Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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The combined time for the speeches of the proposer and seconder are 16 minutes and they may share time. All other Senators will have six minutes. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan.

Before I call on the proposer of the motion, Senator Warfield, I welcome to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery Representative John Lawn and his family Shannon, Katherine, Jack, Liam, Maeve and Owen. I also welcome Martina, Schminge, Oscar and James. They are all welcome to Seanad Éireann. John is the Chair of the Massachusetts American Irish State Legislators Caucus. We are delighted to welcome them here and we hope they enjoy this debate.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

notes that:

- the Housing Commission’s final report was published last Wednesday;

- its findings are a damning indictment of the Governments failing housing plan;

- the report concluded that ‘ineffective decision making’, ‘reactive policy making’ and ‘risk aversion’ are ‘undermining affordability’;

- the report argues that successive Governments have failed ‘to successfully treat housing as a critical social and economic priority’;

- the report also notes that ‘Ireland has, by comparison with our European partners, one of the highest levels of public expenditure for housing, yet one of the poorest outcomes’;

- among the key findings of the report is the need to address a housing deficit of up to 256,000 homes above existing Government targets;

- among the key recommendations of the report is the need to increase the supply of social and affordable homes to 20 per cent of the national housing stock;

agrees that:

- only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will address the housing crisis created by decades of bad Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Housing Policy;

- this will require a change of Government and a new housing plan with the scale of ambition as set out in the Housing Commission’s report.

I, too, welcome the guests in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, to the House.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil like to present themselves as the parties of homeownership. The problem is that almost none of the facts support that contention. If I was to speak about systematic failures, ineffective decision making, reactive policy making and risk aversion having an impact on supply and undermining affordability, someone would think I was taking an excerpt from an Opposition speech in the other Chamber but I am not; these are in fact excerpts from the Housing Commission report. The final Housing Commission report was published last Wednesday and its findings are a damning indictment of the Government’s failed housing plan. The report concluded that "ineffective decision making", "reactive policy making” and "risk aversion" are “undermining affordability”. The report argues that successive Governments have failed "to successfully treat housing as a critical social and economic priority". Increasingly, housing is an economic priority with gardaí, nurses, factory workers and ordinary workers are unable to afford homes in our country.

The Housing Commission was established under the current Government. It has said what every family and person across our country already knows, which is that the Government’s housing policy is failing us. Not only is the Government failing to deliver on housing; it is actually making the housing crisis worse. Perhaps most damning of all, the Government is failing to treat the housing crisis as a critical social and economic priority.

After 12 years of Fine Gael in government, propped up by Fianna Fáil for seven years, homeownership is at its lowest level in 50 years. Homeownership as a percentage of housing stock, particularly for younger people, continues to fall. The Government loves to say that 500 first-time buyers are drawing down their mortgages every week, and that is true, but even with the Government’s inflationary help-to-buy and first-home schemes, the vast majority of those people are not buying new homes. They cannot afford to buy the new homes that are being built because average house prices are now in excess of €400,000. The homes they can buy are now further and further away from the places where they work and where their children go to school, and the community that supports them. That has its own cost in terms of huge commutes, a huge impact on their financial well-being, especially as the cost of petrol and diesel rises, and huge impacts on their mental health and our environment.

If all that was not bad enough, let us look at the affordable housing schemes. The Government continually states that 4,000 affordable housing solutions have been provided in the last year but solutions are not homes.That is something those looking to avail of this scheme know all too well. The fact is that a large number of these solutions were approvals for high-risk, shared equity schemes and loans that were never drawn down. In other words, people did not buy the home. How many affordable homes did the Government deliver last year? It was 1,368, so the Government missed its own target by 61%. The year before the Government only delivered 1,007 homes, again missing its own target by 52%. Even more remarkable is the price of these so-called affordable homes. In Dublin Mid-West the cost of an affordable scheme is €435,000. In Lusk, County Dublin, in the housing Minister's own constituency, it is €565,000. In what world is €565,000 affordable? That is before you look at the fine print, because if the price of one of these so-called affordable homes does increase, the volume of equity owned at the end will also increase. The purchaser may have to pay even more. If, after spending more than 30 years working hard to pay down the mortgage, they have not paid off the more than €100,000 equity, this amount will be passed on to their children as a penalty they will inherit and have to pay.

When it comes to affordable rental in Citywest, the Land Development Agency bought apartments from Cairn Homes. The average rents of these apartments in the suburbs are now €1,400 for a one-bedroom apartment, €1,600 for a two-bedroom apartment and a staggering €1,800 for a three-bedroom apartment. They are more expensive than those paid by existing renters in those areas. Again, in what world is this affordable? For years Sinn Féin has been saying we need to meet social and affordable housing need. We need to deliver affordable homes at an unprecedented scale. We need to deliver houses that teachers, gardaí, nurses, factory and retail workers can afford - houses that people can gain access to. We need to support struggling homeowners with proper mortgage interest relief. We need to take the pressure off renters and put one month's rent back in every renter's pocket through tax relief. We have to stop vulture funds buying up family homes and student housing. We have to cut the red tape to ensure the necessary resources and finance are available to people. We have to reform the planning process so we can deliver the homes needed at speed. We have to ensure we have the workers to build the homes and intervene so apprentices can complete their training on time. We have to encourage those qualified construction workers with Irish qualifications who are all across the world to come back to Ireland to help us. What is painfully clear is that the Government is neither willing nor able to take these basic steps, and so it must fall to the people to drive change. As we go to the polls on Friday, 7 June for the local and European elections, people have an opportunity to send a strong message to Government and make clear that the time for change is now. It is not only possible, but by people coming out to vote in strong numbers, Sinn Féin will fight for them at every level of government. There is a better and fairer way, but this Government is not going to deliver it.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I second the motion.

The Minister of State is welcome. I want to start by quoting an email I received this morning. It is from a woman in Limerick who is overholding her current property because she has nowhere to go. She says she has a daughter who has her junior certificate coming up:

She recently got mental health breakdown at school as this housing situation is stressful for both of us. We have three cats so there is not an option for us to live in some hotel. Especially these places [that] are below minimum standards, I work from home and I need a proper place to live. I am [a] full time working single mother, I do not have any family here, I always worked hard, many times I had two jobs or been working up to 70 hours per week to be able [to] provide a decent life to my child. But I can not afford private renting as prices are above my wages and no one wants to accept Homeless HAP.

She goes on to say:

I am not looking for free accommodation, I'm here almost 19 years. Even when I was pregnant I had to work up to 70 h/week, I used to work 2 jobs, to provide decent life for my daughter. I went [a] long way from working part time as a waitress to work full time job, currently [for a] bank. I am living in “emergency accommodation" now as my lease ended last year so I [have] occupied this apartment illegally and my landlord keeps asking me to move out ... I am totally desperate and devastated by this situation. I can't sleep, it affects my job, my health and [my] mental health. I used to be [an] activist, I have organised many charity events, culture events, I used to be volunteering for Rape Crisis Centre and many other. Please help me as I really can't cope anymore.

Heartbreaking. It is a heartbreaking example of everything that is wrong in this country after 13 years of Fine Gael governments, with eight years of them propped up by Fianna Fáil in one way or another. I had a similar experience chatting to members of the INMO a few weeks back when we discussed the other key crisis the Government has failed in, which is the hospital crisis. They told me there were two key reasons driving our nurses out of our hospitals. The first is the state of the hiring crisis itself, and the horrendous extreme conditions they have had to put up with every day for more than a decade in a failing health system. The second is housing. They literally cannot afford to rent in a city like Limerick, or a city like Cork and they are choosing to leave. We know this. When I met the nurses a few weeks back there was a 200 nurse deficit in University Hospital Limerick because they cannot find nurses. There was, of course, the embargo which did not help, but they cannot find nurses who can afford to live in our cities. The reason for that - I know the Minister of State knows this - is more than a decade of failed housing policy, an over-reliance on the markets, and this determination to bring vulture funds in. What it means is we now have a whole generation locked out of housing. They cannot even afford to rent, never mind buy. In my village in County Limerick, it costs between €2,500 and €3,000 per month. How are working people supposed to afford those rents? Under this Government rents have only gone one way. We asked the Government to freeze rents. It refused to do it. We asked it not to lift the eviction ban. It lifted the eviction ban, and what do we have? We have record homelessness in this State. We have record house prices that ordinary families cannot afford, and we have record rents. A whole section of people, like the lady who wrote to me today, and who work for a living, cannot get the housing they desperately need. Rents in Limerick have gone up by 17.5% in the past year. Do we know anyone who has had a 17.5% pay increase in the past year. People are being squeezed and priced out of what should be recognised as a basic human right - the right to housing. That, of course, is another broken promise from this Government. It promised us a referendum on housing. There clearly is not going to be one. That is another broken promise. We then get to an absolutely devastating report written by the Housing Commission appointed by the housing Minister. The report clearly calls out a massive failure of Government and calls for a radical reset. As devastating as the report was, what was more devastating was the subsequent dismissal by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. It is a pity he is not here tonight, although I welcome the Minister of State's presence. The chairperson of the Housing Commission, Micheal O'Flynn, who can hardly be accused of being a Sinn Fein supporter went on "Today with Claire Byrne" and said directly that the Minister has undermined the work of the commission. He pointed out that two and a half years of work went into this commission report. Perhaps the key finding of all was a deficit of 256,000 houses in our society right now. The word I like to use whenever we discuss housing is "accountability", because I have never yet heard Fine Gael acknowledge that this is its fault. When you are in government for 13 years and you wind up with a deficit of 256,000 houses, then you need to be accountable and hold your hand up to say it is on you. Who else is it on?What is the Government for if it is not there to provide decent housing for our people at prices they can afford? This is the most abject failure, and yet the Minister immediately dismissed the report. He also insisted, somewhat bizarrely, that most of the recommendations are already being implemented. Again, the chairperson of the Housing Commission was asked directly about this and said something very different. He stated he did not agree and that the vast majority - those were the words he used - of the recommendations made by the Housing Commission are not being implemented. There was a ten-minute piece about the matter on "Today with Claire Byrne". It is available on the RTÉ website. I recommend anyone watching or listening to these proceedings to take the time to listen to it because in one way it is more devastating than the report. The Housing Commission and its chair have stated, in a very matter-of-fact way, that the Government is failing on housing. One of the key recommendations in the report relates to the establishment of a housing delivery oversight executive. The Minister dismissed this out of hand and said we will not be doing that.

We have a Government comprising Fine Gael, which has been in office for 13 years, and Fianna Fáil, which has been there for nearly nine years, that has presided over systematic failure in respect of housing that has resulted in the worst homelessness crisis in the history of the State and in tens of thousands of our young people choosing to leave our country. A whole generation has been locked out of housing because of Government failure.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of all of this is that the radical rethink and reset that the Housing Commission, the Government's own body called for, has been rejected by the Government, which is intent, apparently, on just carrying on with more of the same. The dogs on the street will tell you that more of the same is not going to suffice. I have a son who is in university, and all of his friends are saying that they cannot see a future in this country because they want to leave home, like most young adults want to do. Perhaps the most devastating statistic of all, which was provided by the CSO, is that seven out of ten adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are living with their parents. The comparable figure for a country like Finland is one in 20. We have a whole generation of people locked in to not being able to move out of home and start a life. We have a whole generation of people whose lives are on hold because of the failures of this Government. Most damningly of all, the Government has never even acknowledged that it is responsible for this crisis. They are not delivering. We need radical change, and, frankly, we need a new Government.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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Anois an Seanadóir Mary Fitzpatrick.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 1:

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

“notes that: - the Government established the Housing Commission in 2021 to consider long-term housing policy post-2030 and examine how to build on the policy changes outlined in Housing for All and related Government policies;

- the Report of the Housing Commission (the Report) was submitted to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage on 8th May 2024 and was published very shortly thereafter on 22nd May 2024;

- the Report is a culmination of more than two years work, encompasses over 400 pages, including appendices, and sets out some 83 recommendations and more than 500 actions and sub-actions, and requires comprehensive and careful consideration by Government;

- it is clear that the recommended radical policy reset is already under way through Housing for All and other initiatives and some 65 or so of the 83 recommendations are already at varying stages of planning and implementation;

- the Report does not include costings or timelines for implementation, which are crucial for a proper and comprehensive consideration of the measures proposed; the Minister has already requested the Housing Agency to undertake this work;

- the Report, together with the conclusions of the Housing Agency vis-à-vis costings, timelines and priority actions, will help inform consideration of the forthcoming Housing for All Action Plan Update and the revised housing targets due to be published in the autumn;

further notes:

- the significant progress made since Housing for All was launched in September 2021 is underpinned by record State support, including €5.1 billion capital investment in 2024, the highest level of funding for housing in the history of the State;

- there has been a step change in housing supply since 2020, with some 109,000 new homes built between 2020 and the end of Q1 2024, and with almost 33,000 new homes delivered in 2023 alone;

- the critical measures implemented by the Government, including the development levy waiver and water connection refund, have boosted and accelerated the supply of new housing, with an extraordinary surge in the new home commencements to some 53,000 in the year to end-April, and more than 18,000 in April alone;

- the substantial uplift in delivery in 2022 and 2023 will likely be sustained this year and, underpinned by a robust construction pipeline, will undoubtedly be built upon 2025 and subsequent years;

- the Government has placed an unrelenting focus on addressing the significant challenges in the housing market, evidenced by record delivery of almost 12,000 new social homes in 2023 through a mix of new builds, acquisitions and leasing, together with more than 4,000 affordable housing supports which is more than double the quantum delivered in 2022;

- the Government is committed to substantially increasing social and affordable housing delivery, which comprises more than one-third of all new housing supply planned under Housing for All;

- the Government is currently reviewing its housing targets, which will be primarily informed by independent, peer-reviewed research and modelling by the ESRI on population and long-run housing demand projections, with revised targets, providing for current and future demand, due to be published in the autumn;

and agrees that:

- the continued implementation of Housing for All and the forthcoming update, which will have regard to the Report, represents the most appropriate response to the housing challenges which Ireland is now facing.

Nothing really epitomises the Opposition's approach to housing more than its approach to this report. It did not wait for the report to be released; it somehow got its hands on a leaked version. Having secured the latter, those in opposition did not bother to read it. Despite the motion before us, they are not even bothering to speak to the report. It took however many experts were involved two and a half years to produce the report, but those in opposition not even bothered to read it. They have used the House's time to submit a motion and gather everybody together to discuss the subject of housing, which affects every citizen's life and which is essential in order to be able to go to school, college or work and reach his or her full potential. Housing is issue that the Government has made one of its top priorities. What are those in opposition doing? They are using housing, purely and exclusively, as a campaigning tool. They seek to exploit the human challenge relating housing that is being experienced by far too many of our citizens for their own personal and political gain. That is their only interest in this issue.

I will talk about the report. It is a really valuable report. I thank every member of the commission who gave up their time to help compile this report. It is an incredibly important piece of work. It is a piece of work that will help not just this Government but also future Governments. It will help not just the current generation of people who are locked out of housing; it will also ensure that future generations will not to be locked out.

The report highlights specific actions and makes recommendations on actions that should be taken to ensure that we have a sustainable housing model post 2030. This is really important work. It is a pity it was not done ten years ago. I congratulate the Government on putting Housing for All - a plan to build 300,000 homes that has already delivered over 100,000 homes, that is supporting renters and that is putting homeownership within reach for a whole generation - in place. The Government went one step further, however, and commissioned a report. That report has now been completed and neither the Minister, the Government nor anybody who supports the Government has dismissed it.

I am of the view that the right action has been taken in that the report is being considered. Of the 85 actions or so that it contains, 63 are already in train. It is factually incorrect to assert that the Minister, the Government or anybody supporting the Government dismissed the report. It is factually incorrect to say that no progress is being made or that the report is being ignored. In fact, the report, which contains significant and wide-reaching proposals, is being assessed and analysed. Those proposals are really important. They relate to things like reforming our planning, which is already in place. The report also contains proposals on expanding on modern methods of construction, accelerating and increasing adaptive reuse, ensuring that we have both the right housing in the right locations and the right-sizing of housing and addressing issues relating to cost.

The report also addresses many other issues. It calls for a continuation of many of the interventions already introduced under Housing for All. I refer here to initiatives the Opposition objected to, including the shared equity scheme, which is being used to financially subvent first-time buyers in the context of buying their own homes. The report refers to the continuation of the help-to-buy scheme and having real supports for first-time buyers. It also refers to the continuation of the vacant home grant, which is another great intervention on the part of this Government. It further refers to the housing need in cities being dealt with by means of one- and two-bedroom homes, the building of thousands of which of the Leader of the Opposition has objected to in her constituency. There is also reference to a diverse and stable housing mix and having private housing and private funding.

The Opposition is silent on all of this. It is silent on changing the cost-rental model for social housing. It has nothing to say about the actual report. That is because the report is challenging. We have a challenging situation on our hands, but what separates the Government and those who support it from those in opposition is that we are up for the challenge. We do not shy away from it. We do not just describe it. We are rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work of making difficult choices in order to ensure that there will be a sustainable housing model into the future, that the housing crisis will not continue into the future and that we will have a long-term sustainable housing model that will be adequate to meet the needs of our citizens.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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I thank the Senator. Senator John Cummins is next. The Senator has six minutes.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Acting Chairperson. I welcome the Minister of State. Listening to the Sinn Féin representatives deliver their prepared speeches, one could forgive them for leaving out the fact that many of the things which are undoubtedly working and which were put in place by the Government have been shamelessly opposed by their party. Last year, 32,700 homes were delivered in this country. When Fine Gael entered office in 2011 - and that has been cited many times - we were building fewer than 7,000 homes. In 2013, we built fewer than 5,000 homes.We cannot just click our fingers and say we are going to magic houses out of thin air. When there is a collapse of the construction sector and a whole industry is wiped out, it takes time to build it back up and put the foundations in place in order to build houses, which we are now seeing come to fruition. The 500 first-time buyers every single week who were mentioned on this side of the House were just dismissed as if they are not real people buying homes. Solutions, many of them through the support of Government schemes that have been put in place, are being provided to people. More than 46,000 people have availed of the help to buy scheme since it was introduced. This puts €30,000 worth of tax back in people's pockets to enable them to get their deposit together in order to buy or build their first home. Of course, Sinn Féin will not say that if it were to abolish overnight the help to buy scheme, as it proposes, what that will result in is fewer homes being built. As sure as night follows day, if there are fewer people with deposits to buy homes, fewer houses will be built by the construction sector. The abolition of the first home scheme is a plank of Sinn Féin's policy. This scheme has provided more than 4,000 approvals and some 1,600 drawdowns to bridge that gap between the maximum mortgage and the cost of the home. It provides solutions for people to be able to get on the property ladder who could not do so without this scheme. Sinn Féin wants to take the rug out from underneath these people and put nothing in its place. Sinn Féin will not admit that if we did not introduce the development levy waiver and the refund of Irish Water connection charges last year, we would not have the record commencement data this country has seen over the past 12 months. Construction has begun on 30,000 homes in the first four months of this year. Let us put that in context. Some 32,000 homes were commenced in all of 2023, so the measure has worked. Sinn Féin will still not admit that it was wrong in not supporting the measure. The vacant property refurbishment grant puts up to €70,000 in the pockets of people to allow them to take a derelict property and turn it into their home. Again, this was opposed by Sinn Féin.

Mention was made of renters. Soundbites like, "We will freeze rents" sound absolutely fantastic in theory but what happens in practice? The left-wing Berlin Government introduced it to much fanfare. It said it would freeze rents for three years. What happened? Twelve months later, it was struck down by the German constitutional court. There was a 50% reduction in available rental properties in Berlin. Who in their right mind thinks a reduction of 50% of rental stock in Ireland would be a good thing at this moment in time? Somehow Sinn Féin thinks that Ireland is different from Germany. A soundbite we will not hear from Sinn Féin is that when it published its housing document in December 2015, it said it would build 36,500 social and affordable homes from 2016 to 2021. The previous Government and this one delivered 51,076 social homes in that period, yet Sinn Féin decries us for what we have done in trying to increase the social housing stock. It is far more than Sinn Féin even promised. I would not be surprised if that housing document disappears from the Sinn Féin website after I have mentioned it here.

Sinn Féin will also not mention how it will deliver houses for €250,000 across the country or houses for €300,000 in Dublin. The Sinn Féin party leader said this to much fanfare before Christmas but there has not been a shred of detail since. Sinn Féin will not tell us about the terms and conditions it is looking to apply to its version of an affordable purchase scheme, in which people will never be able to own the property they pay a mortgage on and they will not be able to pass it on to a niece, nephew or grandchild because they might be over the arbitrary income cap that Sinn Féin is going to put in place.

Many of the measures are working and Sinn Féin needs to come clean and be honest with people on what it is saying. Simplistic solutions and soundbites are being found out by the public every single week. That is why support for Sinn Féin is plummeting. Be honest with people on what can be delivered. Do not just pretend that with a click of a finger everything can be sorted in the morning. We need honest politics and honest debate on this issue because it is the most important one of my generation.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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I, too, welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank the Sinn Féin Senators for bringing forward this very important motion. I brought up this issue under the Order of Business last week when the report of the commission was published and I asked for a debate on it. The Labour Party is very glad to speak on it tonight. There can be no doubt, as has been said already by people on this side of the House, that the Housing Commission's report is a damning indictment of the Government's failure to address the housing crisis. It highlights what I and Labour Party candidates throughout the State have been hearing on the doorsteps in recent weeks and months. Rents are rising, homelessness is at a record high and increasing every month and house prices are soaring. The Government has failed to manage and tackle this crisis. The commission's estimate of a housing deficit ranging from 212,500 to 265,000 homes, based on the 2022 census figures, sets out the scale of the problem the country currently faces. The report confirms that the supply of housing is far too slow. The biggest failure of the Government is that it has continued to rely almost exclusively on the private market, while implementing other policies that merely tinker around the edges of the housing crisis we are facing.

Recent years of economic prosperity have been wasted by failing to tackle what is undoubtedly the civil rights issue of our time. The Labour Party is calling for immediate and radical change. We would take decisive action to end the overreliance on private investors in the housing market and adopt a State-led approach to building more affordable homes, dealing with the rent crisis and tackling the homelessness crisis.

The Labour Party proposes to allocate an additional €1.45 billion in capital for the delivery of housing. We will protect renters and end speculative land hoarding. We are committed to doubling State delivery of cost rental and affordable housing, increasing income limits for social housing eligibility to €40,000 per person and moving towards doubling State investment in direct social builds.

I wanted to raise a number of specific issues as part of this debate. The Croí Cónaithe grant has been mentioned on both sides of the House at this stage. I am on record as welcoming this grant and the thinking behind it. We had a Commencement matter on dereliction and vacancy which resulted in a good debate some months ago. I continue to hear about issues regarding the drawdown for this grant. That is why I want to highlight it with the Minister of State. There seems to be an overreliance on solicitors as part of the process. This is causing a lot of difficulty for people I deal with. The problem I am increasingly coming across is that the applicant simply does not have the money to pay the builder in advance. Mention has been made of the €50,000 and €70,000, which is great because we need to tackle dereliction and vacancy, but none of the people I am dealing with can afford €50,000 or €70,000 to pay the builder in advance. Given that the last figure I saw, which was for 2023, showed that only 100 of those grants were drawn down, has the Government any plans to change the system and perhaps introduce stage payments? This has been mentioned previously by colleagues on both sides of the House in the context of Croí Cónaithe. I ask for this to be considered because of the high rate of dereliction in many areas.

The Minister of State will not be surprised by the second issue I want to raise, which is the housing adaptation grant. This is a good grant and I have welcomed the investment by Government in this area. The Minister of State will be very familiar with the Commencement matters I have raised on a continuous basis. As far as I know, the report is still with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform or the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. However, I have people who cannot live in their own homes and, unfortunately, have to go to nursing homes or to live with relatives because they cannot get more than the €30,000 limit which is on the housing adaptation grant at present. It is simply not good enough that we are now talking about this.I have spoken to the Minister of State on a Commencement matter three times. I spoke twice with him and once with a previous Minister of State for housing and we still do not have an answer to this. That is something that would make a difference to so many people. I know the Minister of State said in our last debate that something comes through his office on a regular basis. I would appreciate him again using this opportunity to comment on that.

In conclusion, like other members of this House, not a day goes by that I am not contacted by a family or, indeed, multiple families, who have received a notice to quit or who continue to live in their family home, which has been mentioned, given the overcrowding that exists in the market at the moment. Not a week goes by that I am not contacted by a number of couples seeking affordable housing as their wages are not enough to cover the rising house prices.

We urge the Government to listen to the Housing Commission. It has been stated here that it is doing that. We need decisive, radical action. We need a reset of housing policy. The time for half measures is over. Ireland needs a comprehensive housing strategy that truly addresses the housing disaster and crisis we have at the moment. Housing is the number one issue for so many of our citizens and it needs Government policy to reflect that. Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit.

Frances Black (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I am very glad to be here to speak on this Private Members' motion brought forward by Sinn Féin. We all know, and have to face, the reality that housing is the biggest disaster in Ireland right now. Failure in housing is having a spillover effect, which is impacting our ability to retain trained teachers, nurses, doctors and those in the mental health area all over the country, but particularly in Dublin. I am a member of the health committee and that is what we are hearing all the time. The health sector cannot get staff because there is no housing. We are in crisis. This leads to more crowding and worse schools and hospitals. The ripple effect is ongoing.

The publication of the report from the Housing Commission is very welcome. The clear takeaway is that the housing crisis is a systemic failure that has emerged from a fundamentally broken way of thinking that really needs radical change. I am disappointed with the Government's countermotion. I am starting to believe that the only people who have confidence in the Government's housing policy are the landlords, the developers and the speculators who are profiting from all of this. When you think of the homeless people, people trying to raise children in hotel rooms, the refugees sleeping rough and having their tents destroyed by the Government - an action which is off the Richter scale - and the young people paying rip-off rents or stuck in their childhood bedrooms, they just do not have faith in this Government's ability to fix this crisis at this time.

A recent investor report found that Ireland provides the highest rental yield in Europe. Those bumper profits for corporate landlords and institutional investors are coming at the expense of ordinary people who just want a roof over their heads, so that they can live their lives and raise their families in safety and security. It is not much to ask.

The Housing Commission report emphasises the importance of expanding the delivery of cost-rental housing units as a means of providing affordable housing going forward. I agree with this but I raise the unaffordability of cost-rental units. These units are welcome but to qualify, people often must earn above a median income. A rental market that is only affordable for people with an above-median income is dysfunctional.

The Government's use of the term "cost rental" is different from the internationally lauded Vienna model. Irish cost-rental units are defined as being 25% below market rents in their area. In Vienna, rent for cost-rental tenants is calculated as a percentage of their income like the differential income system used in local authority housing in Ireland. As cost-rental housing is plentiful and high quality with generous eligibility criteria in the Vienna model, cost-rental schemes have socially mixed tenants and the higher earners subsidise the lower earning ones, providing enough rental income to keep the buildings in great condition and making them attractive places to live. Social housing and cost rental are separate systems here and both are worse as a result. If the Government raised the income thresholds for social housing and massively increased supply through the establishment of a State construction company. It would create socially-mixed communities of people paying affordable, sustainable rents.

I am glad the Housing Commission's report has outlined the exponential increase in HAP tenancies and has called for the HAP scheme to be used on a short-term basis only. The HAP scheme is being administrated in a manner which attempts to mitigate the worst impacts in the housing crisis on low-income households in the immediate term, without contributing to a longer-term solution. HAP is given in lieu of social housing support which could provide real stability and comfort. Most HAP recipients have to top up their payments. The median top-up is over €200 a month and it means that people in HAP tenancies are worse off than social housing tenants paying differential rent that is scaled to their income to ensure affordability. People in receipt of HAP are being failed by the State which refuses to make the investments and policy reforms necessary to provide adequate public services or proper regulation of the housing market. HAP is an upward transfer of wealth from all taxpayers to those with the wealth to purchase rental property. The report points out that HAP is also contributing to the inflation of rents as lower-income HAP recipients who should be supported through the provision of social housing are made to compete with middle-income tenants in the private sector.

The Government unfortunately refuses to listen to the experts when it says that measures like HAP or the help to buy scheme are inflationary giveaways to landlords and developers. Free-market orthodoxy is winning out over common sense and expertise. I have said this before in this Chamber but I grew up in Charlemont Street tenements and as a child I remember friends and neighbours moving to the newly-built local authority developments built by Fianna Fáil. The social housing that was developed in the post-war era in Ireland was socially and economically transformative. It really represented the efforts of the State to lift its people up out of the poverty and backwardness that was imposed on us by a colonising power. That vision has now been lost.

To solve this housing crisis, we require a new way of thinking. We need a mandate for the kind of progressive change we desperately need. Therefore, I am very happy today to support this motion.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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Well said.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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It is great to have the opportunity to speak on this motion. As of 2024, €5 billion has been allocated to housing. That is a commitment from Government to ensure we have a plan in place. It is true that this is the number one priority of Government. It is a number one priority to make sure we have more access to housing, including local authority and affordable housing. You need to have a plan and it has to be evidence-based.

I listened to Senators Warfield and Gavan. I was in Longford last Friday and we had a panel debate on Shannonside FM. A person who was interviewed spoke about how the cost of a three-bed semi-detached house was €400,000 for the country. My question to the Sinn Féin Senators is: where is the plan? Where is the detail? What is this based on? If we are saying to people that we can build a house, and I do not know what type of house - it may even be a very fancy type of super garden shed - it cannot be done for €300,000. When we talk about the plans we have in government, they have to be based on fact.

The Housing Commission was put in place by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, in 2021 and it involved 11 to 12 experts. Those experts included engineers, local authority experts, architects and people with experience in the housing sector who have came together and who were there to hold Government to account. As was said, 60-odd recommendations out of 80 or so have been started or implemented. There is talk about a radical overhaul of legislation. I really look forward to the planning legislation that will be coming before us because I know Sinn Féin supports that radical overhaul. I am sure its members will be very supportive of the Government when it brings that plan before the Seanad. It is crucial we see that being put in place. It has taken so much preparation. It has gone through the committee and will be coming to us in the Seanad. The quicker that legislation is put into place, the quicker we will see action and activity in terms of more development.

From an educational perspective, I am my party's spokesperson on education in the Seanad and over €100 million has been allocated for 1,000 student bed spaces. That includes close to 500 for University College Dublin and Dublin City University and roughly 100 for the University of Maynooth. I have spoken before about 640 student units in the University of Galway, my own university.With those measures we are looking at a whole-of-government approach. It is not just one area of the Government that is tackling this crisis that faces us.

We are a country of almost 5.2 million people. The highest number of people ever are working in this country. We need to be able to ensure we have affordable housing. My question relates to affordable housing provided by our local authorities. I saw 136 new homes with families moving into them in Ballinasloe. I saw more than 56 new homes in Roscommon town that again families will move into and another 16 homes in Ballyleague. They are all local authority homes, but we also need affordable housing. I have also seen a 40% increase in the income threshold for people who can access HAP - that is in my area of County Galway, including Ballinasloe - from €25,000 to €35,000, but it is not enough. We need more. There is a crisis. The Government has to lead the way. The legislation is one of the measures, as are how we are supporting HAP, the Croí Cónaithe scheme and looking at vacant and derelict homes.

I agree with some of the points that were raised. Staged payments need to be considered. Some local authorities are outsourcing the inspections done through the local authorities and the Government. They need to happen more frequently. I come from a rural area. We had one of the highest numbers of applications in Galway and Roscommon. I want to see success in this and success would be for families to be able to draw down those funds once they have put the measures in place. There are things we can improve on. The benefits of that programme will be seen in years to come. We will see even more success in people applying to it, but there are measures we need to look at.

I acknowledge the people on the Housing Commission that put the report together. The Government will look at its recommendations and putting them in place. However, there are a few points the Minister of State could bring back to the Department with respect to what we want to see in rural areas. I would like to see consideration of some kind of staged payments, especially for people who are vulnerable. As has been mentioned, regarding housing for the western regions, the Western Development Commission talked about how 95% of homes and housing did not reach the BER B2 rating in western counties in 2020. I hope that has improved. We need to see such things as the housing adaptation grants, the SEAI retrofits and the number of SEAI assessors being increased. We are putting all these measures in place. We have been tackling it in recent years but more needs to be done.

Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State. It is good to have him here. I will make sure my phone is off.

I welcome this conversation and congratulate Sinn Féin on initiating it. It is important we discuss housing regularly and look at where we are. As a Government we can be particularly proud of where we have got to now. I will give some headline figures as quickly as I can. Since 2016, 166,000 new homes have been built, with almost 33,000 in 2023, which is the highest number in 15 years. There have been 30,000 commencements since the start of this year, with 18,000 in April. They are impressive figures. Another important figure is that since 2020, 10,820 vacant homes have been brought back into use and, an important facet - I will be finished with the figures after this - is that 12,000 social homes were provided in 2023 with 8,100 new build social houses. That is critical. The plan is to reach 22,500 new social housing units.

One of our greatest initiatives and achievements in government has been the Croí Cónaithe scheme. It is transformative for rural and urban Ireland. It provides up to €70,000 for an especially derelict house and €50,000 for one that is less so. That is a significant grant and it is causing a lot of activity. I know this anecdotally and from driving around the country. Where the Minister of State and I come from, we appreciate the importance of getting rid of derelict buildings, changing them and making them homes. A lot of interesting and exciting things are happening in that regard. That is a particularly good initiative and it should remain. If I understood my distinguished and capable colleague, Senator Dolan, correctly, she suggested staged payments in that area and I agree with that and anything the enhances the scheme. There should not be an issue with it and I commend it to the Minister of State. That is a significant achievement of the Government.

There is a popular suggestion that the help to buy scheme can be inflationary, but it is a significant intervention for people. I had a lovely young couple with me last week in my clinic who had an issue. When people are paying rent, it is impossible to save adequately. I was able to direct them to this scheme and, effectively through tax relief, they can get their deposit, so the help to buy scheme is significant. It was an especially good initiative by the Government and should be maintained.

As I said, we have had significant gains in social housing. The building of social housing should be an enormous priority. It is efficacious for society on many levels that we have a good social housing scheme. It bubbles up. It soaks people out of the housing demand and it creates a situation where we are getting a lot more people housed. Some of the historical heritage in our culture going back to the Famine is diminishing and an increasing number of people will proudly enter the beautiful social houses we are building and happily live in them. That is important. It takes the pressure off the other markets as well. I commend to the Minister of State a continued big focus on social housing and, as Senator Dolan said, affordable housing, which is an important concept. People need to be able to access affordable housing.

When Sinn Féin reflects on the landscape, it will have to say in its summation that when you look at the landscape we inherited, where we came from and the fact that, when we came into government, the entire building industry was at an effective standstill and think of where we have come to in respect of new builds, the exciting number of starts and new builds I cited at the outset, the exciting Croí Cónaithe scheme, the exciting work on social housing, which needs further initiatives, a reasonable objective analysis would be, if I could borrow a slogan Senator Fitzpatrick will be familiar with, a lot has been done. We are the first to accept that there is more to do, but a lot has been done. The fact a lot has been done should give people confidence to say to themselves when they are voting in the local and European elections that a Government that has achieved so much from what could be called a greenfield site in the literal sense is worthy of endorsement and support to go on building on this. We are in an exciting place. We are going places but we need to go places because it is a horror. I will end on this. It is a horror that troubles everyone in politics of all hues, shapes and sizes and of all parties and none to see young people living in the family home beyond the natural age for that. We want that to change and the exorbitant rents to go, which they will if we increase supply. We are achieving hugely. I am very proud of that achievement. I look forward to the Minister of State’s response on Croí Cónaithe and Senator Dolan’s proposition; social housing and affordable housing; the new builds; and his view of the help to buy scheme, which my clinic work would suggest is a positive intervention.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I gave the Senator a little bit of leeway. That is making up for giving out to him earlier.

Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)
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Sorry, I did not hear you.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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Apologies for arriving late as I was at the agriculture committee. Week after week, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, dismisses those of us in the Opposition who highlight the lived reality of people unable to access secure and affordable homes. He ignores the Opposition constantly when we remind him that his plan is not working. However, I think it is impossible now for the Minister to dismiss the views of his own Housing Commission. Not only did the commission outline what the Government should be doing, it also landed a devastating blow highlighting the failure that is this Government’s record on housing. As the commission stated – and I am sure others have said this – “Only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will work” to address the chronic issues we have after 13 years of Fine Gael in government, propped up by Fianna Fáil for the majority of those. It identified core issues such as ineffective decision-making and reactive policy-making dominated by risk aversion. The report is a damning indictment of the Government in general and particularly the Minister, Deputy O’Brien.

It is damning when we see what the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, did after such a crushing professional embarrassment. Perhaps he should have availed of some quiet personal reflection on his errors or taken on board the advice of this commission. No, instead he basically claimed that it was the commission of experts who were wrong, he was already doing all of this and most of the recommendations were being implemented - a claim which is simply disingenuous. I recommend that anybody who did not listen to Michael O’Flynn on “Today with Claire Byrne” on Friday listen back to the podcast. Mr. O’Flynn is a member of the commission. The Minister even dismissed one of the central recommendations out of hand and Mr. O'Flynn was taken aback by the level of dismissal by the Minister. The level of arrogance of the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, is off the charts.

If the Government had really turned a corner, it would not need recommendations from a housing commission. It is incredibly insulting to the people who put in the work and much effort, who are very busy in their lives and who dedicated two and a half years – not just the members but many others within the working groups – only to be told: “Thanks for that but we are doing it anyway. We do not need your advice.” It raises serious concerns, and not just for those people at the sharp end of the housing crisis. Instead of getting homes and workable solutions, they are getting bluster and spin. It is also deeply insulting to the work of the Government going forward because why would anyone sit on any of these commissions into the future? Why would anyone want to give up their time and effort and genuinely engage in trying to fix the mess when dismissal of expert recommendations is not something new under this Government? We have seen that lessons have not been learned since the then Tánaiste, Deputy Leo Varadkar, dismissed the work of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare and claimed it was straight out of the Sinn Féin manifesto. It is deeply insulting to experts to be treated in that manner.

Furthermore, the housing crisis has far-reaching consequences. Our education system is entering into a crisis because teachers cannot afford to live where they work. Our health system is on the brink with nurses and doctors leaving in droves. Only this afternoon, I was in Rathborne Nursing Home, listening to the residents there. They were telling me how upsetting it is that when they get used to and familiar with the carers they have and build up a relationship of trust, and then those carers move on because of the pay and conditions but also, because they cannot afford to live in the city, they have to give up the work. New carers come in and a new relationship has to be built up. The justice system is also affected because gardaí are struggling to find affordable housing in this city.

Basically, the social contract in this country is now in tatters - spiralling rents and sky-high property prices. They have all left our political system really vulnerable to growing anger, which is being harnessed by the far-right. People are really angry and really frustrated at the lack of progress on housing. According to the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing: “Far-right parties prosper when they can exploit the social gaps that emerge out of underinvestment and inadequate government planning ... and when they can blame outsiders." We are in dangerous territory now with the housing crisis. It is very concerning that the Minister just dismissed the commission’s work and recommendations. The Government has laid fertile ground for the far-right to scapegoat those seeking international protection, whereas we are trying to guide people as to where their anger should be focused. It should be focused on the Government, which is failing everybody. Those who get up in the morning, go out and work and do their part of the social contract are not seeing the Government live up to its side of the bargain.

On the ground, people are very angry. The Government’s reaction to the Housing Commission report is shocking. I think they should reflect on that and take a moment out, reset the dial and decide to sit down with the Housing Commission. On Friday, Michael O’Flynn said nobody had contacted him to discuss the report’s findings. That is what he said on Friday and it is now Wednesday. Perhaps things have improved since then, but that is very concerning when the report had been on the Minister’s desk for a couple weeks at that point.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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Senator Carrigy, I apologise that I did not see you indicating until the Minister of State rose.

Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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That is no problem. I want to speak on housing in Longford, where I come from, which has a population of 45,000 people, and where we stand on housing. Since 2016, when Housing for All or Rebuilding Ireland policies were brought in by Fine Gael, nearly 1,000 houses have been completed in County Longford, nearly 1,000 new and refurbished social houses and more than 170 families have submitted claims to the help to buy scheme. On the most recent scheme brought in, the Croí Cónaithe scheme, more than 100 applications have been made by families to access that scheme. People say we do not have an affordable housing scheme in County Longford, but Croí Cónaithe is an affordable housing scheme. It gives a family an opportunity to obtain up to €100,000 off the price of a house, be it €50,000 or €70,000 if it is a derelict property. Add to that the SEAI grants, which are also funded by the Government, and there is in the region of €100,000 towards the price of a property and a family home. Anyone who says the Government is not providing the finance and providing housing is totally off the mark.

A comment was made about the recent commission report and the comments made about the Government's policy. The reality is the Government's policies are working. Some of the big builders such as Hynes, Ballymore and Quintain, those people building and delivering houses, are fearful of a change in Government. They are fearful of a change in policy. They use words like "significant concerns". If we shift the policy of Government, which is working, we are actually going to slow dramatically. These are their words. We are going to slow dramatically if radical plans are put in place by an alternative Government. That is not going to happen because the current Government is going to be re-elected at the next election and we will progress with Housing for All and hit our targets which we have set. The Taoiseach, at our Ard-Fheis, put forward the figure of 250,000 homes over the next five to six years.The figures for commencements that are in place for 2024 show that we will hit that target. We will hit over 50,000 homes being started in 2024 and those houses will be delivered over the next five or six years. We will deliver the 250,000 homes that were promised by the Taoiseach. However, these are words from the top builders in the country who are building homes: undue progress; uncertainty; and slowed dramatically. That is the reality if we change from the policy in Housing for All that has been brought in by the Government. It is working. We need to keep that policy in place and we will deliver the policy.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response and thank all the contributors to the debate. It is possible to deliver homes at €300,000 or under, depending on size and location. Under Sinn Féin’s affordable housing scheme, councils and housing bodies will build homes that people can buy or at near the cost of construction, excluding the land-related costs. This can be done by building on public land and getting the State to cover all land-related costs, including site works and development, utility connections, land and land finance. Our scheme would be open to those with a gross household income of up to €85,000, those who are currently locked out of the housing market. We will only fix this housing crisis by bringing down the cost of homes and by increasing supply. Sinn Féin’s new affordable housing scheme will deliver tens of thousands of homes over five years as part of the biggest social and affordable house-building programme in the history of the State.

The vacant property refurbishment grants have been mentioned by many. As of February, just 127 were drawn down by home owners since the scheme came into effect.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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It is 30,000.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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How many approved?

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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Just 127 have been drawn down. I must also remind the House that since 2011, Fine Gael has pumped €10 billion of public money into the pockets of private landlords. The incredible thing is that €10 billion could have been used to build permanent homes for people.

Senators have mentioned-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Careful there. One of your own TDs has said that you want to abolish-----

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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Senator, please

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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The Senator does not like to hear the truth, so he is interrupting.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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It was suggested that we did not address the Housing Commission report. I think all three of us did in detail. However, I will conclude by addressing it again. The Housing Commission report is a damning indictment of the Government’s housing plan. The report talks about how systemic failures, ineffective decision-making, reactive policy-making and risk aversion were all impacting supply and that they were all undermining affordability. The report accuses the Government of a failure to treat housing as a critical social and economic priority. It also commented that despite having one of the highest levels of public expenditure for housing, we have one of the poorest outcomes. As Senator Gavan mentioned, at the centre of the commission’s report is a concern that the Government has ignored what it terms as the housing deficit, that is, the unmet need that has built up over the last decade. While the issue of the deficit has been well known for years, the Housing Commission suggested that it would be as high as 256,000 additional homes above the Government’s targets. The commission has also called for social and affordable housing delivery to increase to 20% of all housing stock. That would require at least half of all new homes to be affordable and social.

I feel, as happened here again tonight, that the Government talks about housing as some sort of natural disaster but the housing deficit is caused by a market failure and Government inaction. The fact that a Government-appointed body of experts has levelled such damning criticism at the Government’s housing policy is further evidence that its housing plan is not working. We need a change in the course of action and only a Sinn Féin government with a housing plan focused on the delivery of tens of thousands of affordable homes for working people can deliver the reset of the housing policy that the commission is calling for. It was said that all these recommendations are in train. I think the train has yet to leave the station.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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Well said.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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Well said.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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When is it proposed to sit again?

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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At 9.30 a.m. tomorrow.