Eoin Ó Broin
Dublin Mid-West · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“It is disappointing that, when several journalists have contacted the Government and the Department looking to confirm on the record that HAP and RAS tenants are not included - we know that they are not - and set out why and if that will be reconsidered, instead of giving a straight answer that, yes, they have been excluded, and explainin…”
“Will it try to remove survivors when they chain themselves to the gates in protest, as they have said they will, or will it finally listen to them and hear their calls for respect, justice and truth? Will it buy the Bessborough site and stop this outrage from happening?”
“According to the latest summary of social housing needs assessments, 61,000 households are on council waiting lists, although we know a large number of them are single people. About 49,000 households at the end of last year were on HAP, while there were about 7,500 private sector RAS recipients of the 14,000.”
“We are setting out five specific sets of circumstances where that would be permissible. Under our scheme, the person moving from Youghal to Clonakilty would have to have a specific reason like taking up a job or education in Clonakilty or accessing long-term medical treatment, etc.”
“First, importantly it would be for both people on the list and people in receipt of social housing support, such as HAP and RAS. It is not just the 61,000 households on our council lists but also the 55,000 or so households in HAP or private sector RAS.”
“Sure. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. My natural disposition as a person is to treat people at face value, but ten years in this House has made a bit of a cynic of me.”
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“I strongly challenge the position of the Minister that the substance, let alone any of the detail, of the commission's report is in the programme for Government, but that is a discussion we continue to have. I welcome that the Minister met with the commission shortly after taking office. That is a positive. I welcome that the incoming Government has allowed us to have this debate, but the proof will be in the extent to which the commission's report is implemented. I will talk about the headline recommendations of the commission's report and then go through, in what little time I have, many of the sections.”
“Again, however, because the Housing Agency is an experienced body, if the Minister will share further details about its work with us, that would be helpful. In the absence of any of the detail to which I refer it is hard to judge what has been done at all. Of course, the Government has spent nine months running scared in respect of this matter. There was no launch of the commission's report. The outgoing Minister was given the task of circulating the report to members of the Oireachtas housing committee. He refused to do that. As stated previously, there was no promotion. It was also striking that there was no reference at all to the Housing Commission report in either Fianna Fáil’s or Fine Gael's election manifestoes.”
“The outgoing Government's response was deeply disappointing. When it was forced to publish the commission's two reports, it falsely claimed, in my view, to be implementing the majority of the recommendations. That is something the Minister knows caused quite a lot of annoyance to commission members as well as to others. While I appreciate the Minister telling us there has been a lot of work done on the interdepartmental working group, we would like some detail. How often has it met, what has it done and is there documentation that can be released to Members? Likewise with the Housing Agency because, for the life of me, I have no idea why the Housing Agency was asked to do costings for anything. That is the function of the Departments of Finance, public expenditure and reform, and housing.”
“I hope we get the Government's support when the Oireachtas housing committee is formed to ensure we can further this discussion in a more detailed form by inviting in former members of the commission and others to interrogate, scrutinise, talk and think through the implications of all of its recommendations for housing policy, irrespective of whether we agree or disagree with them. There is a role for the individual members of the commission. I urge the Minister to discuss with them what they can do to promote their work, beyond the Dáil Chamber or the committee, with wider sectors, whether through engagement roadshows or other kinds of activities. Before I talk about the detail of the report, I will make a comment on the response of the outgoing Government and the incoming Administration with respect to the work of the commission.”
“On behalf of Sinn Féin, I thank the individual members of the commission and its secretariat and all those other individuals and professionals who assisted it in its work over the two and a half years. This is, as the Minister of State said, an incredibly significant piece of work. It is on a par with the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, Housing in Ireland 2005 report. It is a benchmark piece of work which I would like to think all of us will return to on a regular basis as a source of ideas as well as new thinking. I also welcome today's debate but, of course, a debate is not enough.”
“Obviously, the Minister, Deputy Browne, is not going to do it today but whether in correspondence to me or to Deputies, he needs to come clean on yesterday’s announcement and on tenant in situ and, in future, when he is not able to attend a Private Members' motion or debates from the Opposition, he should have the courtesy to pick up the phone and notify us. That is what previous Ministers did. That is what I did with Deputy Hearne this morning when I was not able to attend due to a media engagement and that is what Ministers from this Government should do. The fact the Minister has not done so shows the height of disrespect for us, this House and the electorate. The Minister of State knows that despite his heckling of Deputy O'Callaghan earlier.”
“Because they are getting their eviction notices, their landlords are inquiring about tenant in situ and they are being told they cannot proceed. I think it is now four weeks since I wrote to the Minister and he has not replied. I raised it with Micheál Martin last week and he said it would be addressed in a matter of weeks, but then last week he said there was a problem with the allocation. It is not large enough so there are currently discussions on how we can target this scheme for those most needy and particular areas where it makes absolute sense for people who would otherwise become homeless. This sounds like the Government is going to restrict the tenant in situ scheme further than the restrictions introduced last April as well as delays.”
“There is a very dishonest attempt by the Government to present the money announced yesterday and the targets as additional and extra, when I do not believe they are. The Minister needs not only to come out of hiding but also to come clean on that. A couple of weeks earlier, I wrote to the Minister about the tenant in situ scheme because the outgoing Government and Minister could not get it together to agree the targets. We now have a situation where local authorities cannot proceed with new tenant in situ applications. It is not just angering many of us in the Opposition but also many of the Government’s own backbenchers and maybe even the Minister of State. Worst of all, it is putting families, couples and single people at risk of homelessness. Why?”
“I want to know, for example, if this is money additional to the capital that has already been provided to the Department of housing for 2025 to 2027, inclusive, or if it is within the existing capital ceilings. If it is additional, how much for this year and when will the Supplementary Estimate come to committee so that we can have transparency on that? Is this, as I believe it is, funding for those approved housing body and social and affordable projects that have been stalled for six months waiting for approval in the Department of housing? If so, does that mean they are in the existing targets for 2025 to 2027, inclusive, rather than additional? Will the Minister provide a timeline for how many of these homes are due to be delivered this year, next year and the year after?”
“I cannot think of a time since I was elected to the Oireachtas that neither the Minister or a Minister of State from the Department was present to deal with a debate on housing. I would like the Minister of State present to give us an explanation as to why the Minister is not here. If he has some more important engagement, if he has some family business, that is entirely legitimate, but so far we have not heard and, on that basis, it is deeply disrespectful not only to the sponsors of the motion but also to the House. There are two issues I want to raise. I wrote to the Minister this morning about the first of these and I was hoping to put these questions to him directly. Yesterday, the Cabinet agreed €450 million to deliver 3,000 social and affordable homes over the next three years. I am looking for some clarity on this.”
“I thank the Social Democrats for tabling this very important Private Members' motion. Sinn Féin is happy to support it. As is often the case in these debates, there are some policy details where we have differences of emphasis but we fully support its spirit, and on that basis we are opposing the Government's amendment. This really is unprecedented. The line Minister was not available last week; he was at Cabinet. That is fair enough, but he did not have the courtesy to notify the sponsors of the Labour Party motion of the reasons for his absence. This week he is not here. We do not have any explanation and again no courtesy extended to the Social Democrats as to why he is not here. Worse than that, the Minister of State present is not even a Minister of State in housing.”
“At some point in the future, we will have the opportunity to implement those alternatives, but until that happens I am afraid that based on what I heard from the Minister of State today, things are only going to get worse.”
“Is it not remarkable that having ignored the Housing Commission's report for half a year, the only time the Government has started to refer to it is when it wants to justify stripping renters of crucial supports, inadequate as they are. It is also significant that nowhere in the Minister of State's speech or in the programme for Government was there any mention of the recommendations of the Homeless Policy Group. It wrote to the Government earlier this year and set out ten key actions required to tackle the homelessness crisis and they are entirely absent. The big worry here, then, is that the Government is not listening to us, to the homeless sector or to the Housing Commission and this means things are going to get worse. We will continue to hold the Government to account and continue to propose alternatives.”
“We ask instead how much more public investment we need to get social and affordable housing to the levels it should be at and how do we support and activate small- and medium-sized building developers to keep building more homes that working people can buy in the private market, including in the constituency of the Minister of State, which will probably not see any affordable rental or purchase units delivered by the State or, if so, it will only be a minuscule number. Thankfully, the Housing Commission has set out in a lot of detail how to address those issues. Many of us in the Opposition have set out in the same level of detail credible policies of how to do all of that.”
“The housing plan of the outgoing Government was to deliver, on average, about 11,000 homes to go onto the market for working families to buy every year. The Government has missed that figure every year. It has stagnated from 2018 through to 2023 at about 8,000 units annually. This means that if we want to have a conversation about how we increase and accelerate the delivery of homes, which all of us want to do, we do not start by asking Property Industry Ireland or Irish Institutional Property what they need to do to get more institutional investment into the private rental sector.”
“Every year under the previous Government, and last year will have been no different, its social housing targets were missed. That happened in many respects for the reasons I have just outlined, including targets that were too low to begin with. Even worse than that, though, the Government's affordable housing targets were missed by an even larger margin. Last year, the Government was meant to deliver probably about 4,300 affordable purchase and rental homes through local authorities, approved housing bodies and the LDA. It will not be anywhere close to 2,000 units and will probably be closer to 1,000 units in the end. Not only is the Government missing those targets, but the majority of those homes are not actually affordable for people buying them. The Government is also missing its private purchase targets.”
“Therefore, I urge the Minister of State to use whatever influence is possible to remove the single biggest obstacle for the delivery of public housing projects by local authorities and approved housing bodies, which is the bureaucracy imposed by the Department. Regarding the Government's proposed amendment to the motion, the problem is that it almost suggests everything is going fine, nothing is wrong and we are just going to continue as we were. If we are going to fix a problem, we need to know what it is. Let us look, therefore, at why the Government did not deliver on its housing target last year. Initially, it was 33,000 units, but this was of course subsequently increased to 40,000 units. There are three reasons. One is because the Government is not meeting its social housing targets.”
“The level of micromanagement by the officials in the Custom House on everything down to where the windows and skirting boards of public housing projects go is actually one of the greatest causes of delay. Along with others, we have been calling for the last Government and the previous Government to dramatically reform the process of approval and procurement for public housing, but this is falling on deaf ears. It is also incredibly misleading to suggest that 80% of new social housing delivery is using the single stage process. That is only possible if we exclude all the Part V units, all the turnkeys and all the design and builds. The actual number of projects of the 8,000 to 9,000 social homes delivered last year that used that process is minuscule because of course it is too small, it carries too much risk for the local authorities.”
“I will also point out that during the last Dáil not only did the previous Minister not undertake that commitment but, in fact, he had a terrible habit of coming in, speaking and then leaving before anybody else spoke. Whatever about the political differences we may have with the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Browne, I hope they will properly engage with the Opposition in a way that was entirely absent in the last Oireachtas. I take issue with a couple of elements of the Minister of State's speech. It is simply not the case that local authorities make the decisions on specific public housing delivery in their areas. Any of us who have been in local authorities know that is just not true. The targets are set by the Department. The funding is set by the Department. The funding approvals are set by the Department.”
“I thank the Labour Party for tabling this comprehensive motion and giving us an opportunity to discuss what is undoubtedly the most important issue facing our constituents today. We are fully supporting the motion. We have some differences of opinion on policy, particularly with respect to the future focus of the Land Development Agency, but we fully support and endorse the spirit of this motion. Obviously, we will be opposing the Government's proposed amendment. At the outset, I will say that I appreciate the line Minister cannot always be here. There was a convention previously, however, where the line Minister would have the courtesy to contact the proposer of a motion in advance to explain an absence and I think that is a practice that should be recommenced.”
“The Government could scrap RPZs tomorrow and allow landlords to reset rents between tenancies and market rent, but not a single new home would be built. How do we know? We know because that was the case a number of years ago. Institutional investors were investing in the market when RPZs were first introduced. It is ECB interest rate rises that have caused the problem. Given that renters are paying higher rents than ever before and have more insecure tenancies, the idea that this Government has their back is nonsense.”
“The Minister is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. For the past number of weeks, there has been intensive lobbying on behalf of Irish Institutional Property, Property Industry Ireland and the Irish Property Owners Association all claiming, wrongly, in my view, that RPZs - as inadequate a protection as they are, they still provide form of protection - are the reason Government did not meet its targets last year. That is not true. The reason the Government did not meet its target of 33,000 new homes last year is because for the fifth year in a row it missed its social and affordable housing targets. The failure to meet housing need is on the Government, not on renters and the rent they pay.”
“Will the Minister provide some comfort to renters who are genuinely concerned about the Government's intentions and make clear that it will not break its election promises? Will he give a commitment not to take any action that results in renters having to pay even higher extortionate rents?”
“A third renter told me that ending RPZs "is going to drive up rents and make thousands of people homeless". One very distressed tenant wrote to the Taoiseach. He copied me and others on his communication, which states: "If you honestly cared about renters, you would not be considering how to benefit private investors, but how to benefit renters." I cannot stress enough the impact the Taoiseach's comments have had on renters. Any renters reading the front page of the Irish Daily Mail today would be even more concerned because apparently the Taoiseach told members of the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party that they should brace themselves for unpopular decisions. It seems that the partial row-back by the Taoiseach in Brussels yesterday was about as misleading as his claim that 40,000 new homes would be delivered last year.”
“His comments read like the speaking notes of an industry lobbyist for institutional investors. The more important point is that they caused real concern among renters. I have been inundated with emails and telephone calls. One women told me: "The rule at the current rate of 2% is the only thing between myself and my daughter and homelessness." This woman is 70. She works to pay the rent. Her daughter has special needs. She lives in my constituency and pays rent in of €1,477 per month. Ending RPZs or allowing landlords to reset rents between tenancies would mean she would face rent of €2,700. Another constituent told me he never knows when his landlord might end his tenancy but at least with RPZs he knows what his rent will be year on year.”
“Since 2020, under the watch of the Minister and his colleagues, rents have increased by an astonishing 40% and their renter's tax credit has been swallowed up by rent increases for landlords. All the while, the Government's failure to meet its social, affordable and private-for-purchase targets means many people who do not want to be in the private rental sector are trapped there in insecure and expensive accommodation. During the election campaign, Fine Gael promised to retain RPZs. In its manifesto, the Minister's party stated that it would review the effectiveness of RPZs. There is no mention in the programme for Government of ending the caps. On Sunday, however, Micheál Martin suggested just that. He said that the Government is considering replacing RPZs when they expire at the end of this year.”
“It has never been more difficult to be a renter. Rents are through the roof, and last year almost 20,000 eviction notices were issued to tenants. The single biggest cause of homelessness, as I am sure the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform knows, is evictions from the private rental sector. According to the Residential Tenancies Board, the average cost of a new rental is now €20,000 per year. It is €26,000 in some parts of the city and as much as €36,000 in others. New rents increased by almost 5% in the past 12 months and existing rents by 6%. Even in rent pressure zones, RPZs, rents are increasing by more than the 2% cap. In almost all of our cities - Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford - rents for existing renters rose by between 4% and 5% last year.”
“We will continue to propose detailed radical realistic alternatives and, eventually, we will have a housing policy that tackles this crisis, but it is not in this programme for Government.”
“There is nothing new for those in social housing, flat complexes and estates who are in desperate need of urban regeneration and deep retrofit. They will continue to live in some of the poorest quality housing in the State, and this is owned and managed by the Government. What we have seen in the Minister's remarks is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is growing ever greater. It has become a hallmark of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that it treats these debates with a level of dishonesty. Just as they were caught out claiming 40,000 new-build homes would be delivered last year, they are now repeating another untruth by saying 60,000 new homes were started on site last year when they were not. We will continue to hold the Government to account.”
“The members of the commission are saying this document is disappointing and will not resolve the problems. Listen to them if you will not listen to us. Going through the other areas, there is nothing new or serious for renters in terms of rights or protection. The Government has completely ignored the ten key recommendations of the homeless policy group, which were sent to it only two or three weeks before the programme was finalised. It sets out what will be needed to tackle the homelessness crisis. There is nothing new for people struggling with defective blocks in Mayo, Donegal, Clare and elsewhere. There is no indication of any urgency in tackling Celtic tiger-era defects. The funding promised two years ago for fire safety remediation works still has not been provided to a single scheme anywhere in the country.”
“I know the Government has no interest in listening to, or engaging in, the very large volume of positive alternative proposals we put forward. We know the Government will not do this. What baffles me is that the previous Government appointed a Housing Commission, getting together the country's leading experts in public and private housing delivery who spent two and a half years producing a report of hundreds of pages, but it is not even referenced in the document. Not a single one of its key recommendations is in it. The previous Minister for housing did not even have the courtesy to meet the commission before he disbanded it and then the Government disposed of its work. No wonder members of the commission have publicly said how disappointed they are with this plan and how it will not deal with the crisis.”
“The most bizarre thing is that the title of the chapter on housing is "Accelerating Housing Supply", yet there is not a single proposal in these pages that will accelerate this supply. In fact, one of the weakest areas after the targets is the delivery. Nowhere does the Government actually explain how it will increase or accelerate the delivery of public housing through reform of procurement or improvement in the Department, or private housing through greater support for the SME sector. The only thing that is clear from this is the Government will continue pushing up house prices. It will do so by extending the controversial first home scheme to second-hand homes, which will mean an extra €90,000 to push up the price of houses, locking out ever more young couples and single people from ever owning their own home.”
“The targets are lower than what every independent body, including the Government's own appointed Housing Commission, is saying what is required. If we start at the top with the wrong targets, then everything below it will be inadequate. Not only are the global targets wrong but the social housing targets are too low. They are well below what the homeless service providers and others tell us we need. There are not even affordable housing targets. The previous Government had no annual affordable housing targets and nor does this one. Nor is there anything to address the fact the so-called affordable homes the Government is delivering, of which there are far too few, are not affordable. This means more of the same.”
“What we have got are vague, unclear and, at times, repetitive commitments that tell us one very simple thing, which is this Government will do exactly the same as the previous Government and the one before it with respect to housing. This means the crisis is going to get worse. This is not just my view. Look at the opinion poll in the Sunday Independent at the weekend, which found 52% of people do not believe the Government is even trying to tackle the housing crisis. A total of 82% of people said the Government will not fix the housing crisis. Even if the Government is not willing to listen to us, it should at least pay attention to the wider public. Let us have a look at this document and see what is lacking. First of all, the targets are wrong.”
“I join with other colleagues in thanking Tony and wishing him the very best in the future. I cannot think of any better job to prepare you for being a grandparent than being an usher in Leinster House and herding the bag of cats that is often the TDs in this place. We wish him all the very best. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. When it comes to housing, the seven threadbare pages of the programme for Government are the very definition of insanity. The Government uses the words "ambition" and "detailed". There is no ambition in these seven pages and there is certainly no detail.”
“Will the Government remove the unwarranted restrictions on local authorities that were put in place last year to ensure every property that can be bought will be bought to prevent families and individuals from becoming homeless?”
“As the Taoiseach knows, the tenant in situ scheme is a vital homelessness prevention tool. It allows local authorities and approved housing bodies to purchase private rental properties where an eviction notice is in place and to turn the tenants into social or affordable renters. Correspondence I received from the Department in January confirmed that no new applications are allowed to proceed because the outgoing Government failed to agree targets for 2025. As a consequence, many landlords currently applying to have their local authorities purchase their properties are being told they cannot proceed, and that is increasing the risk of homelessness among the tenants in question. When will the new targets be set? When will they be communicated to the local authorities?”