Richard Boyd Barrett attacks housing crisis and developer profits

Tawnish, I'm amazed at your trumpeting success really on the housing disaster that people face in this country. Tomorrow we will have the end of month homeless figures, which at December were 16,996 people, record number, living in the misery of emergency accommodation, including 5,321 children. And whatever the figures are tomorrow, there will be an unacceptable level of homelessness. We have next week, you have planned to bring in a bill which is going to lead to some of, if not the most, unaffordable rents anywhere in Europe being increased even further as market rents will then dictate what any tenancy that ends can be set at, right? Market rents currently 2,600 euro a month, more often, in much of, in Dublin, more often 3,000 or even 3,500. Shocking levels. And we now have the CSO figures that show, I mean, honestly, 36,000, very marginal improvement. But we need 50, we, according to the central bank, we need 50,000 to 60,000 houses a year in order to, the government to meet its 20, 30 targets. You're expecting, you're not, I'm a hope in hell, not a hope in hell of reaching the housing need that has been agreed by many bodies, including by the government. By the way, by the way, we also, from Mitchell McDermott today, have proof. It's nothing to do with planning permissions. We have loads of planning permissions, it's not planning objections. It's not planning objections that are the problem as Mitchell McDermott. We have 32,000 planning permissions that are being sat on, no judicial reviews, have the planning permission, not happening because of viability. What does that mean? Profits. Profits for your developer friends or the lack of infrastructure, water infrastructure, because we know from Irish water, they are only being given enough money by the state for 30,000 units a year when we need 50,000 to 60,000. So you're not putting in the infrastructure and the developers, the landlords and the investors. And Minister Lawless summed up the government's policy earlier this month. He said, housing is about international markets. It's actually a spreadsheet in Zurich or New York or Antwerp. More so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon that's actually deciding what happens here. That's it. That's the policy. The investors in Zurich, Antwerp, New York, profit-driven, tell the government to jump and you say, how high? How high? Meanwhile, the housing misery continues. The most unaffordable rents, record numbers of people, homeless, totally unaffordable house prices and speculation and land hoarding as developers and investors sit on planning permissions, waiting for you to pass even more legislation in their favour so that profits can go up. The Honourish to please. I know we come at these things from a very ideologically different place, but I mean, we need private investment to outbuild homes. We don't wish to live in a country, by the way, where every house is built by the state. Can I just be kind of clear about that? We want to build social homes. I think we're on track to build a very, very significant number this year. We'll have the figures for 2025. We want to build affordable homes. And, heaven forbid, we'd also like more private homes, Deputy Boye Barron. That ain't a bad thing either. There's lots of people who want to move out of their box room into the first home. They're not looking for a local authority home in all instances at all. They're actually looking for a home to buy. And planning objections do play a factor in relation to that. It might end in RT when you were out there the other night, but people do care. People do care about planning objections. Jennifer, Carl, MacNeill and Barry Ward are coming to work every day pursuing policies to deliver more houses. Because you're seeing housing schemes and your constituents say, we don't want that one, we don't want that one, and we don't want the other one. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's constructive. You're right in relation to homeless figures being too high. Of that, there is no doubt. And that's why we're continuing to invest more in emergency accommodation. It's also why we have to continue to understand better the composition of our homelessness figures so we can pursue the correct policies as well. But viability is important. I mean, unless your view is, and again, different ideological views, but unless your view is that the state must build everything, well, then we do need to make sure that it's viable for people to build homes. Because if it's not, they won't build them. I mean, that's how business works. You know that. And we've already seen very positive indications from the decisions that we've taken around reducing the VAT rate in terms of people now being much more interested in building apartments in this country. Not my view, by the way, not just my view. The Society of Chartered Surveyors in Ireland look at apartments. I think they said there's five kind of categories they look at. Before our changes, only maybe two were viable, and now a number more are deemed viable as well. So that's progress. At a European level, there's real housing challenges. We're not the only country grappling with this, but in Europe now, we actually have one of the strongest rates of home completion in the entire European Union. For every thousand people living in Ireland now, there's 5.9 homes being completed. The EU average is 3.3. So I stand here very aware that there's a housing emergency, very aware that it's the biggest domestic issue bar none, very aware that people are putting life decisions on hold until they can get home. Absolutely. But also very confident that the decisions that we're making now, hardest at times as they are, will yield real benefits in terms of increased supply. And supply, supply, supply is the way forward in relation to this. We've taken a number of actions. You made a fair point in relation to the infrastructure that's needed to enable housing. I agree with that. I hear it right across the country. We have zoned land here if only it was serviced. That's why this week we announced a billion euro fund. A billion euro fund that every local authority, including Dunleary, can apply from. It opens this week. It closes at the end of February. There's an onus on every local authority to realise they're part of the solution here or part of the problem up to them. And they need to put in their applications now to draw down that funding to help put in the road infrastructure or the water or the wastewater or whatever is needed to open up more sites. So yes, in relation to infrastructure, I agree. In relation to viability, we have different views on that. But I believe we've taken a number of measures. And we will continue every day to engage constructively with any idea that can help increase supply further. Thank you. Go ahead, Barron. Minister. We do not need a single further unaffordable home. Not a single one. Okay? What we need is affordable homes. I didn't say they should all be social. I said they should all be affordable or social. The problem is that houses being delivered with rents of three and a half thousand or six or seven hundred thousand euro are totally unaffordable to ordinary people. But they're very good for investors. So we're saying we need a state construction company to deliver the infrastructure you accept you're not delivering, to deliver social and affordable housing. We need a no-fault eviction ban so people don't get evicted through no fault of their own into emergency accommodation, including increasingly older people and very vulnerable people. We need to stop the speculation and the land hoarding and we need to stop dancing to the tune of investors in Zurich and so on in order to deliver the housing that we want. And by the way, on my own personal record, one of the developments we opposed, we said there should be more social and affordable housing because we're only getting 10%. We opposed it, we opposed it, we opposed it and we got the social, we said there should be more social and affordable housing and we got the 100% because, because we opposed it. Minister, you should be showing you a good example. You wanted only 10%, we got 100% because we put the submission on it. Thank you, Deputy Vice-Barrant. Tornish to respond. Well, I think Minister Cara MacNeill is reminding us of the irony of knocking on doors looking for votes on the same doors that you opposed to ever being built. It's something we should all reflect on in this House as well. We all come under pressure in our community, object to that. Sometimes it's about leadership. Well, you guys can take this up in Dun Laoghaire, but I think it's a point worth considering. Sorry, sorry, hang on a second. It says the democratically elected TD for Dun Laoghaire and Minister. Anyway, the Minister is well able to handle herself and I'm sure she'll pursue this. There is a direct correlation, though, between supply and demand. So you're right around affordability. We all want to see more affordable homes. But we do know one of the things that drives up price is that there's more demand for homes than there is supply. And therefore we have to increase supply. And I think we agree on that point. But I fundamentally disagree that we don't need more planning applications, that we don't need more planning permissions granted. I think we absolutely do. And we also need more land zoned. And I'm getting pretty tired of the local authorities who think they've done enough. Because we need to actually overzone in terms of land. Because not all zoned land actually correlates into new housing developments. Every local authority now needs to look at how it can do to make sure there's enough zoned land. And what we will do in partnership with them is help provide the funding to make sure that that land is then serviced. That's for David Pell. Thank you.