Senator John McGahon- speech from 4 Jun 2021

Thank you very much, Cairlock. I suppose today, Minister, I just want to take a more rounded approach to this discussion around housing, and it has been very good today that the entire discussion in this House today has been resolved around housing, and even in the last two weeks as well, which is really good to show that we all see the urgency behind this very important issue about the importance of actually getting it solved. I just want to take a wider approach and touch on some of the comments I made during the second stage debate of the Affordable Housing Bill. The first one is actually kind of the wider approach in relation to mortgages, and just through the total and utter lack of competition in the Irish mortgage market, and how that then, I suppose in one sense, does tend to freeze out a lot of people. So, like, I'll just give a couple of clear examples, you know, competition is key, and where you have competition, you're going to have people trying to give the consumer a better deal. During the week, I was just really struck by this, it really came forward to me where I had a couple who came to me, good friends of mine, who have come home from working in the NHS in London, both have very, very incredible, really good jobs, both have substantial deposits as well. The wife has now started working for the HSE, the husband, though, is still working for the NHS, but is working across the border. And no bank, nobody will give them a mortgage because he's paid in sterling. Like, no one is giving them a mortgage because he's paid in sterling. And that's just a bank is able to just decide to do that. And if we had competitiveness and competition, something like that wouldn't happen. And instead, what the family are now having to do, they're having to go to the local authority, they're having to get a mortgage to the local authority, but they're not the type of people who that scheme was designed for in the first instance, because they're more than capable of getting a mortgage from a lender. So I just think there is just one small example that encapsulates the lack of competition there at the moment. And the other issue behind it as well, is when I've been trying to get mortgages and loans in the last couple of last couple of months, you know, the biggest problem I have here, which we all have is that we're very, we haven't got, we haven't got stable employment is what the turnaround to say, right, which is fair enough. But the point is, where you have someone paying 900 quid a month in rent, like surely a mortgage lender or a bank should be able to look at that and say, well, okay, they clearly have the capacity to pay 900 quid a month. They're not saving it, but we'll take that 900 quid and take it into consideration. But they're not, you know, and that's just another unfair example of how we need to widen that level of competition around it. In terms of local authorities and how it's going to be a local authority led building houses, I think we need to have really clear, definitive targets of what we expect from local authorities. And to actually remember that it's not just a Dublin centred debate, it is a country wide debate, and other local authorities are going to be able to deliver housing better than lesser local authorities. So we need to set clearly definitive targets. What are we going to set for Louth County Council, Leitrim County Council, Offaly County Council? You know, it doesn't have to always be about Dublin City Council or Dublin this or Dublin that. I get the vast majority of the population is there, but we have to have a more wider approach to that. I'd really be interested as well, and I said this during the affordable housing bill, is how will the chief executives of local authorities be held accountable if that a local authority isn't failing to hit the type of targets that they need in terms of house building? Another thing that I think we should actually roll out right across the country is a scheme where we use compulsory purchase orders to take vacant and derelict houses, a lot of them that are kind of caught up in vulture funds or they're going through issues of probate or families. The Louth County Council ran a really impressive pilot project for the last couple of years. They were the forerunner of all local authorities in Ireland about doing it, and I think if we could replicate a dedicated funding scheme, similar to the VOIDS program that we give money to local authorities, if we could replicate that for compulsory purchase orders of vacant homes, I think that could go a long way as well. And in the last time I kind of spoke here, and I saw it last night on, what was Richard Bruton on last night? Matt Cooper, on Matt Cooper last night, and you see it in this house as well a little bit. It's very much the whole debate around housing is just ideological driven. And the point that I made two weeks ago was that, like I'm 30 years of age, if you were to ask any of my mates or any of my friends, you know, people who are normal people, right, they literally don't care whether the house is built on public land or private land. They don't care if the house is built by a local authority or by a developer. They just want the opportunity to be able to work hard and get a house in life, get an affordable house in life. And I think that, just the common sense of the approach, is missed sometimes when we in this house perhaps get up to the higher echelons of debate and discussions around housing. What does the average person on the street on this country want to be able to do? They just want the opportunity to buy their own home. And I really think that we just can lose sight of that sometimes when we get bogged down in the ideological aspects of the housing debate. And what's the quickest way to do that? It's just build, build, build, increase supply, increase supply. And once we do that, that's when you start seeing housing lists and local authorities going down. That's when you see people of my age, my generation, being able to buy an affordable house. And that's when you see people going in to get effective cost rental housing or living in a state that's mixed use. You have social housing, you have private housing, you have affordable housing. And that's the way forward. And by having those very clear mixes of housing, I think that's a really good way to get away from mistakes of the past in the 1980s or in my own area where we built substantial social housing on mass or on block. But look, there are just a couple of the key points that I just wanted to bring to this debate. I just think it is so simple. Over the next three years or the lifetime of this government, we need to set, and we are doing it through the affordable housing, through the legislation that went through today. But to be brief about it is set clear, definitive targets. We want to build 8,000 houses this year. We want to build 8 the next year. We want to build 8 the year after. I think we are doing that. And now it's the case that we, and I am absolutely confident that we're going to deliver it, deliver on that. And in three years' time, this government will be able to turn around to say, this is what the housing issue was like when this government took over. This is where we've left it. And you'll have people of my generation been able to buy affordable houses. And that's just the key of it at the end of the day. Thank you, indeed. Thank you.