Senator John McGahon- speech from 17 May 2021

Minister, I think it's just very important, as it's been said earlier, to actually discuss who is this bill actually about? Who are the people at the coal face of it that is actually going to benefit? And I'm 30 years of age and it's my friends, it's people of my generation, it's my age cohort that is going to benefit. And we're the generation that those of us who are still in Ireland today are the ones that didn't emigrate in 2010, 2011, 2012. We're also the generation of people who did go to New York, did go to London, did their five or six years there, are now looking to come back home, to set up a family life at home. That's what this is about. It's about families, it's about graduates who want the ambition of home ownership. And I can tell you now, like from listening to this debate, like if you were to ask any of my mates to come in here and ask them to say, what does this actually mean? The level of, you know, just to put it in layman's terms, when people are talking about ideological things, we need to do this, we need to do that, it will fly over everybody's head. And we just need to be so clear in what affordability is. It means we're going to give you a house and the opportunity to buy it. And literally, and again, I'm looking back to my mates and people I know, they don't care if it's built by a developer, if it's built by a local authority, if it's built on public land, if it's built on private land. Nobody, honestly, normal average people on the street of Dundalk where I am from, do not care who it's built by. And I think that's a bubble issue by people in here. It's an ideological issue in here. People, the average Joe soap on the street in this country does not care. What they want is the opportunity to buy an affordable house. And they buy an affordable house through legislation like this, through landmark legislation like this. And that's what we are trying to do. And I just think that just gets lost in the debate of ideology around housing that we have seen rage within our county councils and our local authorities right across the country over the last couple of years. I really agree with some of the proposals made by Barry Cowan recently in terms of cutting down the wait times that are on board Pamela and like, let's get radical about this. Let's be radical about it. And if there's one political learning to learn from COVID over the last 12 months is that anything is possible. We can put legislation through in 24 hours. We can change the constitution if we need to. Let's take the learnings from COVID and realise that the sky really is the limit of what we want to try and do, that anything is possible. And let's take that approach to housing and be radical about it. When we look at the concept of local authorities, and again, I think this is something that we should consider, where Louth County Council a couple of years ago was the best local authority in the country for using compulsory purchase orders to take vacant houses and put them back into housing stock. That's another avenue we need to consider when we're looking about reintroducing housing stock. Another thing that I'd really appreciate is when the local authorities do start building houses, that they are given definitive targets. And who's responsible if they don't hit those targets? Who would the chief executive of the local authority be responsible to? When you have certain local authorities flying it, somebody has to be accountable to an Oireachtas committee or you the minister to come in and say, why have you not hit your targets consistently for the last two or three years? And I really think that would be something to look at as well when it comes to local authority housing. I think over the next four years of this government, as I said, we need to be radical about it. We need to set clear, definitive targets. How many houses do, and it's not houses on public land? How many houses that normal people are going to be living in? Do we want to deliver in year one? Do we want to deliver in year two? Do we want to deliver in year three by the end of this government? And I accept when people say from my own party, well, you've been in government for 10 years. Grand. No houses in this country. Not one single house was practically built for five of those years between 2011 and 2016. We're trying to get the country out of an economic mess. That is a fact. Nobody can disagree with that. So I find it so disingenuous when you, the opposition, know that, and yet still hark on about a decade of no houses being built. The final thing that I'd want to say about it when we talk about political ideology, and this is where the cynicism of a creeps in minister. When you look at local authorities constantly blocking housing at every opportunity, it's either A, and the higher level of it might be that they have political ideology about it, and they don't believe in this. But the real thing is, is the cynicism of it, and it's the politics of it. And the politics of it is delay, delay, delay, make it as difficult as possible to build, make it as hard as possible to build, delay, delay, delay, delay, and we'll reap the political benefits by exacerbating this housing crisis in the next few years. And that's what it really boils down to. I'm talking about local authority councillors, of which I was on a local authority for seven years, and I know exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to local authorities.