people are on the precipice of homelessness. These are ordinary people and workers who, basically, are one month's rent away from being homeless in the context of incurring the cost of repairing a broken clutch in their car or the potential pig ignorance of a landlord. The fact is we are living in a society that leaves families in such a precarious state. It would not take much to simply add in fixity of tenure and to be able to tell people that if they fulfil their responsibilities according to their contract in terms of paying the rent and ensuring the house is kept in good order, then they will be able to stay in that house for either a specific length of time, a ten-, 15- or 20-year period, or in perpetuity.

The Government, though, will not give that confidence to people. So many people are calling my office regularly and sitting in front of me in clinics and saying, "Peadar, I have no idea where we are going to go." They are in a state of panic and you can see the fear written across their faces. We are in the jaws of an emergency now, and what is the Government's response to it? This is the real issue I have. I have mentioned this next point before, namely, that I believe there is an extreme level of Government incompetence currently. Some of this is because the Government has been in power for so long, while some of it is because many people in Government have not held down a job outside of it for so long.

Looking at the situation right now, the response to a parliamentary question submitted by Aontú showed that, between all the local authorities, there are 3,500 local authority homes empty today. They are empty. Nobody is living in them. There are actually enough local authority homes existing for all the people who are homeless to be able to live in. Obviously there is going to be some churn in the number of local authority homes that are empty. This is natural. The point is that when private rental accommodation is flipped, it takes an average of three weeks for that to be relet to another family. What is the average time for a local authority house? It is eight months on average. It takes on average eight months for local authorities in this country to get such a property back into use. This is an incredible indictment of the level of administration happening in local authorities and the Government now.

The schemes the Government is providing are incredible. It has created this network of schemes, it says, to get people back into vacant houses. The idea that we have 160,000 vacant homes in a housing crisis is similar to having ships leaving this country with food in the middle of a famine. It is just atrocious that we would have this happening. The Government has created a fund to get vacant houses properly refurbished. It was launched in July 2022. So far, the number of people who have received a payment from this grant has been 70 in a year and a half. The grant has been paid out for 70 houses out of 160,000 empty houses in a year and a half. This means the Government is spending about €250,000 a month on grants to get empty homes back into use. The disparity in the proportion of the action by the Government to the size of the crisis is immense. It would take 3,300 years for the Government to get all these empty houses back into use if it kept delivering this particular grant at the same rate. It is an incredible situation.

Eviction is the other issue significantly feeding homelessness. I refer to no-fault evictions. We in Aontú submitted an amendment when the Bill in this regard was last discussed and voted on in the House to inject some level of compassion into the Government's proposals and to give a chance for the Government to help those in need. Our proposed amendment was very simple. It sought to provide protections against eviction for people who had fulfilled their responsibilities as tenants but who had a disability, were suffering from cancer, had a severe illness, were pregnant, had a very young child or were over the age of 65. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party TDs voted against that proposed amendment. I feel that is an indictment of the Government's approach to this issue. It could not even make an exception in this regard.

During the period of the pervious Government, representatives of vulture funds got to visit the Department of Finance 150 times. When the finance committee asked representatives of those vulture funds to come before it, they appeared zero times. The vulture funds are a product of Fine Gael policy. They are creating excess demand in the system that is pushing up rents and house prices, and they are doing this based on paying no tax. It must come to an end.

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue

With all due respect to the Minister of State, it was the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, whom I wanted to have in front of me. I refer to some of the comments he made in his introduction when he started talking about the Land Development Agency, LDA. Much of what he was talking about is a crock of bull. I hate to put it that way, but it is.

The LDA was set up to deal with infrastructure within 15 minutes of cities. This is what the Government set it up to do. In my area, this brings in Patrickswell, Adare, Croom, Ballyneety and Crecora, which are all about 15 minutes from Limerick city, but it wipes out the rest of County Limerick. In Croom, permission has been granted to build 135 houses. There is also a new water scheme that got funding of €5 million. I do not know if the company is Uisce Éireann or Irish Water, but whatever it is called these days, it has got funding to put in a water supply. A 100-person nursing home is to be built there too, as well as housing for the elderly and a crèche facility for progression of the primary school. A letter came from Uisce Éireann three months ago to say it wants €400,000 to investigate the infrastructure in Croom to see if it is possible to build houses. The company went to the landowners looking for this development fee.

Usually, when people want to build houses, the infrastructure is provided by the Government and then those people pay a fee per house when they build the houses. Irish Water, however, is looking for €400,000 for a survey, even though a survey was done previously when the Croom system was taken over from the Government by Irish Water or Uisce Éireann or whatever the company is called today. At the moment, therefore, 135 houses, a nursing home and houses for the elderly are being held up because of funding and infrastructure. The sewerage system in Croom now has enough capacity for 300 people. It is under severe pressure and needs maintenance. When the new road was being built to service the school in Croom, I said the extra infrastructure required should be put in because in the Government's plans, in the context of the LDA, it wanted to invest in areas 15 minutes from Limerick city. It did not do that.

I have been a contractor all my life and I can see that when infrastructure is to be put in place, it should be done when roads are being put in.

You increase the size of the pipes and everything else to make sure the services are there to allow houses to be built. Did the Government listen? No. Does it listen to anything we say in this House? It then has to do U-turns afterwards and look for investment. Last week, I spoke about five sites in Kilmallock that were offered to the county council. The person in question even offered to build the houses and then offer them back to the local authority but has not got a phone call. The Government says there is a housing crisis. Why is that? The council has now been informed that it is not to buy any more sites or houses and that it is to leave them to agencies. That is why.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

I welcome this debate and thank Sinn Féin for bringing it forward but I also want to highlight one issue. Sinn Féin has made 11 points in the motion being debated tonight but I would like it if it had 12. The thing I would like to see Sinn Féin highlighting is its own contribution to the housing crisis. I will give an example. Between objecting to zoning and objecting to planning applications, it has objected to 5,121 units of housing in 18 votes in Dublin City Council alone. Its representatives have made objections in Mayo and Wicklow and to 853 units on Oscar Traynor Road, 768 units at O'Devaney Gardens and 1,500 units in the Fingal County Council area. They only objected to 1,200 units in Donabate. Sinn Féin representatives have also made objections to 500 social, affordable and private houses in Tallaght. One TD here has objected to more than 2,000 units while another has objected to five developments comprising a total of 1,102 build-to-rent residential homes. An awful lot of houses they are objecting to are social and affordable. I have asked Sinn Féin Members about this before. They know I am not a critic of their party. I am not. I look at every group and thank them for their contribution. However, Sinn Féin is talking about housing here and there are people on the other side of the Chamber who shout about housing an awful lot as well but, if you look at what they do at home in their own constituencies, you will see they continuously object to people zoning land to build houses on and to actual planning applications. An awful lot of these TDs and county councillors are from Sinn Féin but it is not an exclusive Sinn Féin club. There are people in other parties, again including those on the other side of the House, who also object. I am not able to understand that.

If there is something wrong with me and if I am wrong, I would like somebody to stand up tonight, criticise me and say why I am wrong. If the Minister of State thinks I am wrong, I would like him to tackle me. I would like somebody to give out to me and to say I am wrong and that every time he or she objected to zoning or people putting a roof over their head that he or she was right and that those people should not have had their house. If somebody can put that argument up to me, I will debate it with him or her any day of the week. It would be some day in hell before I objected to anybody having a roof over his or her head.

I will give a good big clap on the back to any developers or people who have the - I will not say what - to build houses. If they can go to the local authority and convince it to zone land, more good to them. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not a dirty word. There is nothing wrong with being a building contractor with "building contractor" written on the side of your van and being out at 6 a.m. How are we going to have homes? How are we going to have places for people to live if they are not allowed to get planning permission? There are people pontificating in here every night. You would get sick of it. They are continuously on about this but, when they go home, they bring out a piece of paper and write a big long objection about overshadowing somebody else or doing one thing or another. Jesus and God almighty, it would drive you into the mental home. I really have to condemn it in the strongest possible way.

Deputy Michael Collins

I thank Sinn Féin for putting forward this motion. In November, Ireland had 13,514 people, including 4,105 children, in emergency or homeless accommodation, according to the Department of housing. The homelessness crisis in Ireland is growing due to this Government's lack of action. This is causing distress for many people, especially children, and is now considered a national problem. Those facing housing insecurity are being overlooked by the political system. In November 2023, the number of homeless people was 335 higher than in the previous month and 17% higher than in November 2022. Since the current Government took office in the summer of 2020, homelessness in Ireland has increased significantly. The number of homeless individuals has risen from 8,702 to 13,514, an increase of 55.3%. Including all those in hostels and rough sleepers, the actual number of homeless people is closer to 20,000. Many others are forced to live in their childhood bedrooms or to rely on family and friends. The true extent of Ireland's homelessness crisis is much greater than the recorded 55% increase since this Government came to power. This shows a growing crisis and a Government that seems uncaring.

Despite promises, the Government has failed to reduce homelessness. This failure has left thousands without a stable home, highlighting the need for effective solutions and a commitment to tackling homelessness. The Government's handling of the homelessness crisis lacks decisive action and fails to prioritise the needs of the vulnerable. The Government is neglecting the basic needs of Irish citizens. The number of children in emergency accommodation in Ireland has surpassed 4,000 for the first time. This alarming statistic shows the Government's failure to address the homelessness crisis effectively.

We can also look at bigger issues such as people objecting, which Deputy Healy-Rae has spoken about. To be quite honest, that is an outrageous scandal regardless of where the objections are coming from. People seem to be literally driving around looking at planning proposals and putting in objections to people's applications. There is a situation in my constituency, and probably in every other constituency, with planning permissions and nobody in this Government is willing to tackle it. People want to get out on their own. They have found their own loans, have their own bit of ground at home and are willing to go through everything required for planning permission but they are being hit with one snag after another in a brutal effort to make sure they do not get a home on their own farm.

Last year, we put forward a proposal regarding log cabins. The Rural Independent Group was proud to do that. That would at least help with the situation. If everybody was singing from the same hymn sheet, the numbers would start to reduce. However, if they are not, they will not. Permission for log cabins is refused. They could be a good start for a young person or couple starting out. I know many young couples who started out in log cabins at the bottom of the garden. Nobody knew they were there and no objections were made. However, if they go through the planning process, the planners object to them. There are many solutions that would help but the Government is not working towards those solutions.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I will also thank Sinn Féin for the motion. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it. I agree with almost all of it. I welcome that Sinn Féin wants to bring forward measures to effectively ban investment funds and many of the other things set out in the motion but I have great concerns about the use of emergency planning and procurement powers so I will reserve my position on that.

In contrast with the Rural Independent Group, I have not come across anybody who has made an objection or complaint. What people make are submissions expressing their concerns. The planning legislation provides for that and it is vitally important. Indeed, the courts have repeatedly said that the role of the individual outside of the two parties is extremely important for our democracy and have praised the role that individuals have played. I hate going back but, when I was elected in 1999, my biggest difficulty was with the underfunding and under-resourcing of the planning authorities, which remains an issue to this day. I understand there are hundreds of vacancies.

A second issue is the continuous reduction of the involvement of the public. Because of repeated myths such as the suggestion that people are objecting for no reason, we brought in legislation to preclude people who did not make a submission at local authority level from doing so at the level of An Bord Pleanála. Then we brought in fees to further discourage people from taking part in the planning process. Throughout all this time, my experience was that the difficulty was interference with planning law by various means by big developers and by planning permission being given with certain conditions and those conditions never being complied with. We saw that when the planning tribunal reported. Does the Minister of State remember that? We are inclined to forget the planning tribunal that cost a fortune and set out the systemic misuse of the planning laws from top to bottom. I cannot remember the words it used. The Minister of State might help me. I am getting tired in the evening. However, it spoke about the abuse of the planning laws on a systemic basis and money repeatedly changing hands.

From 1999 to now, I have had the privilege of being a city councillor and a TD. As with health, I have watched the failure to invest in local authorities and the continuous removal of power from them, whether by leaving vacancies or by not giving enough money and then blaming them. I am a critic of local authorities but never of their staff. I certainly criticise some of the management but, most important, I criticise the Government policies that have seen them starved of funds and a role. They now spend their time privatising and outsourcing. I could count on one hand the number of people directly employed as plasterers, carpenters, electricians and so on. Everything has been privatised.

I have watched a housing crisis deliberately being allowed to come into being, following Government policy. Back when I was a proud member of the Labour Party, one of the first speeches I made was at a Labour Party conference on the unaffordability of housing. I remember pointing to headlines in The Irish Times at the time on the cost of housing. Does the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, remember the Kenny report? It was published more than half a century ago - 51 years ago. It told us there was a huge problem at the time and we needed to give local authorities power to acquire land at existing use value with a 25% bonus for the owners. It clearly pointed out that we needed to do something 51 years ago.

If we fast forward to 1999, when I was elected, there was a housing crisis. Houses were built every year and the progress was outlined in a quarterly report that told us where and how we were building and when construction would be completed. Then in 2009 we moved to the last column, "construction suspended", never to build a house again. I am not given to exaggeration. As the facts are so damning, I do not need to exaggerate. Not a single public house was built from 2009 until 2020 or 2021. That is a significant part of the problem.

I have been a Member of this House since 2016 and have grabbed every moment, whether through Sinn Féin motions, our own motions or at any other opportunity, to highlight that there is an alternative vision for this country in the context of housing. The current situation has been deliberately created through reliance on the market. The market has repeatedly failed and each Government. It is extraordinary that the three Government parties continue with this reliance in light of the damning figures.

The figures trip off our tongues as though they do not mean anything. There are 13,514 people in homeless accommodation, of whom 4,105 are children. Various experts have pointed out that is an underestimate. The Government does not tell us this in so many words, but my interpretation is that those people are just collateral damage. The Government tells us the housing policy is brilliant even though the numbers in emergency accommodation keep rising and there are appalling figures for deaths on our streets. I walk past people on the street every night as I go to my hotel. I wonder what is happening to me as I look at the recesses at the front of the Gaiety Theatre, which have become a bedroom for somebody. I ask what has happened to me and this country. At one stage, we were outraged that there were people sleeping on the ground. I watch as the seagulls come over and take the little brown bag that sits beside the person. I watch various voluntary groups give out money and blankets and I say I am part of this Dáil that is allowing this to happen. This is an obscenity.

I am so tired of the Government's spin. I want to work with it because I think there is a solution. An integral part of the solution is to face the facts. The Simon Community tells us the position as is through its 32nd snapshot of 16 areas. The study examined the availability of property in 16 areas. In nine of those areas, there was no property available under the main Government scheme, namely, HAP. Galway city was among the nine areas, while there was one property available in Galway county. That is the position. This is its 32nd snapshot. Surely any Minister worth their salt would say, "Jesus, we are doing something wrong here. How is that happening when our main scheme is HAP?"

I will look first at Galway city and then move to the county. The famous Galway social housing task force, which I have mentioned often, has been sitting for more than five years but we still have not got a single comprehensive report from it analysing the situation in Galway. It gets more presentations from homeless groups on the ground to tell us the situation is getting worse. Part of the solution for Galway city and county is to build public housing on public land. I am not looking for affordable housing or other housing. There is a need to build public housing on public land and extend the income limits in order that there is a diverse range of people there. The Government should stop the negotiation that is going on in respect of the docklands, which will give land to the Land Development Agency at a premium price for premium housing. Does the Minister of State think selling off land to fund an extension into the sea that cannot go ahead if one takes storms realistically and believes what is happening in the context of climate change is a solution to an emergency in Galway? As regards Ceannt Station, approximately 14 acres in the centre of Galway are being developed by that body without any connection with the other bodies.

As regards the county, is cathair dhátheangach í ar thairseach na Gaeltachta is mó sa tír. Maidir leis an gCeathrú Rua agus an córas séarachais; níl aon chóras ann agus tá an séarachas amh, the raw sewage, ag dul díreach isteach san uisce. Ní féidir aon rud a thógáil ansin mar níl an córas cuí don aidhm. In Carraroe, there has been no treatment facility for 20-something years. We tabled questions on the matter but were told it is nothing to do with the Minister but, rather, it is to do with Irish Water. A most unsuitable site was picked, with all the eggs in one basket, if you will excuse the bad pun. I could call what is in the basket something other than eggs. In terms of delivery, there has been nothing.

We could have balanced regional development, as well as balanced county and city development, but it is simply not happening. We have any amount of schemes with no vision. There is no vision because there is no acknowledgement that we cannot have a Republic based on the market. The market has a role but, for a democracy and a Republic, we need homes. They are the most basic and fundamental segment of society that will give security and allow people to participate. Instead of that, we have a jigsaw without a picture, as well as boasting about a first-time buyers' scheme that is simply keeping the price of houses too high. The Government says that my colleagues and I do not want people to own their own homes. I do want people to own their own homes, but at an affordable price. I do not want them to have to work every God-given hour to get a mortgage they cannot even afford in the first place.

Deputy Violet-Anne Wynne

I welcome the motion, as I do any motion that offers solutions to end homelessness. The motion covers eight main points and I will do my best to address them in the time afforded to me. I welcome any measure to increase the supply and pipeline of affordable housing. Shannon, County Clare, has a population of more than 10,000. People from all over the mid-west are employed there. The town provides third level education and has an international airport. Unfortunately, I often hear from employers who cannot get staff because there is nowhere for them to live. We need to build social and affordable housing at scale in this country and use all available resources. I met the Land Development Agency at the housing committee this afternoon. I welcome that its next phase will include towns such as Ennis and Shannon.

I welcome the various points made in respect of ending homelessness for children and those aged over 55 and increasing Housing First tenancies. To do so, however, we need to get the actual picture of the homeless crisis. The way the figures are based only on those accessing emergency accommodation, the number of whom is now at an all-time high, is flawed. It fails to grasp the true gravity of the crisis. How can we address the problem if the Government has not admitted how bad the problem is? We need to expand the definition of "homeless", as I have been suggesting to the Minister for the past year. I will continue to do so until I am blue in the face. Unless you have been homeless or at risk of facing homelessness, you have no idea of the mental and personal cost to you and your family, and that is the huge problem. Every person who is homeless matters. It is about time the Government recognised them.

It makes total sense to reinvest all moneys saved from emergency accommodation into homelessness prevention. I call on the Minister to provide additional step-down beds for those exiting refuges. Clare Haven Services has brought this up with me many times in recent years as its number one priority for housing. The lack of step-down beds is preventing women and children from accessing refuges and the support needed. The number of beds needs to be vastly increased.

I was happy to support the motion on the increase in stamp duty and investment funds. However, as I said at the time, I do not believe 21% is enough. Their pockets are deep and Government must get to the bottom of them.

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

There were 19 contributors. I want to acknowledge the importance of the debate. I really want to echo what the Minister said and to reaffirm our commitment to tackling homelessness and solving the housing crisis. Since the formation of this Government, we have been committed to long-term sustainable solutions to homelessness, accelerating the supply of homes including building of sufficient social and affordable homes. We are fully aware. The recent rise in homelessness is of course of serious concern to everyone here on the Government side, and no doubt on the Opposition side as well. We take this very seriously. We know the impact it has on individual families. We have put €242 million in the budget for this year, up from €215 million last year. Resourcing is not an issue. We are redoubling our efforts to prevent further homelessness. I refer to the tenant in situ scheme. There were 1,700 acquisitions last year of social housing, the majority of those under the scheme. To date this year, we have 1,600 houses under purchase with many of those tenancies under way. The cost rental tenant in situ scheme has 47 completed. We would like to see more coming forward in that area.

We have seen a small decrease in certain areas, particularly in October, in single adults in emergency accommodation in mid-east, the midlands, mid-west and south east compared to October. There was a small fall in the number of families accessing emergency accommodation in the west. However, the figures are too high and we acknowledge that point. We are working closely with local authorities and NGOs to support them to help people exit homelessness. In the first nine months of last year, 2,000 adults exited from homelessness. That was an increase on the previous year. There were 2,500 preventions. That is up on the same period from 2022. In the last quarter of last year, we saw an increase of 14% or 1,585 people exiting and preventions from homelessness.

I want to deal in facts. We had a debate here and Members are talking about facts. There has been delivery on social and affordable housing. More than 10,263 social houses were completed last year. They were not all purchased. There were 7,433 new builds, the highest in many years. There were 960 acquisitions and 1,870 leases. Ask anyone who wants social housing. They are not concerned whether the house they are being provided with is built by a local authority or leased or acquired. Furthermore, there were nearly 9,675 in a combination of RAS and HAP. This year alone we have seen over 2,500 up to the quarter. The majority come through in the last quarter. I would advise the Deputy to hold her full comment until she sees the outcome of the last quarter.

In terms of social housing, there is the focus on affordable homes to rent and buy. Some €250 million has been approved for affordable housing fund delivery of more than 4,000 affordable homes in 67 projects across 20 local authorities. From a starting point of zero, 1,800 homes were delivered last year. In excess of 2,000 affordable homes are to be delivered in the first nine months of this year. Deputy Stanley said no affordable cost rentals were being progressed in County Laois; there are. There is an application in before the Department for Portlaoise in terms of affordable cost rental. There has been delivery of affordable purchase in Stradbally.

The Croí Cónaithe scheme has had 6,220 applications, of which 3,400 have been approved. Only 103 have been paid but that is a bit of a red herring. Anyone who has been approved under the scheme has 30 months to do the works so they are going to be drawing down at a later period.

On many of the points Deputies have raised, we all want the same thing here. It is not fair to say that there has not been delivery; there has. I will touch on a few points that were raised by Members during the debate. We spoke about the whole issue in terms of the investment funds purchasing homes. Deputies neglected to state that following the changes in the planning laws since May 2021, approximately 42,000 properties have been given the owner-occupier guarantee. They are homes that are ensured to be available for owner-occupiers, which is hugely important. Less than 1% of the homes were actually purchased by the funds. As the Minister said, Sinn Féin must provide details of its alternative plan. Deputies stated the average house price should be €300,000. That is an unrealistic price and they should be honest with the people out as to how they are going to do that. Anyone who buys a home will have no control over their home. The site will continue to be owned by the State. If they want to rent their home, they cannot. If they want to sell their home, it is at the control of the State. The schemes we have in place make the purchase of houses affordable. The Sinn Féin scheme will bring about negative equity. More than 40,000 people have availed of the help-to-buy scheme. Sinn Féin continues to speak about it. The party has put on record that it will abolish the scheme. In one of its reviews, the Central Bank has stated that the scheme provides a major advantage to people in putting a deposit together. It has very little impact on inflation. It is only people getting their tax back that they have already paid. Sinn Féin opposed the first home scheme. That allows the State to go in and basically provide an equity stake that people can buy out, unlike the party's scheme, where the site they are on will be owned by the State, effectively.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

That is right.

Deputy Kieran O'Donnell

When people buy a home, they should have control over that home. We cannot have them just as glorified tenants. It is hugely important for Sinn Féin to spell it out. It is very well to throw out a figure of €300,000 without putting flesh on it. With the schemes we have, including the local authority affordable housing scheme, people can get up to a 40% discount and still quality for the help-to-buy scheme. We changed that in the last budget to deal with people who can purchase whose income is not very high. On the first home scheme, people can get up to a 30% discount and at up 20% they still get access to the help-to-buy scheme. On the Croí Cónaithe scheme, Sinn Féin needs to be honest with people. Is the party for it or against it? From what I can see, it is looking to abolish the scheme, yet at the same time it is calling it the same scheme but it is not the same scheme. Someone who gets the Croí Cónaithe scheme can purchase a house that has been unoccupied for two years, get a €50,000 grant, or €70,000 if it is derelict, and SEAI grants as well. More than 6,120 people have availed of that to date. The question is: is Sinn Féín for it or against it? The party wants to abolish the LDA. Will it abolish the LDA? The LDA is going to build a substantial number of homes. We would like it to happen faster but the agency is building a substantial number of homes this year. It will invest €1 billion in 2024. We need to see flesh on the bones. What exactly is Sinn Féín's alternative plan? Deputy Ó Broin said he would bring it out, yet we have not seen it. He has certainly flown many kites but if he is in government, he will have to make those hard-core decisions at a point in time and show judgment. When the riots were on in Dublin city, Sinn Féin blinked and did not make the right decisions.

In the cold heat of being in government, Government has to make decisions. There were 30,000 units built last year, exceeding targets. We will exceed targets again this year. We are building social, affordable and cost-rental housing. We are providing schemes to make homes affordable. The difference with our scheme is that it allows people to get on the property ladder and makes it affordable, but they control their home, unlike Sinn Féin that proposes to bring in a scheme which effectively does not add up. I think Deputy Ó Broin owes it to the people to spell out exactly what he is proposing.

Deputy Thomas Gould

Last year, 88 families and 166 children entered emergency accommodation in Cork city. In April, after the Government cruelly lifted the eviction ban, 32 children were forced to leave their homes and to sleep in a hotel, almost double the number in March. Cork city Accommodation Placement Service saw a 26% increase in the number of presentations, and a total of 938 individuals. It saw a 49% increase in 2022, with more than 5,000 repeat representations. Can the Minister of State please ask the Minister the straightforward question that I asked him last year? How many children must become homeless before he will resign and before he, the Minister of State and this Government will accept its policies have failed? There are now 4,150 homeless children. Must it be 4,500 or 5,000 children? How many children must become homeless before the Government admits it is wrong and its strategy does not work? Those are the figures. The Minister of State has listed figures and talked about all the different schemes that are available. We have an all-time high of people and children using homeless services, an all-time high in rents and an all-time high in relation to house prices. Looking at the homeless figures we have, they are only a fraction of the real figures we get when we talk to the Simon Community and other organisations.

I will provide a couple of examples. I know of a woman who is 34 weeks pregnant. She was in my office on Monday. When she comes out of hospital - God is good and when the child is born hopefully everything will be fine - she will be homeless. Can you imagine that? She will be homeless. I know of another person who has a four-year-old daughter who has been couch-surfing between friends and family since 2022. She is not even part of the statistics. The Government does not even know who she is. Finally, I know of a mother with two young sons who has been 15 months in emergency accommodation. The only thing those boys will remember is growing up in a hotel. For all the Minister of State's statistics and figures, these are real life people.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

Hear, hear.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I listened with interest to the debate all evening. While I was listening to it, I got an email from a man in Mayo. I want to read a couple of extracts from it. It reads: "I am currently homeless. I have a full-time job. I am living out of my car in between work and seeing my four children. I have no money towards getting a deposit for a house. I am currently sitting in my car, with €30 to my name, in the wind and the rain, writing this email." That is while the Minister of State sits here and slaps himself on the back, saying Sinn Féin is not going to do it for that man or for the other men or women and children in Mayo. Fine Gael, not Sinn Féin, is the party that brought homelessness to Mayo. That is a fact, not like the nonsense that was being spouted by a colleague earlier.

Fine Gael has now been joined by Fianna Fáil in doing that, as more and more people are driven into homelessness. Month after month the numbers increase, and there is failure after failure to get to grips with the housing crisis. People are falling between the incompetency of Government and the bureaucratic system that paralyses local authorities from fulfilling their statutory responsibility to deliver housing. I am very short on time, but I want to say that not a single social or affordable house was built in Mayo in the first nine months of 2023. I struggle to understand how that is even possible. Every week all through 2022, we were told that everything possible was being done to build houses, for us to see each month; of the first nine months of 2023, not a single home was built. It was not until November that any houses were delivered. I welcome those and they are sorely needed, but it is far short of what is needed and far short of the modest targets. The Government said it would build 151 social and affordable homes in Mayo. It has not even nearly come close.

Many others are not even able to get on to the housing waiting list, on top of the 1,235 people that are on that list. Everyone suffers when the Government fails to deliver. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have designed and delivered a housing policy that continues to destroy the lives of many people in Mayo and other areas. The disturbing cost of the psychological damage being done to children, who have nowhere to call home, will impact generations to come. This will be the Government's legacy, the commodifying of desperately needed homes and the lining of the pockets of the vulture funds who continue to make millions on the backs of the people I am talking about.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

The motion before us today is about homelessness. I think it was very telling that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, spoke for ten minutes, and only 30 seconds of that were about the issue of homelessness. I counted it on the clock. When the Minister of State started to speak about this same issue, he talked about the recent rise in homelessness. The Minister of State has been in government for 12 years. Every single year since his party has been in government, seven of them propped up by the Tánaiste's Fianna Fáil, homelessness has increased. Despite the fact that the Government claims record levels of investment, record levels of output and historic records of social housing, homelessness is now at its highest levels ever. Contrary to the Minister of State's claim that we do not propose alternatives, and I probably have more housing policy documents and legislation published than almost anybody else in this House, we put a number of very basic propositions to the Government. They were sensible suggestions to reverse the damage the Government's housing policies are doing to men, women and children who are being forced into homelessness.

We proposed increasing the social housing targets. We got no answer and no response. We suggested using emergency fund procurement powers and new building technologies to supply a further additional stream of social housing, exclusively for people who are in emergency accommodation, to accelerate the exits which collapsed in recent years. We got no response. We said we need to prioritise homelessness among the over 55s, which is at its highest level ever and is one of the most shocking indictments of this Government, and also to prioritise increasing the exits of families with children, because no child should spend two or three years in emergency accommodation, and that is what the Government's housing policy allows. A very simple proposition is to double the Housing First tenancies. We have the highest level of single people in emergency accommodation in decades. The Government has a target of around 240,000 Housing First tendencies a year. It is a good scheme and I supported it before it was this Government's policy. We should double the target to 500,000 and accelerate the exits. We have also proposed that as the number of people in emergency accommodation are reduced, which is something that would happen if Sinn Féin was in government, we should ring-fence the money that is currently spent on emergency accommodation and increase investment in supports to sustain tendencies and prevention. We got no answer to that. We want the Government to expand the tenant in situ scheme and, crucially, to fix the problems with the scheme in the cost-rental tenant in situ. It is not working. We told the Government the same thing over a year ago with social rental tenant in situ. It ignored us and lost valuable time. Do not do it a second time.

Deputy Kieran O'Donnell

The Deputy is wrong on that.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I urge the Government not to do it a second time around. We have called on the Government to increase the funding for domestic violence refuges. We have about a third of the refuge space that is required for women and children fleeing domestic violence and coercive control. We have no got answer from the Government on that as well. Crucially, we have called for the reintroduction of the ban on no-fault evictions. We know what the Government's position is on that because it voted down our legislation in December.

We tabled a series of propositions so we could have a discussion, and neither the Minister of State nor the Minister addressed any of them. With respect to the Government's so-called progress, here is the problem. Yes, it is true that more new-build social homes were delivered the year before last than anytime since 1975.

Since then, our population has doubled, and in the 1970s, we had a surplus of social housing in our large local authorities. The level of need for social housing today is more than double what it was in the 1970s, so if we want to make an intelligent comparison, we would need to double the output beyond what the Government it has delivered.

With respect to affordable housing, in 2020, I published a very detailed policy document setting out exactly how we would deliver large volumes of affordable homes, something the Government is not doing. In my constituency, in the case of one of the Government's affordable homes funded through the affordable housing fund, the full cost to the buyer is €425,000. In what world is that affordable?

We have set out our alternatives. The Government has ignored them and misrepresents them. It will not even talk about the issue under debate tonight. Its head is in the sand, it is making this problem worse, and the sooner we get rid of its parties from government, the better, not just for us but for those people whom the Government's housing policies are failing year after year. Shame on the Minister of State for again defending the indefensible. I commend the motion to the House.

Amendment put.

An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach (Deputy Marian Harkin)

In accordance with Standing Order 80(2), the division is postponed until the weekly division time tomorrow evening.

Dáil Éireann debate - Tuesday, 23 Jan 2024

Housing and Homeless Prevention: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 23 Jan 2024