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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 6 Mar 2018

Vol. 966 No. 3

Provision of Cost-Rental Public Housing: Motion [Private Members]

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— we are in the midst of a housing crisis which is undermining our society and threatens our economy;

— since 2010, rents in Dublin have increased by an average of 81%;

— there are 700 sites in public ownership around the country which have recently been identified by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government as having potential for housing development;

— the Government is overly dependent on the private sector for the provision of new housing supply, relying solely on increasing such supply will not address the affordability issue as developers will bid up the prices for available land, leading to further increases in house prices and rents;

— the provision of new social housing, using differential rents, will not on its own address the housing crisis, as it will not affect rent and property price rises in the private sector;

— providing a direct subsidy to existing private market rents similarly fails the test of helping reduce overall rents and would prove very expensive to the exchequer without the State ever acquiring any additional assets;

— EUROSTAT has recently indicated that approved housing bodies will not be able to avail of off-balance sheet financing for the provision of new homes;

— 1,000 new apartments are currently under construction in the docklands area of Dublin but most of those units are already sold to international corporations for the use of their staff;

— we must avoid the mistakes made in other international high-tech cities, where local people are frozen out of the housing market and public servants are unable to afford housing close to hospitals, schools and other social and public services;

— European countries with more stable, affordable and socially inclusive housing systems support large-scale provision of secure cost rental accommodation where rents reflect costs, not the maximum that the market will sustain;

— the case for a new more ‘unitary’ public housing model was set out in a report compiled by the National Economic and Social Council, entitled Social Housing at the Crossroads: Possibilities for Investment, Provision and Cost Rental, in June 2014, which proposed the widespread adoption of a cost rental housing model;

— a cost rental model of housing can reduce development cost by availing of low interest rate public finance, publicly owned land, economies of scale from large-scale development and the absence of profit margins to private developers;

— this model will enable national public housing sectors to remain off-balance sheet, which allows investment to continue through downturns in economic activity;

— cost rental housing schemes could be funded through a combination of the European Investment Bank and other European Union funding institutions, credit unions, pension funds, Home Building Finance Ireland which funds from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, the Housing Finance Agency, and Exchequer funding, as appropriate;

— this model will provide multi-annual funding commitments to facilitate forward planning;

— the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness contains no targets, and no clear funding stream, for the delivery of cost rental housing; and

— only one small test site for new cost rental housing has been initiated and no other affordable rental scheme is being developed by the Government;

and calls on the Government to:

— define cost rental housing as publicly owned housing which is publicly provided on State-owned land where the rents are set on the basis of recovering the cost of the property over the lifetime of a long-term loan;

— introduce regulations to ensure that any long-term profits, after the repayment of such loans, are retained within the system and reinvested in housing supply;

— direct the new National Regeneration and Development Agency to work with the relevant State agencies to designate Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines, Dublin 6, and Broadstone Garage in Dublin 7 as the first locations and plan for them to be the first of the major cost rental housing developments;

— plan for the construction of 3,000 new homes at these two locations;

— design each cost rental scheme to target those individuals who are currently spending more than one-third of their total income on their current rental accommodation;

— also allocate a percentage of new housing for people on the local authority housing lists and in those cases facilitate the use of a suitable State support - for example, housing assistance payment - to allow them pay the same rent as other tenants;

— involve disability communities, such as Nimble Spaces, in each development so that it promotes an arts-led participatory design process, meets the needs of many different citizens, enables active citizenship and participation, encourages social inclusion and positive relationships, and incorporates smart design that is good for people and the environment; and

— immediately identify other publicly-owned sites that would suit the provision of cost rental schemes led by local authorities, approved housing bodies and housing co-operatives.

I am very glad to introduce this motion on the promotion of a form of cost-rental housing for our country for consideration and, I hope, agreement by the Dáil . The need for a change in our housing system has never been clearer. There are hundreds and thousands of families living in acute homelessness, more often than not because they can no longer afford private rented accommodation. The single greatest cause of homelessness, particularly for young families, is their being forced out of the private rented market. It is a fact that the supply of rental accommodation in particular is drying up. Only some 3,000 properties are advertised on daft.ie, this being the most common accurate measure of supply. It is a fact that rent prices, despite the attempts to introduce rent restrictions, continue to rise. In certain instances in the Dublin area, there have been dramatic rent increases of over 81% in the past seven or eight years.

More than anything else, we need to debate this matter because it is clear that Fine Gael's housing policy is not working and needs to change. It is also clear that we should be using this opportunity as we recover and emerge from an economic crash caused mainly by the nature of the property market and banking and lending systems in recent years. The case for change is so clear, and we do not want to and cannot go back to the system that got us into such trouble. However, I am afraid to say we have been looking, in the two years since it was formed, for the Government to grasp this opportunity of doing things differently. However, it is not happening. Fine Gael seems happy to stick with the status quo, to rely on the market and to promote developers as the solution to the problem. This is both a terrible failing and a terrible mistake. I am very glad to see the Minister of State, Deputy English, for whom I have high regard, present. However, the absence of the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, speaks volumes about the importance Fine Gael attaches to this housing crisis. The Minister is no doubt attending a further meeting of the national emergency co-ordination group in the wake of the recent storm and snow but he could and should have taken time to attend this debate and outline some of his own views. In the constituency I share with the Minister, people are in acute difficulty all the time because of this housing crisis, not just because there is a storm or snow but also as a result of the fact that they cannot find a place to live and cannot afford the rental accommodation that applies. They deserve the respect of the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government and his attendance in the Dáil to address a motion on the subject of housing pure and simple.

I fear we are going back to the same form of housing supply model that got us into trouble and that we are in a numbers game. The Minister and the Government seem to be saying that if only they can get the numbers up the market will sort this out. That is a fatal mistake. The housing market is not a perfect market and never should be. It has different characteristics and different variables and will never work with a reliance on market-based solutions to deliver the housing needs for our people. However, this is what we see this Government doing, emphasising all the time a loosening of regulations, providing tax breaks, easing the planning system to try to get a construction and development industry working, then thinking that by building those numbers of houses we will find a way out of the problem. That will not work. It will only bring us back to the property market that got us into the trouble. It will only increase competition between developers and pump up construction and land prices, which, ultimately, will be shouldered by the Irish people, who must pay the higher rents and property prices we see returning. We must avoid that.

I welcome the fact that there are proposals in Rebuilding Ireland and elsewhere for the building of social housing. It has taken far too long for us to build up that capability, but a second message we have today, and the reason for this motion, is to recognise that while this social housing is urgently needed and very welcome, on its own it will not address or change the nature of our housing market. Part of the problem we had in our housing market was this very divided, dualist system, with one half a social housing model with very specific rules, differential rents and all sorts of inequities of its own and, on the other side, the private market. We believe, even if we do build a larger number of houses in the social housing market, which we do need, that this will not address the huge problem of affordability that is particularly occurring in the rental sector.

I have listened in recent weeks to such commentators as Ronan Lyons and Lorcan Sirr identify the fact that the private rented sector is the one in which the housing crisis is at its most acute. I do not believe either reliance on the market or social housing will tackle that problem. We need what the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, outlined in its 2014 report - which is almost four years old now - Social Housing at a Crossroads. We need to move towards a unitary system. NESC argued in that report with real cogent analysis and a good review of what is happening in other countries that the central response to the current housing crisis should be moved towards what is known as a cost-rental form of public housing. The need for this is clear because, particularly in the cities, where we have the highest pressure points in terms of the private rented market, there is, as I said, this incredible increase in rental costs, but we are also seeing a segregation occur. Dublin risks going the same route as San Francisco, another tech city that is similar to ours, whereby ghettoes or enclaves are created in cities in which whole sections of society are no longer able to afford to live. As evidence of this, I cite the fact that there are 1,000 apartments being built in the Dublin Docklands, but I am told that the vast majority of those are already committed and sold for use by people in the international companies which operate in the area. We cannot run a city or our housing market on this basis because we need accommodation for our nurses, doctors and teachers, people involved in care work and families who want to live in the city centre and grow up there and who have grown up there in the past. Therefore, we must provide a wider, balanced mix of housing and that is what cost-rental housing can do.

It has to be low cost.

Cost rental means the rent covers the cost of the accommodation and the loan. It has to cover the full costs for reasons I will set out and, over the long-term lifetime, this has to be fully paid off through the rent, so it is cost rental. There are advantages to this, the first of which is that it allows us the prospect of being able to do such lending off-balance-sheet. Although this may not be easy, we can and should be able to argue and get it through EUROSTAT and the European Commission, and they will recognise that in those circumstances the full cost of construction and the loan that covers that construction is paid for over the lifetime of the rental agreement. I believe we can do this, and the advantage would be that we could avail of financing through downturns as well as booms and balance our construction activity over a longer period of time.

This is a long-term policy decision and it will take many decades for the real benefit to accrue, with the maturation of those assets as they stay in public ownership then being able to help other construction activity to take place. A virtuous circle would start to develop. It would take several decades outside the political timescale we are all involved in, but sometimes, particularly in the area of housing, we have to think long term.

Another reason we should not just focus on social housing is that there is a fundamental problem with our existing model, whereby the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, in all its grandeur, hands out a wad of cash to a local authority and pays upfront for the full amount of the construction of that housing. This gives the Department great power and control over local government, but it does not make financial sense. All financial advisers will tell us that where we have such a long-term investment and potential return, it is far better to match it with a long-term loan rather than doing it all in cash, as is the historical way we have done it.

It has to be low cost but it is very much part of the market. This low cost, cost-rental housing has to influence the private market and has to interact with it if we are to move away from that divided dualist system towards a more unified system. It would be the great prize and benefit from this step if we were to take it. I believe it is possible in a variety of ways to keep the costs down. Critically, we could apply public financing, which we can get at very low interest rates at present. This is probably the best and most significant way in which we can deliver a cheaper option than the private sector.

The Minister's amendment states that the Government is in discussions with the European Investment Bank, EIB. It is about time. The EIB came before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and publicly stated one of its biggest problems in this country is that no one is looking to borrow from it. It does not have sufficient counterparties. We should be going to the EIB in this area for cost-rental funds and looking for loans of hundreds of millions of euro to invest immediately in this long-term housing solution, such is the scale and nature of our crisis. There are other places we could look for such long-term low cost finance, including pension funds, credit unions and the State's investment fund. It is critical. The one advantage we have and the way we can bring the cost down is to make sure it is secure public lending financing where the interest rate is typically lower, which would affect the overall cost of the rent.

To keep costs down, this is targeted at State lands, be they with local authorities, State agencies or the State itself in whatever form. It is the 700 sites identified by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government as being potentially convertible for housing that we should use for the cost-rental model. We should, as the NESC report sets out, consider doing it in a way which helps keeps the cost down by setting the land price at a level that helps us to do so.

We need to do this at scale to bring down the costs. The test runs that are not even up and running in Dún Laoghaire, Lusk and Sandyford, to which the Government refers in its response to the motion, are too small. This will only work to really bring the cost down if we think at scale. If a builder - not developers, because they would not be involved - local authority or approved housing body was able to build hundreds of units at a time, it would help bring down the costs and create new vibrant communities in the process. There are ways in which this can be done, but I see none of it happening.

Deputy Martin and I were involved briefly in the programme for Government negotiations, and I will be honest and say we were slightly aghast and removed ourselves. One of the main reasons was that the discussion we heard with regard to housing was all about the market. This was very out-of-date in terms of really getting the market humming here as a solution to this problem. Nothing I have seen since has changed my mind in this regard. We need to step up our game and start providing cost rental at scale. There is nothing in Rebuilding Ireland, the national planning framework or the new national capital plan. The Taoiseach briefly mentioned it just before the plan was launched, stating he would have a major announcement in the Dáil on cost rental on the day, but there was nothing about it. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has not turned up today to discuss this motion, which speaks volumes in its own right.

Cost-rental housing is for everyone. It should be open to the entire market, and the best example of the model we have seen is in Vienna, where as far back as the mid-1920s it addressed its housing crisis by going in this direction. That housing became the most sought-after housing in Vienna, and it still is, and it has been a huge success. We are similar to Vienna. We are similar in size as a country to Austria. There is no reason we should not learn from that experience and apply the same model here. It has to be a model where it is opened up to a variety of people so it has the prize of bringing the whole market down because we have a lower-cost solution that does not have developers' profits priced into the cost of rental and has those other low-cost effects I mentioned.

The exact details of this would have to be worked out by the national regeneration and development agency, which I believe should have the task of leading this. It should target people on the social housing list, and if they cannot afford cost rent, they should get a subsidy similar to what we give through the housing assistance payment, HAP, or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, to the private sector. If we want to target those in the private rental market currently paying more than 30% of their income, which is the definition of unaffordable housing, as a way of trying to address that specific sector, which is the pinch point of the housing crisis, we should go further. We have included in the motion that we should look at designing communities that are really integrated where we bring disabled people in and ask how can we make them part of a community that works for them as well as for everyone else. We need to think of it as a cultural space and a part of a community and not just as housing units.

Our motion set two locations which we believe should be immediately targeted for the development and roll-out of this model. These are Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines and Broadstone bus garage in Phibsborough. Other Members will ask why we have picked two Dublin sites. One of the reasons is that Dublin is where the rental crisis is at its most acute. The average rental costs in south Dublin city are 65% above what they are in Cork, 75% above what they are in Galway and 95% above what they are in Limerick. People in that area often live on the same wage as a teacher, nurse or garda or social welfare payment as someone in another city. We have a particular problem in Dublin that needs to be addressed.

The Labour Party has tabled an amendment, and I do not know whether it can adjust it at this late stage, but if there are alternative sites that people would argue we should consider, it would be a very welcome amendment and we could add them to the list. There are loads of places. We picked the two sites particularly because they are large and close to the centre. They are close to Luas lines, schools, shops, churches, swimming pools, libraries and all the services people need. It would be a real benefit for the State. They are in locations where people could walk to work and where there is a tradition of people renting and where, as I said, our crisis is most acute.

We have been in correspondence with various people from the Army who have asked us to hold on because it is showing disrespect to the armed services, but far from it. We have the highest regard for the Irish armed services and we believe they need the restoration of pay and conditions, which recognise the high regard they are held in by the people of the State. I do not believe this is happening under the current model. I do not believe it is happening given the number of people we have driving from around the country to do barracks duty in Dublin. We could do it in a better and more effective way for the Army, whereby we use McKee Barracks, Baldonnel, the Curragh and other resources, so we do not have soldiers moving around all the time and we base them and improve their conditions and resources.

The same applies in Broadstone. There was a very good report by Steers Davies Glieve in the transport expert review in November 2016.

It advised that it would not be possible to renovate it, which is badly needed, and that there might be real gains from the use of other sites, probably not in the centre, or to amalgamate it with other bus sites. This would allow a much better service for Bus Éireann.

Those sites, given their scale and position, are the best sites we can see for rolling out cost rental at scale in a way that changes the nature of the market and changes the public perception of housing policy. Maybe in his contribution the Minister of State, Deputy Damien English, will restore some faith that Government is really serious about cost rental. It says in the programme for Government that his Government is going to do it, but it has done nothing about it since. What is his solution? Will the Government resort to a form of affordable housing or affordable rental whereby it continues to subsidise the private rental market? This does not address the problem. It does not stop the ever-escalating rates, it actually drives them upwards. It costs a fortune. That approach to affordable rental accommodation cost us €535 million last year.

Will the Government go with affordable purchase as the only solution? I do not think that is appropriate and right. We need to start respecting people who rent. We need to give them a fair rent, a sense of security of tenure, a sense of community and a sense of being central to our housing strategy. I do not get that sense from Fine Gael. I think Fine Gael thinks buying property is the purpose of life and helping people do that is what a good housing policy is about. That is out of date. It is not serving us, it is expensive and it will cost us more in the long run.

I ask the Minister of State and other parties to use this occasion. I know we have a debate the week after next on affordable housing. We need to understand what this cost rental model is, because it is a fundamental piece in the jigsaw of developing an alternative housing market. It is not easy to understand because it is different from anything we have done before, but I believe it is the way forward for this country, this city and indeed each of the cities, particularly where the rental housing crisis is at its worst.

We very much appreciate the support, online and elsewhere, of Threshold, the Nevin Economic Research Institute, NERI, the housing association Respond!, Social Justice Ireland and others. Everyone with a keen interest and a keen eye on what is happening in the property sector is saying to us privately that cost-rental has to be a big part of the solution: everyone except, it seems, Fine Gael.

I move amendment No. 2:

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

“notes that:

— the Government reaffirms its commitment, in the Programme for a Partnership Government, to develop an affordable cost rental option for low-income families, to help keep rental costs manageable for tenants and allow them to avoid future rental market increase shocks;

— the Government’s ambition is to make cost/affordable rental a major part of the Irish housing system, with rents set at levels to cover construction costs and the management and administration of developments, but with only a minimal retained

profit margin, this will be informed by pilot projects being progressed in Dublin at Enniskerry Road and Lusk;

— following the second Housing Summit on 22nd January, 2018, local authorities are now finalising an outline of their respective affordable housing programmes, from the State residential land bank of around 2,000 hectares, including cost rental proposals;

— detailed discussions are continuing with the European Investment Bank regarding the application of its international experiences in developing and supporting affordable housing to large-scale cost rental projects in Ireland;

— the finalisation of new ‘Build to Rent’ and ‘co-living’ planning guidelines to encourage development and investment in more rental accommodation at more affordable rents;

— as part of Project Ireland 2040, the Government’s commitment to establish a new National Regeneration and Development Agency, including consideration of how best to make State lands available, including suitable lands in the control and ownership of Government departments and State agencies, to the new body for, inter alia, affordable residential development;

— a package of affordability measures was announced on 22nd January, 2018, with the potential to deliver more than 3,000 new homes initially and a target for at least 10,000 new affordable homes to buy and rent;

— the new measures are targeted at low- to moderate-income households, with annual gross income of up to €75,000 for dual income and €50,000 for single income households;

— a new Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan was made available from 1st February, 2018, providing long-term, fixed-rate mortgages for first-time buyers;

— a new Affordable Purchase Scheme will see affordable homes built initially on State land, in co-operation with local authorities, such as at the centrally located O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin city centre;

— the new €25 million Serviced Sites Fund will provide funding for local authorities to offer low-cost serviced sites to Approved Housing Bodies or housing co-operatives for the delivery of affordable homes to buy or rent;

— a second Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), an infrastructural investment fund, will be launched in the first half of 2018 to facilitate the early development of housing lands and delivery of more affordable new homes;

— the Government, through its Rebuilding Ireland – Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness and arising from the focused Rebuilding Ireland review in recent months, has prioritised measures to stimulate housing supply at more affordable prices and rents;

— the Government’s initial primary focus has been on delivering homes for households in the lowest income brackets, through the commitment of over €6 billion to deliver 50,000 new social housing homes by 2021, with qualifying households also able to

avail of the Housing Assistance Payment, the Rental Accommodation Scheme and other targeted programmes;

— over 25,000 households had their social housing needs met in 2017, an increase of 90 per cent on levels achieved in 2015;

— the Government has also implemented a suite of measures to facilitate increased residential construction activity and ensure the sector’s capacity to produce more affordable homes, through, inter alia:

— fast-track planning reforms and more flexible planning guidelines;

— €200 million investment in enabling infrastructure to service/open up housing lands with proportionate affordability dividends for house purchasers;

— the development of large-scale mixed-tenure housing projects, with social, affordable and private housing, on publicly-owned lands; and

— the help-to-buy scheme to assist first-time buyers to meet their deposit requirements;

— the Government has also introduced targeted and time-bound measures to limit excessive rent increases (e.g. through Rent Pressure Zones), and to provide further protections and effective support services to both tenants and landlords;

— in Budget 2018, the Government removed significant obstacles to building more homes more quickly, by:

— investing more in direct house-building by the State;

— removing the Capital Gains Tax incentive to hold on to residential land;

— escalating penalties for land hoarding; and

— providing a new, more affordable finance vehicle for builders through House Building Finance Ireland; and

— these measures are having a positive impact with all relevant indicators clearly showing that the supply-based measures under Rebuilding Ireland are working, e.g. over 17,500 new homes commenced construction during 2017, three times as many as in 2016.".

I thank the Green Party for moving this motion and giving us a chance to have a debate on the very important topic of cost rental and affordable rental, an area in which the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is very interested. The Minister sends his apologies. He spoke on this earlier today. He would like to have been here, but as Deputies know, he was very much at the centre of the National Emergency Co-Ordination Group, doing great work on behalf of the State along with all our agencies and Departments, trying to co-ordinate the recovery throughout the country. I think Deputies might recognise that. It is unfair to claim that he should be here. He cannot be in two places at the same time, and he did address this issue earlier today. As Deputy Ryan knows, when the Minister took office in July, he made it very clear that affordability was a key part of the work he wanted to do, along with developing social housing. I think Deputy Ryan knows he is committed to this.

We are willing to work with the Green Party on this area and were willing, as Deputy Ryan said, to form a Government. We would have loved for the Green Party to be a part of that. Deputy Ryan made a decision not to be part of that. That is his choice and Deputy Catherine Martin's choice, but we were open to having everybody involved in this Government and we were very clear on that. We all share a commitment to tackling the shortage of housing, both social and affordable.

I acknowledge the assistance of everybody in this House in facilitating the work of the National Emergency Co-Ordination Group this week and for rearranging the various meetings, including at committee, which the Minister had been scheduled to attend. We appreciate that and everyone's effort to ease the work we are doing in the Department. Storm Emma was a national weather event the like of which we have not experienced for more than 35 years. My Department continues to manage the recovery from it, which is still under way. Some counties are still very badly affected. That said, the Irish people have shown incredible resilience this week. Thanks to the efforts of our emergency response services, as well as community and volunteer groups throughout the country, most areas have returned to some sort of normality. There are some counties, including Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, Kildare, parts of Tipperary, Galway, parts of Westmeath and Meath which are still under pressure, but we are getting there.

Is there a written version of the Minister of State's remarks? He is speaking very quickly.

I will slow down, but it is not our motion and we do not provide a copy in those circumstances. I understand that those are the rules of the House, but I can supply the Deputy with a copy.

During debates on housing over the past two years, it has always been said that it is an ideology issue with Fine Gael, or that we are against something. That is not the case. Every week the Minister and I have to say that it is not the case. We are committed to all forms of housing. There is a specific rental strategy; we are committed to cost rental, which is in the programme for Government, as Deputy Ryan pointed out. The Minister has worked very hard on cost rental and affordable projects. We keep saying we are very open to that and recognise that if we are to address the housing shortage, action must be across all forms of housing, including social, affordable, rental, private and purchase. There has to be a rental part of that. People choose to rent now. They want the choice it offers because of job commitments and so on. We are very much committed to that so I ask Deputy Ryan not to keep saying we are not. It does not help debate. It does not help us work together to find solutions.

We are not totally relying on the private sector. We recognise that we do have to rely on the private sector in the short term, as we develop our own social housing stock and develop plans for social and affordable housing. We have to work with the private sector and in some cases rely on it. However, we also recognise that through Rebuilding Ireland our duty is to bring back a sustainable construction sector. It is to tackle an emergency housing shortage and homelessness now, to get our local authorities back to building social housing and to bring the stock of houses back up. However, in the long term our duty is also to have a sustainable housing construction market. That is what Deputy Ryan's party wants and we want it too. Rebuilding Ireland commits to that for the first few years, while Project Ireland 2040 and the national planning framework set out the long-term vision of how to achieve it. Yes, these plans involve social housing and private housing, but they also address the way we manage our land and where we build houses for the future. Where do the next million people live? Where are the next 500,000 jobs going to be and the next 600,000 homes? We are trying to address those issues in a sustainable way. We are committed to those goals in the exact same way that Deputy Ryan is, so I call on him not to keep saying that Fine Gael is against something or that its members all think one way. We recognise that our job as a Government is to bring balance to housing across all the various sectors.

There is a lot of common ground between the thrust of the motion and the Government's objectives, actions and plans in the area of affordable housing and cost rental. In considering the overall objective, we can all agree that it must be to ensure that people can access affordable housing in every part of the country, in cities, villages, towns or rural areas. Deputy Ryan mentioned two Dublin sites, but as he said, this does not just concern Dublin. People have been critical when the Minister has referred to one or two cities. We recognise that housing has to be available throughout all of our cities and urban areas and we must make sure that people in rural Ireland can afford houses as well.

Cost rental is a commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government and the Government is determined to make cost rental a major part of the housing system. We share that desire with Deputy Ryan and everybody else in this House. For that reason, we welcome the opportunity to set out what the Government has done and is doing: delivering social housing for those with the greatest affordability challenge, making the housing more viable and affordable generally and making affordable housing available to buy and rent. All of this is happening under our five-year €6 billion programme, Rebuilding Ireland. We have tabled an amendment which we will be supporting but there is a lot of common ground in both of the motion and the amendment.

When it comes to social housing, after the economic downturn we simply had to help those who had the greatest need and faced the greatest affordability challenge. Affordability of houses was not the only issue. In some cases, people could get houses. I have often referred to the fact that in many places, rent was half the price it is today only two and a half years ago. As such affordability was not the whole issue. The first priority was to get social housing stock back up and to put our local authorities and housing bodies back in the business of building houses. They have stopped doing so due to previous decisions, not just because of the downturn. Many people had fallen into negative equity. The Government was committed and made the decision, along with the relevant Oireachtas committee, that we would increase the stock of social housing by 50,000 homes by 2021.

Everyone keeps referring to the figure of 50,000 homes. We are all on the same page where that target is concerned. Other parties want to do more with affordable and cost rental and so do we. However, there was a commitment across the parties in this House to provide a minimum of 50,000 social houses. Taxpayers' money has been committed to doing that.

Those on the social housing waiting list can also avail of the housing assistance payment, the rental accommodation scheme and other targeted programmes. There is now a very strong plan to accommodate everyone on the social housing list. Some €6 billion in funding for this has been securely ring-fenced by the Government and beyond that money has been committed to make sure that we get back to delivering 10,000 or 11,000 houses per year. In the first ten years of Project Ireland 2040, money has been committed to increase that to 12,000 social houses a year. We are committing to that in the long term. I have no doubt that most people in this House would agree to that as a minimum and want to do more.

It is a fair commitment to have that money secured and it shows our commitment to dealing with the housing shortage across all the different sectors. Over the past 18 months, we have been ahead of target in many sectors. I emphasise, on behalf of the Minister, that while we are ahead of target, we accept it is not enough to deal with the current number of people who need a house. When we say we are making progress, we know it is not enough and that is why we want to constantly put more money into this to drive the agenda.

More than 25,000 households had their social housing needs met in 2017, an increase of 90% on the levels achieved in 2015. We are delivering social housing, although we also realise there are people who are not eligible for social housing and who struggle to afford to rent or buy a home. These people also need the support of the State. The Minister recognises this and made a very clear commitment upon his appointment last July that this is an area on which he wanted to focus.

Before we get into the type of supply we need, it is important to remember the challenge the Government faces in the context of Rebuilding Ireland relates to the residential construction sector. Housing construction had fallen by 90% and the Government had to take immediate remedial action to make residential construction viable again across all the various sectors. To achieve this, we introduced a dedicated €200 million infrastructure fund, provided access to development finance, for example, through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and now through Home Building Finance Ireland, which can provide competitive development loans for builders, and also introduced new departmental guidelines and streamlined planning. These actions and many others are rebuilding the residential construction sector. This is borne out by the data on residential construction commencements for the year to the end of January, which, at nearly 18,000, is up by 34%, a one third increase on last year. We expect to see a minimum of 20,000 houses built this year across all the various forms of supply, and the sector itself estimates it might get about 23,000 houses, some 8,000 of which will be social houses, or perhaps even more when short-term rentals are taken into account. We are beginning to make the progress we need to bring back sustainable housing across the sector.

As we continue to address supply, we must ensure that the new homes are affordable and accessible. To achieve this, the help-to-buy scheme is a great help to many in securing a deposit, with almost 5,000 approvals in 2017. It has helped to drive up the supply of starter homes, as the reports show. As a Government, we are doing more to guarantee housing affordability. The Minister announced on 22 January that we are initially doing this in three main ways: an affordable rental scheme, with cross-rental; a Rebuilding Ireland home loan; and an affordable purchase scheme. The measures are generally targeted at households with low to moderate incomes, with a maximum of €50,000 for a single applicant or €75,000 for joint applicants. From the affordable rental and the affordable purchase schemes alone, we are targeting 3,000 houses in the first phase, with an ambition for over 10,000.

The Government is determined to make affordable or cost rental a major part of the Irish housing system. Such housing will be-----

Excuse me. To follow on from Deputy Joan Collins' earlier question-----

We have asked for the script.

That is fine.

I thought I had more time.

I am afraid the Minister of State had just ten minutes and the time is up. Members will have the benefit of the script being circulated. I call Deputy Casey, who is sharing time with Deputies Curran, Cowen, Brassil and Murphy O'Mahony.

I welcome and support this motion and I commend the Green Party and the Social Democrats on highlighting what I have long believed is a necessary model in addressing the worsening housing crisis. The housing crisis has consistently been getting worse according to all the evidence produced. Rents have been rising for over five years, supply in the rental market is abysmal and tenants are being broken on the back of unaffordable rents. Earlier, I checked the national property website. It shows that there are only 1,200 properties available to rent in Dublin, our capital city, which as over 1 million inhabitants. In my county, Wicklow, there are only 61 properties available for a population of over 142,000.

Since 2014, the cost-rental model has been endorsed by the NESC. The Government, however, has ignored this advice from the body of experts appointed to guide it in these matters. For four long years this advice has been ignored while the housing and rental sectors have spiralled out of control. This is a remarkable failure, by any standard.

The cost-rental model allows rental housing units to be provided on the basis of cost, not on the market forces that we all know are not functioning in this area of acute social need, an area where far too many of our people - our fellow citizens - are being denied access to the basic human right of a home. The Government has a duty to intervene for the common good. The cost-rental model has a number of advantages other than the immediate one of allowing rental homes to be provided strategically to our people at prices they can afford. The model provides the State with a key asset that can be accumulated to ensure that not only can we tackle the rental crisis where it is at its worst, but that we have a rental housing stock that can prevent future crises from occurring. The assets these units would provide on a permanent basis for the State would also allow financial leverage to secure additional funding for housing.

The cost-rental model for rental housing provided by State agencies, such as the Housing Agency, is, therefore, a win-win policy to tackle the lack of homes for our fellow citizens. Therefore, the timid, hands-off approach to this model beggars belief. The Minister and his party are not able to see the bigger picture that a responsible Government must see. The market is not going to provide a solution without State action. The State has a duty here and Fine Gael's ideological objection to permanent State action in the area of housing is no longer credible. The introduction of a strong, strategically placed and nationally managed cost-rental model of housing is an ideal job for the national housing agency proposed by our party. This agency could be used as an additional source of housing as part of a full portfolio of measures, from rental to affordable and social, and then to a healthy private market in order to create a holistic, modern, sustainable housing system for the people of 21st century Ireland.

We can still do this. We can work on a cross-party basis to get this model moving and established. We should establish it in Dublin initially but, in my view, this model should be in every major urban centre in Ireland. I welcome that the Minister eventually took action in regard to the short-term letting platforms such as Airbnb. I was the first politician to raise this anomaly in the Dublin market at national level nearly two years ago but only now are there statements on Government action. I urge the Minister to accept our Bill rather than delaying further by the production of his own. We need to co-operate more when we are in agreement - that is responsible leadership at national political level. We are in agreement on Airbnb and we are in agreement on the cost-rental model of housing. We can act quickly and with purpose for the sake of our people, who so badly need an affordable home, so let us do it.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is an issue that has crossed my desk on a number of occasions. As the House is aware we have seen the rental market, particularly in Dublin, increase very significantly for 22 consecutive quarters, with double-digit annual increases for most years. The situation has become unsustainable. Part of the reason we have the private rented sector, as the Minister of State clearly understands, is due to the deficit in social housing. On the other side, we have people living in private rented accommodation who have incomes and who would like to buy, but who, because of the high rents they are paying, will never break that cycle.

As Deputy Casey said, we must recognise the impact Airbnb is having on the rental market, particularly in the Dublin area. There is a certain irony when we think that properties that should be let to families on longer-term lets are being rented to tourists, and that those people who should be staying in them are probably staying in bed and breakfast establishments, hotels and other types of accommodation. It is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed.

The issue of the cost rental model has been around for some time. The Committee on Housing and Homelessness, which was formed before the Government was formed, has looked at this issue. Just today I reflected on the findings of the committee. It stated:

There appears to be relatively broad consensus on the need for some form of an affordable rent model to provide long-term affordable residential accommodation for low to moderate income key-worker households in urban areas of high demand.

We also noted the comments of Professor P.J. Drudy, who recommended that a cost rental model of housing be established. Threshold and the Irish Council for Social Housing all acknowledged this, and it was clearly laid out in the report. When the programme for Government was adopted, and it was also reflected in Rebuilding Ireland, there was some sense of encouragement that this was a positive step that needed to be developed. We were well aware of the issues around it, in particular the issues concerning off-balance sheet activity, the special purpose vehicle and the piece of research that needed to be done to give effect to what had long been acknowledged as necessary. Action 4.6 of Rebuilding Ireland refers to this and states, "We will introduce a new affordable rental scheme to enhance the capacity of the private rented sector".

The initial timeline for that was the third quarter of 2016. In the action plan status report for 2017, the goal posts moved, delivering the same action but stating the Government had not made the kind of progress it had intended to make, delivering cost rental will be an important part of the overall solution, etc. We all agree this needs to be done and when Rebuilding Ireland was published, I said that we would support it and that its implementation was key. The Government has not lived up to expectations in the cost-rental sector and has not delivered in the timely fashion we expected.

Rebuilding Ireland is more than 18 months old. We have been encouraging the Government every step of the way to engage in the process. In a recent reply to a parliamentary question, however, the Minister stated:

In terms of broader research and discussions on developing a cost rental model as part of an evolving and more sustainable rental sector in Ireland, I plan to form an Expert Group to examine the issues and provide advice on the most appropriate way forward. I am currently  considering the terms of reference, formation and composition of the Group with a view to establishing it later this quarter.

This should have been done a year ago or more. We are behind the curve. The Government spoke about this in 2015. The Committee on Housing and Homelessness spoke about it in 2016. Rebuilding Ireland spoke of it in 2016. It is in the status report for 2017 and here we are in 2018 about to establish a committee. We all recognise it is a job that needs to be done. We recognise the technical complexities in off-balance sheet development but it is truly important and possible to do. The Government has fallen way off the target line to be effective. We all knew the different projects in Rebuilding Ireland would take different periods but we expected that a group to draw up a clear roadmap for a cost rental sector would have been established much sooner.

The model for the money made available to housing associations to build houses is based on the average rental values in counties. While that works quite well in Dublin and Cork, where rents are high, in counties such as my native County Kerry, housing associations are offered between €180,000 and €190,000 to build a three-bedroom house. They cannot do it for that money. We are trying to get programmes and proposals off the ground and associations such as Clúid and Respond! will not do it. The associated costs of development levies, water charges and Part V contributions amount to between €15,000 and €20,000. There are also the site development and ancillary costs, which make developing houses at that price unviable. The Department does allow an independent quantity surveyor to make an assessment and do a cost analysis, allowing a fair mark-up for the developer to build on that basis. That should be promoted in rural counties such as Kerry. For a housing association to come in and build houses it would need an average of €210,000 per house. That is what is needed to get projects off the ground. It happens in counties Cork and Dublin but we need to drive it on in rural counties. The Minister needs to consider that seriously to get supply under control.

Ruthless landlords are letting substandard properties. A family came to my clinic yesterday who had spent the entire week of the bad weather in one room in their house because it was the only one they could heat. It was pointless trying to heat the rest of the house because either the heating did not work or if it did, the house was so old and draughty that it was a pointless exercise. All houses should have a building energy rating, BER, certificate. State money is being given to landlords through the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and the housing assistance payment, HAP, or rent allowance. Landlords are getting money from the State to provide proper accommodation but that is not checked. The local authorities and Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection do not send out inspectors. Ruthless landlords are getting away with unacceptable practice. Most landlords do a very good job and I do not see why they should have to uphold standards while others get away with not doing that. Will the Minister of State make sure that local authorities send out inspectors where good State money is being paid? The Minister of State should look closely at those two issues, namely, supply and an acceptable standard in rented houses.

I am happy to say a few words on this crisis and to support in principle the Private Members' motion introduced by the Green Party. There is no doubt that the rental crisis threatens to hollow out communities, villages and towns and is putting households under severe strain. The Government should cease its delays on cost-rental models and put in place a broader strategy to address the rental crisis. Many people ask why can we not consider the Scandinavian and German models. The main difference between those models and ours is that tenants in those countries have rent certainty and surety. They also have tenure. People there know that if they are happy with the home they are renting, they have the opportunity to stay there for a long time. While I accept that the private market cannot be controlled, the Government could do more to support the tenants. I do not suggest that we should be anti-landlord because we need them in the current system in which the local authorities are not addressing the crisis by building houses.

Banks need to be brought into the debate. This morning, a constituent contacted me. He is a young man whose partner sadly died last year and he has three small children. The local authority is paying HAP for his house. HAP can be a good system but in this case, the banks are taking the property from the landlord and the tenant has three weeks to leave the house. Surely we can find a better system than one in which a bank will take back a property that will possibly be boarded up, leaving a young man and his three very young children trying to find alternative accommodation, which is practically non-existent in Kildare at present.

At present, 325,000 households are renting private accommodation. The current system mitigates against both those who are renting privately and those who rent through the local authority. We need something that supports both elements of the market. Dare I say we also need a system that takes on board what a couple or single person is paying out in rent for credit approval from a bank or financial institution when buying their own property? The data from the fourth quarter of 2017 show that rents have risen for 22 consecutive quarters. This upswing has not only lasted significantly longer than the preceding downturn but also longer than the upswing before that downturn, which lasted from mid-2004 until early 2008.

There have been huge delays in addressing this issue. We need immediate action.

I am disappointed with the Government's counter-motion. I support the motion but I do not support the designation of sites, as I believe that is a matter for Government in the context of Rebuilding Ireland, in which it is stated that together with local authorities the Government will source sites for this process. At the very least, I expected the Minister of State, Deputy English, to acknowledge the failure of the Government to meet the objective mentioned earlier by Deputy Curran. When Rebuilding Ireland was produced, we all acknowledged it contained many credible actions within it and we all hoped it would achieve its objective. Along with others, Fianna Fáil played its part in feeding into that process by way of the all-party committee, the recommendations of which were only partly taken on board by the Government. That said, it was always going to be about implementation and the action matching the rhetoric but, unfortunately, that has not proven to be the case. Far be it from me to go over old ground and talk about how this crisis has progressively worsened over the past months and years, but I had hoped that the Minister of State, Deputy English, would be man enough tonight to admit that the objective of Rebuilding Ireland has not been met. During the debate on budget 2015, the Government stated the proceeds from the sale of Bord Gáis Energy would yield €400 million and that that money would be used for this very purpose but that has not happened. It is incumbent on the Minister of State, Deputy English, to inform the House during this debate, and by association the public, why he has failed in this instance, why he has not identified sites or whose responsibility it was to identify them. Who is culpable and who is accountable? Where is the transparency we were promised?

I congratulate the Deputies who brought forward this motion, which is very specific in terms of how this issue is to be progressed. I agree with the concept proposed by them, as everybody does, including the Government, but it is incumbent on Government to show some humility now and then. In this instance, it needs to acknowledge its failings and tell us what went wrong and why it went wrong and to acknowledge the recommendations from all sides of the House to move this process forward. If the issue is delays in respect of the European Investment Bank, there are other concepts, models and funding methods that can be utilised without relying on that institution. There is a vehicle that could be put in place and would provide the 51% public finance such that we could meet the criteria in relation to EUROSTAT. The Government has gone only half way in terms of acknowledging the contribution that credit unions, among others, want to make. They can provide the necessary finance and the Minister of State can provide the land. This would result in minimal site costs and allow us to replicate the success of the Ó Cualann model in many parts of the city and, if needs be, many parts of the country.

As I said in this House last week when talking to the Minister, all sections of society and all of those affected by this crisis want an option that is affordable and meets their needs, irrespective of what level of the spectrum they are on.

On behalf of Sinn Féin, I acknowledge the significant additional work of the staff of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the local authorities, homeless charities, including the Peter McVerry Trust and Focus Ireland, as well as grassroots campaigners such as Inner City Helping Homeless over the past number of days. There is no doubt that as a result of that significant effort, we are not here speaking about the death of homeless people on our streets. It is important that we acknowledge that additional work and I ask that the Minister of State convey that to those staff.

I welcome the motion and Sinn Féin is happy to support it. For those who do not know what cost-rental housing is, it is not market priced housing but rental housing based on the cost of providing, financing, building and maintaining it. This allows for the provision of rental accommodation substantially below current market values and it ensures that the future cost of that rental is not tied to the fluctuations in the market, which provides for a real level of affordability. I welcome that within the motion there are some very specific targets. Unlike others, I believe the two sites mentioned are sensible sites but they should not be an exclusive list. The comments of Deputies Cowen and Jan O'Sullivan regarding other sites can be supported but we need to be in the business of mentioning specific sites and specific targets. Notwithstanding the Government's opposition to this motion, I urge it to examine those proposals and to discuss with the Deputies from the relevant constituencies future possibilities in that regard.

I listened carefully to the contribution of the Minister of State, Deputy English, and I have carefully read the counter-motion, the words of which do not match with the facts. The facts are very stark. We are now into the third year of this Government and not a single affordable housing unit to rent or purchase has been delivered through a Government scheme. The only affordable housing that exists was delivered through a scheme involving a housing co-operative and Dublin City Council, which in itself speaks volumes. At the same time, never has the need for affordable purchase and rental housing been greater not only for young couples, but for older couples, single people and a range of other people, including people like me who do not want to buy a home but would prefer to have long-term secure and affordable rental accommodation.

The State has access to land and access to capital through the Housing Finance Agency, Revenue funds, the Strategic Investment Fund and other sources, yet it is refusing to directly intervene to provide affordable rental or purchase units. There is a plethora of schemes in existence. Officials in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the local authorities are exceptionally busy administering an ever-growing number of complicated schemes that have yet to deliver any units. Among these schemes are the help-to-buy scheme, which is inflating house prices in the private market - the majority of people benefiting from this scheme did not need any assistance because they already had their deposits and private finance; the land initiatives, which are proving to be very slow and on at least one of those sites, if not more than one, no genuinely affordable units are likely to be delivered; and the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, in respect of which again, in Dublin in particular, there is no guarantee of any units below €320,000. The Government has provided €25 million to local authorities to assist them in developing Ó Cualann-type projects but, again, no scheme in this regard has yet been put in place and there is no timeline for its delivery. In regard to the pilots which have been talked about for more than 18 months, not only will they not be ready until the end of this year or early next year, but the entry level rents, particularly in the Dún Laoghaire cost rental pilot, will be quite high. While such rents might become more affordable over time, there are genuine concerns in this regard. The home loan scheme is not available to people who are not first-time buyers, which particularly affects older couples and people close to pension age. Moreover, it only works if there is an affordable for sale at an affordable price and again, in many of the areas of high demand for affordable housing, they are not available. While the Government has claimed that the package of measures it announced a few weeks ago will deliver 3,000 affordable units in the short term and 10,000 over the lifetime of Rebuilding Ireland, it cannot tell us where these units will be or what they will cost.

While the Minister of State, Deputy English, mentioned balance - he is absolutely right - more than €1 billion of taxpayers' money has been given to private developers via loans or grants, without any guarantee of affordability. The only direct investment by the State in the delivery of affordable homes is €25 million. That is the balance about which many of us are so concerned. My colleagues will speak about Sinn Féin's preferred options. We have put forward many proposals in terms of mixed tenure, affordable sale and affordable rental and we will continue to pursue them. Until such time as the Government starts to take this problem seriously and invests significantly in direct local authority mixed tenure, mixed income, social affordable purchase and rental housing, this problem will not be resolved.

Three years ago, at a committee meeting with the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, I mentioned that as house prices were rising, we were heading towards another bubble. The Minister responded with a wry smile and stated that house prices were not expensive enough, which was a shocking statement.

If one looks at the record of the Government so far, that is exactly what it has sought to do, namely, to increase house prices. Instead of taking action with regard to building houses, it has produced schemes such as the help-to-buy scheme. That scheme simply puts money into the pockets of those who are chasing the limited supply, thus raising house prices. One can also see an over-dependence by the Government on the private market and the private rental scheme is another example of Government money chasing limited supply instead of being used to build houses. Obviously the very favourable tax deals done for real estate investment trusts, REITs, and vulture funds allow massive multinational firms to chase limited supply and push Irish first-time buyers out of the market. It is a clear part of Fine Gael policy that house prices increase.

I do not have much time left but wish to raise one more issue with the Minister of State, Deputy English. As he knows, our constituency has the shocking, infamous record of being one of the areas that has seen the highest increases in rents in the country, quarter after quarter and year after year. That is causing immeasurable hardship and putting enormous pressure on families. What is the Minister of State going to do about this? Why has Meath West not been included in the State's rent control zones?

First, I express my complete support and that of my party for this motion. Cost-rental has long been a pillar of Sinn Féin's proposed solutions to the housing crisis. Social housing is simply a recognition that the provision of this basic need is too important to be left to the whims of the private market. How much social housing a state is willing to build is indicative of that state's desire to meet the needs of its citizens. Clearly we have a gap in our country where the Government sees profit as being more important than the needs of its people. This is because the less a state cares, the more social housing becomes the preserve of the most vulnerable, mistreated and the poorest in our society. Social housing should be the preserve of people who want to live in a vibrant and grounded community and the mix that cost rental could provide would be crucial to this. Cost-rental is also necessary because increasingly, housing is not only expensive for average earners but unaffordable and becoming more so by the month. In my own area of east Cork, this is a major issue in areas outside of the rent pressure zones. Despite rising rents, it is unlikely that they will be able to become part of the scheme as the national average is continuing to rise year in, year out. The system is nonsensical and is not a serious policy on the part of the Government to tackle rising rents but is merely window dressing.

A number of months ago, a woman came to my constituency office and the amount of rent she was paying, while not insignificant, was affordable. However, she was facing a 70% increase in her rent because rents outside the pressure zones are not capped. The system is extremely weak and this must be addressed. The Government must act on the issue of rents. There is no justification for the current trends other than unbridled greed encouraged by the Government's apathy. There is also no justification for annual increases in rents but this is encouraged by the model of regulation adopted by this State. Rents were unaffordable for many three or four years ago. We need deep and immediate regulatory action to set this right. The Government must stop making excuses for itself and for landlords and do the right thing.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan is next.

May I move my party's amendment to the motion now?

No, the Deputy cannot do that now because the Government has moved its amendment. Amendment No. 1 can be moved later.

Regardless of whether we move our amendment, my party fully supports what is being proposed by the Green Party this evening. We just have some doubts with regard to the specific locations that are identified in the motion. I will begin by talking about our support for the motion. There is a real opportunity here but that opportunity is being lost as time passes. The 700 or more publicly-owned sites, most of which are owned by local authorities, could be used to address and solve our housing crisis. The Government's amendment to the motion refers to a suite of measures, one of which is the "development of large-scale mixed-tenure housing projects, with social, affordable and private housing, on publicly-owned lands" but that is not happening. That may be the stated policy but it is not actually happening because it is being left to each local authority to work this out and the private element is winning out over the public element. I am really concerned that we have an opportunity here with these 700 publicly-owned sites which are ideal for that kind of mix of social, affordable and cost-rental accommodation but not for private, for-profit housing and that is the problem. I am concerned about the Government's amendment to the motion because we have heard a lot of talk and lots of schemes have been introduced, which are listed in the amendment, but we are not seeing any action. I am very worried that in using the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, and in using public lands, an opportunity will be missed and that private developers will move in and make a profit instead of using their own lands, for which many have already been granted planning permission. It was estimated recently that there is enough zoned land to build 40,000 new homes in Ireland and 19,000 of those in the Dublin area. The private sector should be building on its own lands and the publicly-owned land should be used for social, affordable, cost rental models and a mix of same. We should not be allowing the private sector to come in, take the rich pickings and use the LIHAF scheme and publicly-owned lands to make a profit. They should be using their own sites to make their profits.

The aforementioned publicly-owned sites represent a real opportunity to address the current housing crisis and that opportunity must be grasped. The cost-rental model is the one proposed in the motion tonight and we fully support that as part of the solution. I will now outline the reasoning behind our proposed amendment. We proposed our amendment because the two particular sites that are identified in the motion are not local authority-owned sites. Cathal Brugha Barracks and Broadstone bus garage are used by other State agencies at the moment. While the Labour Party fully supports the concept that is being put forward, we believe that progress would be much quicker if the sites identified were local authority-owned. I understand that the Green Party suggested these particular sites because it wanted to begin with projects of scale but this could be equally effective if we chose a bigger number of smaller publicly owned sites. Deputy Eamon Ryan has suggested that we might propose sites but I do not know Dublin as well as I know Limerick. I certainly know that the problem in Dublin is bigger than elsewhere. In Limerick, for example, there is a site known as the Guinness site, which is owned by the council. I understand from Labour Party councillors that local authority management will propose the sale of that site next week. The site, which is big, is publicly owned and would be perfect for a cost rental housing project. That is one site I know of in my own constituency, located on Carey's Road near the station. I know that site well but I suggest there must be similar sites in Dublin that could be used. I do not know whether there are already plans for O'Devaney Gardens but that is one possibility, although I have not researched it in depth.

The Labour Party supports the cost-rental model. Indeed, the Nevin Economic Research Institute has done some good work on it and the NESC has produced a report on same. Deputy Eamon Ryan referred to the Viennese model. The model in Vienna is excellent. People can live right in the centre of the city and can afford the rents. The tenure is mixed and it works really well. There are models that can be used and cost-rental is a very important element of the model that we should be seeing in action. I would also refer to the Ó Cualann model, which others have also mentioned. That is working on a publicly-owned site that the Ó Cualann cohousing alliance got for €1,000 per unit. There are certain elements of the normal cost of sites that the alliance did not have to pay for but it is able to provide housing at affordable prices in Dublin.

A conference was organised recently by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, at which Mel Reynolds, an expert in this area, spoke. He said that 35% of the cost of any housing development is land and profit. A cost-rental model on State-owned land should be able to eliminate that 35% and that is where we need to be going with this.

We need to grasp the opportunity that is there now. Local authorities all over the country are looking to figure out how they can comply with the Government's policy of using those sites for mixed tenure development. Each local authority has to develop its own proposal for each of its sites, however. A State model that kept out the private profit element really could supply housing for those on social housing lists and also for the growing number who are in the in-between category. They do not qualify for social housing, cannot get a mortgage, are facing rent increases continuously put upon them and are really worried about their future. A cost-rental model and affordable purchase and rental schemes are the only way we are going to address their needs.

I support the two previous Deputies who spoke about rent pressure zones. I also live in an area that is not included in rent pressure zones. They are not working for very large tracts of the country that are either just outside the zones or not in them at all and in which rents are increasing at the same kind of pace as they are within the zones. It is simply because of the model that is used that they are not included. That legislation is over a year old now and needs to be reviewed. We need to go back and look at better ways of protecting tenants from rent hikes that put them in real fear. There are many households that are really worried about their current situation.

We support the overall thrust of the motion although we have tabled an amendment, which I am not sure will be accepted. We think it is a very positive motion but would have preferred if the sites that were chosen were actually ones owned by the local authority.

I am sharing time with Deputy Mick Barry. I thank Deputy Eamon Ryan for bringing forward the motion. Any motion that seeks to address one important aspect of this crisis, namely, people who are not eligible for council housing and are looking for rental accommodation, which cannot be and is not being delivered by the private market, is welcome. I certainly think we should look at the cost-rental option as one part of addressing this crisis.

Every time we are debating this issue for the next four or five weeks, I will repeat that the Government's continued reliance on the private sector means we need tens of thousands of people out on the streets on 7 April, when the national housing and homelessness coalition, with which many parties in this House are affiliated, is holding a demonstration. The trade unions and ICTU are backing the demonstration and we need people out on the streets. I do not just say that because I like demonstrations and want to criticise the Government.

The Government is still relying too much on the private sector. It says it is going to deliver 50,000 council houses. That is better than what it was talking about before. However, of the 133,000 social housing units the Government is talking about, which is in the region of what we need to deliver, some 83,000 are in the form of housing assistance payments, HAPs, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, or leasing. Last year, according to the figures, there were 17,000 HAP solutions. Some 2,000 of those tenants are already being evicted. I got this information in a response to a parliamentary question recently. That is 15% facing eviction or whose tenancies are in trouble.

Last year's tenancies were the low-hanging fruit in terms of HAPs. It will be harder to get the rest of the HAP tenancies or to get the landlords; I do not think the Government will get anywhere near 83,000 HAP tenancies this year. Already I am dealing with people in HAP and RAS tenancies being evicted and having to go into hubs. The numbers are increasing. The majority pillar of the Government's plan, however well intentioned it might be, is not going to deliver. We have to look elsewhere, and that means the State has to do it because the private market is completely incapable of it. We need public housing on public land to answer this crisis.

I did not like the spin in The Irish Times today. I know Deputy Eamon Ryan did not write the headline, but the implication was that social housing is not going to deal with the rental crisis in the private market. I am sorry but that is incorrect. One of the reasons rents are going through the roof - it is not the only reason - is that huge numbers of people who would normally have got council housing, when we used to build it, are being told to go out and find stuff in the private sector. This is driving up rents. If we built the 100,000 council houses we need, we would drive down rents.

Nor do I like the spin, which perhaps Deputy Eamon Ryan did not mean to put into his article, that reinforces the stigma around social housing. If we want to get rid of the stigma around social housing, we should raise the eligibility criteria so that people on higher incomes can apply for it. Someone rang me today who is accepting €10,000 less in her salary than her employer is willing to pay her because she would be taken off the housing list if she accepted the pay increase. She could not get a mortgage and could not get affordable rental because there is no scheme from the Government on this, and she wants to stay on the housing list. How do we address that? The Green Party's proposals could be part of it but we should also raise the eligibility criteria. One way or another, the State has to build affordable housing. I believe council housing has to be the majority answer to the problem. In addition to that, there is a need for housing that is genuinely affordable to people.

The motion contains some correct points about the scale of the housing crisis, the plight of renters and the under-utilisation of publicly-owned land. However, it also contains a glaring untruth and, in the final analysis, it is a retrograde policy. I will not be supporting the motion although I am not sure which way I will vote. The fifth point of the motion states: "the provision of new social housing, using differential rents, will not on its own address the housing crisis, as it will not affect rent and property price rises in the private sector." This is simply wrong. The fact of the matter is that if we now had a multiple of our current housing stock and the promise of significant public house building to come, demand for private rental would clearly decrease and be catered for publicly. This would not just directly benefit those on the housing allocations list but would also indirectly benefit those not entitled to apply for public housing, who would not find themselves competing with prospective tenants availing of the HAP.

The motion makes the case for a cost-rental model. However, it fails to venture an estimate of what people availing of this option might end up paying in rent. The Government's land initiative, which was announced in 2015, provided for pilot public private partnership, PPP, type development on local authority-owned land. On one of those sites, the Lawrence lands on Oscar Traynor Road, 20% of the privately owned units - if they are ever built - are to be rented on a cost recovery model. To date, no ballpark cost has been put in writing although figures like 80% of market rates have been bandied about at Dublin City Council meetings. This is clearly unacceptable. The motion makes cost the driver of rent. Cost is in turn a function of interest rates on the borrowings required to build homes. In this regard, the motion refers to low interest rates. However, global interest rates have been increasing steadily in recent months and look likely to continue to increase.

There is also an underlying assumption in the motion that the current eligibility limits for public housing remain in place. Why? It may seem counter-intuitive, given the size of the list and the long waiting times, but I put it to the Green Party Deputies that a better course of action couples a massive stepping up of public housing delivery with the raising of the eligibility criteria. With such a measure, we would achieve a number of things. Besides the obvious housing solutions, we would also help build communities with all strata of the working and middle class living together. If we maintained the differential rents, there would be a greater revenue stream for local authorities from the middle income earners eligible to avail of it. My colleague, Deputy Ruth Coppinger, in her minority report after her participation in the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, made the case for a progressive differential rent whereby the typical 10% to 15% of income level for existing tenants would apply, while a higher rate of around 20% could be levelled for those with higher incomes.

These measures, coupled with a real affordable housing policy, a ban on economic evictions and strict rent controls, are what is needed, not a policy that is really a Trojan horse for the undermining of public housing.

I support the motion and I thank the Green Party for bringing it before Dáil. It gives us an opportunity to debate the question of the direction in which housing policy is going. I agree with what previous speakers said. Fine Gael has been in power since 2011 and all we have heard is regurgitated rebuilding programmes for housing when we are facing the worst housing crisis we have ever had. For every step the Government proposes, there is a tsunami of homelessness following behind. People are losing their rented accommodation and their homes. What has been suggested will not even catch up with the horrendous situation we are facing in housing.

I am part of a campaign for public housing. Unite, other unions and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, as well as Deputies and councillors, are supporting it also. It puts forward a game-changing idea. The policy of Governments over the past decade has been to allow private developers to build houses for people. That policy is not working. It did not help in the past - people put themselves into huge debt - and it is not going to work in the future. The campaign for public housing is calling for a new system of universally accessible public housing. Under such a system, the State would use its full legal and financial powers to dramatically increase the pool of public housing through a major build and buy programme. The sell-off of public housing to tenants must also be ended to ensure the continuous increase of public housing as a percentage of the overall housing stock.

We had public housing in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Train drivers, Guinness workers, bus drivers and factory workers were the people who accessed public housing in that period. This was in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was a huge drugs crisis in our cities. Public housing was abandoned throughout Europe, and there was a change in how social housing was viewed. I know people who left local authority housing estates because of the difficulties they were having in raising their families in those areas. That was Government policy at the time. There is a stigma attached to social and public housing sometimes. Robust, strong public housing on public land, increased by 25% or 30%, would cut across the high rents that are now being charged by landlords because people would have access to secure and decent rented accommodation.

I was going to read through a few points about the social housing programme in Vienna. I suggest that the Government sits down and reads it.

A delegation visited from Austria recently.

The Government should read the full report. It makes many valuable points about public housing. In Austria, housing is seen as a public right and a human need, and that is how housing policy is approached. In the future, I would like to read about how it is addressed. It is clear that secure housing helps mental health and general health because people do not have to suffer from horrendous thoughts that they might lose their rental accommodation or their home because their rent is secure.

I received an email recently from a young woman in Drimnagh. She said:

I am emailing you to raise a really important issue for not only my family but for many others. I can only speak on behalf of my family and our current situation in relation to housing. Myself and my partner are currently residing in the Dublin 12 area with our two daughters, aged eight and five. Our daughters both attend an Educate Together primary school. We are currently renting and have been since 2007. We both work and have permanent positions. We work opposite shifts to accommodate childcare as we would not be able to afford childcare costs if we both worked at the same time. We have a joint income of €56,000 and are currently paying €1,050 in rent per month.

In the current climate that rent is very reasonable, but if they lost that accommodation, they would be looking at a rent of €1,500 or €1,600. She goes on to say, "We really would like to be able to buy our own property so that we have security". Families are really looking for security. They are not looking for a huge debt around their necks, but security. The email also states:

[We want security] for ourselves and more importantly for our children as renting is so precarious. However, to be able to get our own home we will need more than €20,000 for a deposit. We are not able to save this amount of money [because we are] paying so much in rent. However, if we had a mortgage we would be paying the same, or less, in mortgage repayments. I saw the new initiative for first time buyers, which seemed great, but it does not identify the issue of being able to save for such a huge deposit. We have heard the Taoiseach's solution - to ask parents for a deposit - but unfortunately our parents do not have that type of money.

These are the people who need public housing on public lands. We have St. Michael's Estate and O'Devaney Gardens. There are many sites we could look at on the north side of the city. I agree that a critical amount of housing needs to be built to make this operable and to ensure that it is a success. I believe this is the way we have to go. It would cut across the crisis that people are facing in rental housing at the moment. People who do not have mortgage-to-rent arrangements should come under that public housing umbrella as well. There is also the idea that people who are on low incomes could have the HAP to subsidise their rent under the cost rent model.

I thank the Social Democrats and the Green Party for bringing this motion forward. I will be supporting it.

Our housing crisis is obviously getting worse in view of the fact that rents are increasing, as is the number of people in emergency accommodation. The over-reliance on the private sector to solve the problem is a mistake. State intervention is urgently required and the Government has to rise out of its ideological commitment to allowing market forces to solve this problem. The State and society has to supply housing in the future. Until now, there has been a general political consensus in many continental European countries that society should be responsible for housing supply and that housing is a basic need which should not be subject to free market forces. Society should ensure that a sufficient number of dwellings are available.

A young teacher, a garda or a nurse should have a reasonable expectation of being able to acquire good, decent quality accommodation at affordable prices but, unlike their parents, fewer and fewer of these people are able to afford houses. A cultural change has overcome Ireland. As a result, ownership is going to have to be replaced by an affordable rental model. We have to be open to new ideas and a different model of doing things. The European cost rental public housing model is not new. It is widely successful across many European cities. It is new to us, however, and we have to embrace that change. Our tradition of adherence to private sector and social housing has to have a third component to it, and that is cost rental housing. We need to change.

Explaining how this can be done will take a great deal of work. I would like to hear some further information about how the model will work. Who will build the rental accommodation? From here will the money for it come? Most importantly, how will it benefit people in search of a home, apart from the lower costs involved? We have to have a culturally inclusive form of housing that is community oriented and includes developments which are attractive to live in and properties which can be rented at affordable prices.

This is an urban solution to our housing crisis. In the context of scale, it will not solve the problem for smaller towns and cities that require housing. It is an urban solution and it should be embraced.

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this matter for a couple of minutes. I thank the Green Party and the Social Democrats for bringing the motion forward.

Increasing supply is the key to getting us out of the rut we are in. I do not agree with people who say that it should be the responsibility of only the local authority or the public sector to build houses. The private sector has a role to play as well and it should be supported in that. Everything has been thrown at the sector. It is difficult to get planning permission or finance. Its margins have been cut and it is regulated extensively. These issues should be looked at so that the sector has a level playing field.

The tendering system is slowing down the building of houses for local authorities. It was much better before as they had a list system where they had their own builders who built so many houses. It seemed to happen a lot faster. We have a lot more equipment now. We have more diggers and teleporters and different types of scaffolding, so no one can understand why it is taking so long to build so few houses.

On the cost of rent, this week has been terrible for those living in my neck of the woods. Girls with two and three children were bawling crying because they must leave their houses as they are being sold. They do not know where they will go. One girl, who has split up with her partner, has not seen her daughter for a number of weeks because she is in bed and breakfast accommodation and cannot get social housing to bring her little girl to visit her. It would drive one down to the ground to hear them crying and upset. Life is short and the least people deserve is a home.

Rents have increased to €1,200 and €1,400 per month in Killarney. This week, one girl was quoted €2,000 per month for a house in a certain part of the surrounds of Killarney. People just cannot afford those rents. They are in receipt of social welfare such as lone parent's allowance and whatever other little bits they get. The cap on the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme in Kerry is €575. People are therefore in a desperate state. Tenants should be asked to pay so much but, if the Government wants to reduce the rent, the tax that landlords pay on the rent received for houses should be reduced across the board. I have said it in the House a few times before. It might get things moving a bit.

I apologise to Deputy Mattie McGrath for taking some of his time.

Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an gComhaontas Glas. I am delighted to be able to speak here tonight on the motion but I am tired of speaking on such motions, even if it is a very good one. This is because of the inaction of the Government and the inability of this Government, the last one and, to some extent, the one before it to build houses and supply a housing stock. It was a normal thing to build council houses and I do not know what is wrong that the Government cannot build them now. I do not know what planet the Taoiseach is on. Today, he said that Deputy Martin was here longer than most people expected to live. If that is the life expectancy those in the Government have, God help us all. Is that the way the Government is gone now? To hell with the people - let them live in boxes, give them shovels and let them live by the seaside, fall into the sea and go away with the tide. It is madness.

I have asked the Minister of State countless times to bring up the county managers and housing directors to sit down with him and say who is codding whom. Millions are announced for this and that but nothing is built, never mind anything else. Not all landlords can be demonised. They are not all bad. There are very good ones out there too. We need a rental market. We also need more voluntary housing units. Those groups can build them. I am involved in one of them. The Ceann Comhairle is gone but I was tempted to say while he was here that there is a fabulous building - an old convent - in Naas. It has up to 100 units in the complex. The people in the voluntary sector will have to do it because the Government, with all its advisers and spin, cannot do it. As Deputy Healy-Rae said, despite all the cranes and everything else, the Government is just not building. It is codding the people. It is not rocket science. Get those people into the rooms here and see who is codding whom. Money is being announced but nothing is built. They are saying they have not got the money and the Government is saying it gave it to them. The people know, however.

I think that there is a greater motive not to build houses for people and to have them in a situation of distress and the trauma that goes with it. The Government has a lot to answer for and a lot of questions will be asked in years and decades to come because it is an abysmal failure with regard to building dwelling houses for rent and otherwise.

I thank the Green Party for tabling tonight's motion. Whether renting or buying, the key issue facing anyone looking for secure housing today is affordability. This is the critical issue. Quite simply put, housing is not an affordable option for many, including those who are on relatively decent wages. For example, I have sent working people who are at risk of losing their homes to the Focus Ireland café. We would never have considered this possible. Everywhere we look, we will find people paying ever higher proportions of their income on rent or mortgage payments while being absolutely terrified of losing their home. Often it is more expensive to rent than to buy but in many cases people cannot get a mortgage. The figure of 35% of one's gross income is used as a benchmark when considering the maximum a person should be spending on his or her accommodation needs but people are going way beyond it and are denying themselves food and heat to compensate. It is a case of Hobson's choice.

To buy an ordinary home in Cork or Galway, one needs to be earning five times the average wage. It is eight times the average wage for homes in Dublin. Therefore, renting becomes the default option for so many people who simply cannot afford to buy. People are then paying huge rents and will never be in the position to be able to save in order to be in a position to get a mortgage to purchase a home, so the cycle continues. Those people are left to the mercy of the private rental sector, which is poorly regulated and subject to the whim of the markets.

Average rents have spiralled by almost 50% over the past four years. A test of any fair society is its capacity to house its people. This issue has been on the agenda every single solitary week since last September, yet we are back here again talking about housing in one guise or another. Despite all the fancy words and the so-called action plans, the only action is further entrenchment into the mindset of abdicating responsibility primarily to the private sector. It is clear that there is no security for those who rent and that buying a home is increasingly becoming a pipedream for many. This is simply not acceptable.

We must get out of the mindset of thinking of bricks and mortar as property. We must think of it as someone's home. If the mindset was different, the response would be different. While we in the Social Democrats support the cost-rental model proposed in tonight's motion, it is incumbent on us to note that, whatever model or solutions are employed, one of the key considerations must be to ensure a mix of tenure types so as not to end up with a concentration of one particular tenure type, or size of housing unit, in order to have communities that are sustainable. It is the only sure fire way to ensure healthy and sustainable communities and to ensure they are not transient. This should be the key objective of any housing policy.

The Government must take immediate action to ensure long-term rent certainty. We in the Social Democrats have called for an immediate linking of rents to the consumer price index until there is sufficient housing to drive rents down. Even that is too late because prices are too high as it stands, however. We must free up as many of the 200,000 vacant properties throughout the country using mechanisms such as the vacant site levy. We must enforce that levy and make it punitive enough to count, but the budgetary measures do not achieve that as the levy is less than the rate of land inflation. Therefore, it is not having the desired effect. We need to drive down the cost of housing and bring ordinary homes within reach of ordinary incomes. Otherwise, we will have a mismatch where people will be demanding ever-increasing incomes because they need higher incomes to meet their basic housing needs.

We need a strong building sector but we have to reduce building costs, including finance costs. There may well be arguments relating to particular sites about which others have spoken. The Broadstone site would be a particularly great one given it is so close to the city and the Grangegorman campus. It is occupied by Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann at the moment, however. Doing things at scale would introduce more certainty. The building could be done to scale. The builders could come in and do pieces of the work. Alternatively, it can be done in a way that creates certainty. For instance, perhaps they would not have to go through planning permission individually.

Across Europe and in many large American cities, long-term rentals are a vibrant and important part of the overall housing strategy. People happily rent knowing they have security of tenure, rent certainty and a place they can legitimately call home. They can put down roots and build sustainable communities, which is critical. The only reason we have failed to achieve such a rental sector in Ireland is because the Government has consistently taken a hands-off approach and allowed market considerations and landlord interests to dominate. A vibrant, affordable sector could benefit both landlords and tenants and should be encouraged, not avoided as it has been for so long. The cost-rental model provides a social mix and removes the profit motive from the supply of housing. It is a valuable model and it needs to be embraced in the context of mixed developments.

In the national planning framework, €11 billion was identified over ten years to build 112,000 houses. There are just over 100,000 people on the housing waiting list. If one assumes one does not have to make HAP payments, or provide long-term leasing and can apply all of that money to build 112,000 houses, they will still have to come in at €100,000 each. The Taoiseach was asked if it was build or provide because the terminology was obscure. It was "provide" and he said it was "build". I would like to see where one can build houses for €100,000 each because that is the calculation. It does not divide up any other way.

The cost-rental model requires several different approaches. This is a valuable piece in addition, not instead of, local authority and private sector construction. The principal achievement must be to get to a point where people can afford a roof over their head, there is a degree of certainty, whether they rent or buy, and they can call the house where they live “home” rather than to have the roots they put down in the communities in which their children are going to school uprooted where a landlord wants a house back to sell on. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred earlier to the houses that are subject to HAP. There is not the same provision in that as there is in the rent assistance scheme where the local authority is obliged to find alternative accommodation if the landlord sells up. The worst of all worlds is the one in which people are moved to a transfer list, get a housing assistance payment but must find accommodation themselves if they are subject to eviction. We are starting to see this emerge as a problem. Deputy Boyd Barrett and I spoke about housing in the Dáil in 2012 and 2013 and it was a lonely place at that time, which was just after the crash. Our areas may well be the first in which one sees this type of thing come through. It is starting to present as a problem and making even the HAP option a very precarious one. A specific consideration is required from that point of view.

Housing access and affordability is a key topic and it is good that it has been debated and discussed here in the House this evening. It is a topic that every elected representative is confronted with almost every day of the week. The situations people are in as an overhang of the economic downturn can be very difficult. We all see it. The most challenged are those on the lowest incomes and in need of social housing. As such, the Government was right to put a major emphasis on this area first. More broadly, measures to get housing construction moving again under Rebuilding Ireland are starting to work. As housing supply increases, the entire Oireachtas can agree that ensuring access and affordability is an absolute priority for housing into the future.

Cost-rental is a model that is relatively new to Ireland but which I understand works very well in other European countries. The best way to introduce anything new is to learn from best practice and to produce really good pathfinder projects. The best place to do this is on a ready-to-go local authority housing site, not on a fully utilised key military base. However, from the debate tonight it appears that, overall, there is lot of agreement about the need for a cost-rental sector in Ireland's cities. The Minister is progressing two initial cost-rental projects and is working on another major cost-rental project drawing on expert support from the European Investment Bank. This is precisely the right way to go about it in my view.

I turn to the Government's record. Every study shows that the poorest in society suffer the most in a deep recession. This Government is absolutely delivering for the most marginalised in society. We are increasing social housing stock by a third, or 50,000 new homes, by 2021. With the housing assistance payment, the rental accommodation scheme and other targeted programmes, we have a fully funded €6 billion euro plan to accommodate the entire social housing list. With the needs of over 25,000 met in 2017, we have made great inroads and we are delivering on social housing. Through targeted interventions under Rebuilding Ireland in infrastructure, planning, financing, etc., the Government has also resuscitated the residential construction sector. I am heartened and optimistic when I see that, at 18,000, commencements are up by over a third. Again, we have all seen how the sector and the people that worked in it were devastated by the collapse. Rebuilding that sector is an absolute priority and we are making real, tangible, measurable progress here.

The focus now has to be on making sure new housing is accessible and affordable. The actions the Government will progress this through include the help-to-buy scheme, the affordable rental or cost-rental model, the Rebuilding Ireland home loan and an affordable purchase scheme. Taken together, these initiatives provide real help with securing a deposit for first-time buyers; affordable and predictable rental options for the many people who want or need to rent for a short time or longer depending on their circumstances; access to new and second homes through the very attractive new local authority loan; and affordable homes on mixed tenure local authority sites to make homeownership a realistic option for a generation of people for the first time.

These are real actions that this Government is taking now and which will deliver. Already, the help-to-buy scheme has been very successful in helping 5,000 first-time buyers. Dublin City Council is at a very advanced stage of procurement for O'Devaney Gardens, including 20% affordable purchase. The cost-rental model the Minister is working on with the Dublin local authorities and the EIB is important and interesting. The bank provides access to finance but almost more important is the access to a repository of learning on what works in affordable housing and cost-rental projects. I am really looking forward to seeing this project progressed and I support the Minister fully in what he is doing here. I want to see similar projects pursued in cities like Cork.

Another key issue I want to touch on briefly is land, in particular State land. We need to see optimum delivery from the State landbank, particularly the 700 local authority sites. Local authorities are working very hard on this and there are exciting projects coming forward on major sites in our cities like O'Devaney Gardens. The new national regeneration and development agency announced under Project 2040 will also be a great help in getting the most out of our State land. This is a major priority for the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy. Some sites may need infrastructural investment and, as such, I welcome the €25 million in funding the Government has set aside to provide infrastructure for local authority sites which need it to deliver affordable housing.

While we may not agree on all the finer details, there is broad consensus regarding the need to ensure that, as housing supply continues to increase and accelerate, it is accessible and affordable, particularly in our cities. Cost rental will play a major role in this but it will take time and we must get it right. That does not mean asking the Defence Forces to leave a key base. It is much better to bring forward realistic projects that have a strong chance of success in the short to medium term from ready to go sites in Dublin and other cities. That is exactly what the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is doing, working with industry experts, including the EIB. The Government is making very strong progress on housing and plans to do even more to ensure that as supply increases, we deliver access and affordability.

I am sharing my time with Deputy Eamon Ryan. We have still not received a copy of the Minister of State's speech even though many Members requested it at the beginning of the debate.

Once again we debate in this Dáil this Government's most tragic failure - its ongoing inability to deal with an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis. There are today more than 9,000 people homeless in the State. More than 3,000 of those are children. The numbers suffering on our streets and in emergency accommodation are only going up. The Government, in its isolated wisdom, feels it can tackle the crisis by, among other revolutionary, ground-breaking initiatives, granting tax breaks to developers and paying hundreds of millions of euro to private landlords in rent assistance without requiring fair fixity of tenure for tenants, let alone improving rental living standards and conditions. Where is the equity in all this? These initiatives are not working. It is certainly the definition of futility that the Government continually adopts the same methods and narrow-minded approach time and again to fix the crisis as the numbers of individuals, families and children who become homeless continue to grow. The Government simply does not have the vision or strategy to deal with this crisis. Every day, more people are suffering as a consequence. The Government's approach is not working. We need immediate, effective action. We need new ideas and new thinking outside the box, and then we need to implement the new proposals, not the same old, same old.

The Green Party motion calls on the Government to tackle one of the foremost and fundamental challenges associated with our housing crisis, housing supply, by taking the responsibility to build more houses into its own hands. The motion provides a clear and practical model for doing so, one that is used in many other European countries. The State needs public rental housing stock of its own to ward off the problems that the private-market, subsidies-oriented approach brings with it. Public cost-rental housing provides security of tenure and affordable rents for tenants of all incomes. We can build these houses off-balance sheet, borrowing against future rental income. This is an investment in our future, our children and our children's families.

The 34 acres of land at the site of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, which is in my constituency, Dublin Rathdown, will be perfect for an affordable, State-owned, cost-rental alternative for families who are priced out of the areas in which they grew up. This is once the facility is relocated to Portrane. House prices in my constituency have doubled in the past six years. We are identifying effective, identifiable and practical steps that the Government needs to take. I urge every Deputy in the House to support our motion. I urge the Government to take these ideas to heart and do so with the appropriately extreme sense of urgency needed.

Mar a léirigh mo chomhghleacaí, an Teachta Eamon Ryan, roimhe seo, táimid ag moladh sa rún seo go dtógfar tithe agus árasáin d'ardchaighdeán ar thalún an Stáit ionas go mbeidh daoine in ann cíos réasúnta réalaíoch a íoc le haghaidh a gcuid lóistín. Tá a macasamhail á dhéanamh faoi láthair sa Danmhairg, san Ostair agus san Ollainn. Níl fáth ar bith nach féidir linn é seo a dhéanamh in Éirinn. If the Government is truly honest about this issue, it will admit that its approach is not working. It has been adopting it for seven years and it is not working.

I appreciate that the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has not been in his portfolio for seven years but the Government has. The approach has not been markedly different since the Minister took office. Therefore, in order to make progress on and ultimately resolve the problem once and for all, the Government must first wake up, be very candid and accept its approach is not working. The statistics speak for themselves. For how much longer, over a prolonged period, must the Government insist upon continuing to implement failed policy - a tried, tested and failed policy? This is not a vanity project and it is not about who is right or wrong. The overarching concern - the only concern - is to tackle this unprecedented crisis head on.

The National Economic and Social Council is recommending the cost-rental approach. The Nevin Economic Research Institute is recommending this approach. Social Justice Ireland is recommending this approach. Will the Government admit a new approach is needed, follow the experts, take on board the view of the stakeholders and abandon, here and now, not just a failing policy, but also a failed response? All the Deputies in this House want a constructive solution to our housing crisis. For that to happen, the Government first needs to realise it must change its approach. It needs to change its way of thinking. Our cost-rental motion is a start in that regard. I urge every Deputy to support it.

What we are hearing from the Government is that it wants to build social housing and carry out some pilot cost-rental projects at a small scale before doing what we require. Nobody is saying cost-rental housing is not a good idea. Everyone I have heard in this debate has said it is. Therefore, the difference of opinion concerns the sense of scale and urgency.

In response to Deputies Barry, Boyd Barrett and others, I agree we need social housing. It will help in lowering rents if we build it at scale, change the terms of entry and do as suggested but it is not enough on its own. We need to complement social housing with cost-rental housing because, rather than undermining the public housing approach, about which Deputy Barry is concerned, it actually makes the case for public housing. It makes the case for more mixed development and a different way of doing things.

We need to proceed quickly, for a number of reasons. The first is the scale of the crisis. Second, there will be no access to cheap money relatively soon. Therefore, we need to get in there, think big and be quick. If we proceed by testing pilot projects, it will take us five, six or seven years because the State works slowly. Lord knows what the interest rates will be. Now is the time to obtain long-term cheap money. Now is the time to proceed quickly and at scale.

I listened very much with respect to Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. She is absolutely correct that the Guinness site is a perfect location. There are other locations also. The Guinness site is not as big as the two we picked. I very much appreciate Sinn Féin's recognition that this is now the time to be talking about specific sites. If we are to proceed quickly and at scale, we should not avoid the debate and we should address the hard issues. There are hard issues associated with moving around State agencies. If we do not proceed now and if we just carry out a small pilot project and talk to the EIB for another few months before thinking about what we might do, we will not be addressing the crisis with the urgency required.

There are other sites. Deputy Catherine Martin mentioned the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, which is a perfect location. I would also cite Dublin port. Perhaps I am thinking of it because it is the area I am particularly knowledgeable about. The docks area in Cork also jumps out to me as an area where there could be development at scale. We need to go to the centre, however. If the national planning framework is to be real, we must then pick central sites in our cities. The Limerick one had the benefit of being central. We pushed very much for the use of the RTÉ site. I am glad it is being developed. I wish it had been developed as a cost-rental site rather than a very expensive private development. I am very glad that the Irish Glass Bottle site is to be used. Before the last election, one of our main campaign planks was based on the use of the site. I regret that the level of social and affordable housing is far too low at the site but I am glad it is being developed.

I would examine whether the entire Dublin Industrial Estate, which is beside the new Luas line, could be used for housing. It is complicated because of various ownership issues. We need to be debating here and now where specifically we are going to build. Thus, when talking to the EIB we will not be talking about just one project but about five, six or seven, with 5,000 to 10,000 units, thereby bringing the price down substantially and changing radically the sense of housing in the country and the market. The houses would be in the market and bring down the market price. This would be in addition to what we do through social housing.

This is, however, a targeted intervention to what is now the worst part of the market for those in the private rented sector. It is not good enough for the Government to say it is doing pilot projects or is talking to the European Investment Bank. We should be talking about sites here and now. It is difficult but it needs to be done.

Amendment put.

In accordance with Standing Order 70(2), the division is postponed until the weekly division time on Thursday, 8 March 2018.

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