Hear, hear.

Sentiment score: 0.00

I commend my colleague Deputy Gould on bringing forward this very simple but sensible legislation. Leaving homes derelict in the middle of the deepest housing crisis in the modern history of the State is akin to hoarding food during a famine. This is a comment that I and many other Members of this House have made repeatedly. I note with some interest the language the Minister has started to use with respect to dereliction. He has used it again here by using terms like "antisocial behaviour" and "war on dereliction". In a recent interview, he stated that if he had his way, he would make dereliction a crime. The problem I have is that I have been on this side of the Chamber for a decade and this is the fourth Minister with responsibility for housing to make these type of promises regarding dereliction. I have learned the hard way not to take those promises at face value and to judge people on the basis of delivery. The difficulty after a decade of having had four Ministers and four housing plans is that the record of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in terms of tackling vacancy and dereliction is, quite frankly, appalling. I do not believe the Minister said anything that is going to make that difference. Simon Coveney had an entire pillar of his housing plan in 2016 dedicated to vacancy and dereliction. He introduced a plethora of new initiatives, including buy and renew, repair and lease and the rolling Housing Agency fund, all of which were abysmal failures in terms of the promises he made regarding bringing back into use the quantum of vacant and derelict homes. Those initiatives continue to exist and limp on ineffectively. In effect, they have been abject failures. When Eoghan Murphy became Minister, following a very sensible proposal from former Deputy Fergus O'Dowd, he was asked by Leo Varadkar to investigate the idea of a vacant property tax. He studied the idea and came back with proposals, but he was told by Leo and Paschal that it could not proceed. Again, Eoghan Murphy's record as Minister in bringing back the tens of thousands of vacant and derelict homes that lie idle across the State was an abysmal failure. Then Darragh O'Brien arrived. Again, the record is very poor. The only major initiative he announced was the vacant property refurbishment grant. It took three years to get up and running. They had to change the rules of the scheme on three separate occasions. Finally, people are now able to draw it down, although significantly, that scheme still excludes huge numbers of people who have applied and have been approved because payments are not made on a stage basis - a key reform of the scheme we have urged the Government to take. When we eventually got to see the vacant property tax, this actually was not going to be a meaningful tax collected by Revenue on the tens of thousands vacant homes across the State. As Deputy Gould has outlined, the actual number of property owners being charged this tax is tiny and the level of the tax is very low. That is why many of us treat with great scepticism the proposal by the Government to transfer the derelict sites levy to Revenue for derelict sites tax. It is not just that the Minister is delaying it. In fact, I think Deputy Gould is being generous to him. I do not believe a cent of that tax will be collected until 2028 based on previous experience. How many will actually pay it? On the evidence of the mishandling of the vacant property tax, we could have a situation where not only is it delayed for a long period, but many of those who should be paying it do not. In his speech, the Minister listed a whole series of other initiatives - initiatives that have been around for a long period. Sure, they make small incremental changes in some locations, but in terms of tackling vacancy and dereliction with the ambition and the scale that is required, the Minister is simply repeating the same propositions as his predecessors. That is why, on this side of the House, there is such scepticism. It is pretty disingenuous to dismiss legislation by an Opposition Member because it is not dealing with the totality of vacancy and dereliction. The Minister knows as well as I do that we cannot bring Bills here that place a charge on the State. He also knows, as he does often as Minister, that small, sensible propositions can be very effective while addressing the broader issues. Let us just look at the broader issues to remind him what Sinn Féin's policy is on the areas beyond Deputy Gould's proposals. First, at the very centre of our alternative approach to tackling dereliction and vacancy is putting tackling it at the very centre of public housing provision. This State should be funding and delivering in the region of 25,000 social, affordable rental and affordable purchase homes each year, more than double what is currently being produced. There should be targets within local authorities for a percentage of those homes to come from vacant and derelict stock. To do that, the Government would have to reform the way in which it funds local authorities to tackle vacancy and dereliction. Currently the Department does not provide funding to a local authority that wants to buy a vacant or derelict property through CPO and refurbish it to bring it back into use. On top of that, the Minister's predecessor and his predecessor before him promised to reform CPO legislation, which is completely unfit for purpose and unable to tackle the issues at hand. We also need a single vacant and derelict property tax - a punitive vacant and derelict property tax - that is actually applied and collected as a matter of urgency. How can the Minister stand there and expect us to take him seriously when he says he is going to wage a war on dereliction but just not right now, next year or probably not even the year after that? That is the kind of war that anybody who tried to wage it would lose and would lose immediately. Deputy Gould has been very upfront. He has made it clear that this is not going to tackle all of the problems, but in the meantime - during the two or three years while the Minister and his colleagues are dithering and not introducing a Revenue-collected tax - this would at least force local authorities to put on record what the Minister says are their failures, and then allow us to force him to do something about those. It seems to me what the Minister is saying in respect of the derelict sites tax is, at some point in the future it will be there, but in the meantime, he is accepting the status quo. That is what I am hearing on this side of the House. The fact that this is the position the Minister has taken, and he is not even willing to accept and work with my good colleague's Bill, tells me he is not serious about this. The Minister can have all of the nice catchphrases and soundbites he likes, but he is the man in charge. He is the person who can actually bring forward the proposals to dramatically increase and accelerate not just the total output of social and affordable homes, but the number of those homes that are taken from vacant and derelict stock. He is the man who, once and for all, could actually finally reform the vacant property refurbishment grant to make it fully fit for purpose. He is the man who could introduce the CPO reform legislation to make it quicker and more cost effective for local authorities and State agencies to access those properties. Yes, he has some years to go yet in office, but so far, in his first year in office, I see nothing whatsoever from him that is going to address vacancy and dereliction this year. Again, Deputy Gould quoted figures from geodirectories and the census. For me, one of the most shocking figures from the most recent census is that about 40,000 homes were vacant between the two censuses. Not only have we high levels of vacancy and dereliction, but the length of time they are vacant or derelict is unacceptably long. If the Minister was really serious, if this was a war and he wanted to make it a crime, if he really believed it was antisocial behaviour, there would be a level of urgency and a willingness to work with the Opposition to tackle those issues. We have not heard any of that here today. Here is my prediction: in two, three or four years' time - whatever amount of time this Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Lowry lackey Government limps on for - somebody standing on this side of the House will not just be mentioning the failures of Simon Coveney, Eoghan Murphy or Darragh O'Brien in tackling vacancy and dereliction; the name of James Browne will be added to that sad and sorry list of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers who talk the right talk, but when it comes to action and delivery, fail. Just as the Minister is presiding over record levels of homelessness, record rents, record house prices and the slowest rate of social and affordable housing delivery in recent times, so too is he going to fail on vacancy and dereliction. Why? Because he is offering nothing new, and nothing different from his predecessors. They failed, and so too will he. Who will be the losers? They will be the very people who my colleague spoke about - those in desperate need of social, affordable or private to purchase homes. Those are the people he is letting down. We will not let up on holding the Minister to account so long as he is in office. We will not stop bringing forward sensible, credible proposals to tackle these problems.

Sentiment score: -0.01