Speech: Housing (Amendment) Bill 2013

To take up Deputy John Browne’s last point on the total number of people on local authority housing waiting lists, it is indeed a housing crisis. It is one the Minister of State inherited from her predecessors. It has continued for ten years because the previous Administration refused to do anything about it. The culture of dealing with local authority housing requirements was gone; the private sector was going to deal with it. The culture of building local authority houses and lending to first-time buyers through the local authorities was also gone, and remains that way. There is no easy way to deal with it. It must be dealt with in the old, traditional and difficult way.

I realise there is scarcity of capital at present for investing in local authority housing, but it is a very serious social and economic issue that can only be dealt with in one way. That means the Government at some stage will have to work out a programme that will be beneficial to people on the housing lists. Instead of being funded by the Department of Social Protection by way of rent support, it is the responsibility of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, and the Minister for Social Protection has quite correctly said as much. It must be taken seriously. As Deputy John Browne said, local authorities have the staff to operate this and other schemes. The staff are in situ so there is no reason it cannot be done. There is no extra cost administratively.

The sad part of this is that a comparison with the 1980s is relevant. In a four-year period in my local authority area, a total of 1,200 houses were built by the local authority. In the same period, 1,500 Housing Finance Agency loans were issued to families on the housing list. That has not been equalled since then. What happened during the boom was just appalling. Houses became known as units. The first time I saw a reference to a unit, I knew we were finished. Everything went down the tubes at that stage. A unit is a one-bedroom apartment with a bathroom and a kitchen in which one cannot swing a cat. This was deemed to be the resolution to the housing problem because it was cheap and it was possible to put ten or 15 families into a space in which one would normally place one family.

What we are left with is both a social and an economic disaster. First, those houses are incapable of housing a family. In houses that were purchased and allocated during that time we have situations in which children of mixed ages and sexes are sharing rooms. It is utterly crazy. I have never seen anything like it in my lifetime. When I was a member of the local authority, which was quite a long time ago, one of the first issues we were instructed to consider in determining housing requirements was the sleeping accommodation of the family. That has all gone out the window. It is utterly crazy and dangerous. It is an appalling situation. We must move away from that nonsense.

There is no surplus housing on the periphery of Dublin, as all representatives in Dublin and the surrounding counties know. There is huge demand but there is nowhere to divert the people. We cannot divert them to the private sector. We cannot divert them to the NAMA sector because the housing is unsuitable. There is a dearth of family accommodation. That must be dealt with. There is a need for a cultural change in how we deal with this. In the past ten or 15 years we slid into the habit of pointing to the voluntary housing sector. The voluntary housing sector, some of which is good, is not the solution to the problem by a long shot. In fact, I am not the greatest fan of the voluntary housing sector. That is well known. I was an opponent from the beginning. As the Minister knows, I have pointed out some inadequacies in that area that have shown up over the years, and more will follow.

I strongly urge the Minister of State to bring control of the housing situation back to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, where it belongs. I agree with Deputy John Browne’s proposal that local authority houses be sold to tenants. It should happen as soon as possible. It would remove that burden from the balance sheet. On foot of the memorandum of understanding there is a requirement for the Government to reduce borrowing and remove borrowings from the balance sheet. That can be done in a simple way by selling as many houses as possible. At the same time, if necessary, the local authority should provide the funding through the local loans fund where the banks are not doing so. There is nothing like a bit of competition.

I remember when the Housing Finance Agency was mooted in 1981. I was a great supporter of that scheme. I dealt with the first cases in which people applied for housing loans under that scheme and they are still in their houses. That is the case for thousands of people throughout the country. However, the wise guys came along afterwards and told people they would be paying until they were 90 years old because it was an income-related repayment system and if the income did not increase over a period of time, the loan repayments remained the same. The main aspect of the scheme was that it gave access to housing for families in need of a home. It did so quickly, effectively and efficiently, without placing a burden on their backs that they could not handle in the future. I believe it should be reintroduced and made available to families that are currently in need of a house. There are at least 100,000, as Deputy Browne said, and possibly more.

One of the criticisms levelled at those of us who promote the concept of greater investment in local authority houses is that there are people on the housing waiting lists who would not be on them if there were different social circumstances. That may well be the case, but our job as legislators is not to tell people not to change their circumstances but to attend to the problems that arise afterwards. It is no use to complain that if a family has split up and gone in different directions, where one house was sufficient for them previously they now require two houses of different types. We must deal with the situation as it is presented, not the situation that was presented previously. We must deal with the new circumstances and I strongly urge the Minister to do that. Again, that can only be done through a serious investment in the local authority house building programme.

I ask the Minister of State to take account of the numbers on the individual local authority housing lists in order to be able to assess the requirements in the various areas effectively. There will be those who will advise otherwise. I was a member of a local authority for a good few years, and it is a good few years since I was a member, but I know the requirements in this area have not changed. The difficulties were actually exacerbated by reluctance on the part of the former Government to address them in a meaningful way. It did not do so and consequently there is negativity and a lack of accommodation.

If a person is on the local authority housing list and qualifies for rent supplement, which is necessary because there are no local authority houses, he or she is caught in a poverty trap. If he or she moves at all, his or her rent support is removed. It is not that people are deliberately staying where they are but that they cannot move because they are caught in a poverty trap. If they do move out, their income drops because of the loss of the supplement from the Department of Social Protection.

When a person has a local authority house, provided there is a reasonable differential rent, that person will, without any encouragement from anybody anywhere, go to work to improve his position to the best of his ability. I have never seen it happen otherwise. I strongly urge that we recognise this now and enable people on the local authority housing list to have a means of housing themselves, by way of a loan or direct local authority housing provision, instead of keeping them in a poverty trap.

The tenant purchase scheme was referred to by other speakers, including Deputy John Browne. I agree with the points made. I would identify the total number of houses eligible for purchase under the scheme at the earliest opportunity and I would then ask for an assessment of the benefit that would accrue to the Exchequer on foot of the change to the balance sheet.

Reference was made to the disabled person’s grant scheme, which has been opened and closed by turn for the past ten years. In any five-year period, the scheme was repeatedly switched off on the receipt of a certain number of applications by the local authorities, thus requiring applicants to make an entirely new application when the scheme reopened, perhaps six months later. I never saw such nonsense anywhere in my life. This has changed in the past year or so and the local authorities are keeping the relevant information on file such that it is automatically activated when the scheme is brought back online. I compliment the Minister on this. This approach could be taken in respect of many other schemes.

If the number of people on the local authority housing list had been counted more often during my time in this House, a premium would have been payable for them. Counting the people on the list does nothing at all. With modern technology, it should not be necessary to count them. There should be co-operation between the Department of Social Protection and the local authorities such that cross-checking would make it readily identifiable who is on the housing list, how long they are on it and how their housing needs can be met. This could be done with the touch of a button and with no research, counting or laborious administration. I ask that there be much closer co-operation between local authorities and the system itself. The system should be integrated so information will be available instantly. This can be done without problem with modern technology. Information could be kept up to date at all times, thus cutting out the nonsense of having to count the people on the list every three or four years to determine who is eligible, who is on the list and who has gone off the list.

Society can benefit greatly from a good, well-balanced housing programme for people in the income brackets that have not been accommodated at all in recent years. This is essential. I note that Deputy Finian McGrath agrees with me. The time he signed a document of support for a previous Government was crucial in our history. His signature handed all responsibility over to the private sector. Deputy Finian McGrath is a great supporter of the private sector and his signature was a manifestation of his support therefor at the time. I was appalled at the time that anybody should have thought that we would solve our housing crisis through the private sector. We had Part V, Part VIII and all sorts of parts, some of which were notorious and which were purportedly to solve our housing problem. Where are we now if there was a crisis then? The approach at the time did not and could never have solved the problem. It never will. Until we decide to tackle the problem in the old-fashioned, traditional way, it will not and cannot be dealt with. The Government has taken some decisions that are beneficial but there is a big one yet to come, namely, dealing with the big problem in the fashion in which it must be dealt with.

In recent years there has been a lack of funding for local authority housing. Deputy John Browne referred to the consequent uptake under the rental accommodation scheme. The scheme is not successful, nor does it work. No such schemes work because of their temporary nature. A person taking on a house under the rental accommodation scheme knows there is a temporary arrangement. He or she may not necessarily get on well with the landlord indefinitely despite the fact that the local authority is leasing the house in the first place and subletting it to him or her. The system is appallingly laborious and difficult and costly to administer. If we do not consider ways and means of regularising it somehow, we will have further problems that will be magnified well into the future. As a famous former Member of this House said: “A lot done. More to do.”