Building local authority houses would 'not make social or economic sense'

DIVERTING SCARCE capital resources into a new local authority house-building programme would not make economic or social sense, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn told the Dáil.

“We have a surplus of houses, irrespective of the ownership,” he added. “We should look at getting effective, efficient use from what is there already.” The Minister was replying, during Opposition leaders’ questions, to People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who warned that Government policy could mean a return to slum tenement conditions.

Mr Boyd Barrett said there were people in the public gallery who were threatened with homelessness, or who had been made homeless, as a result of the cuts in the rent allowance cap.

“It would not be a problem if the Government provided council housing for the 96,000 people on the council housing list,” he added.

“However, in June of last year, without making any public announcement, the Government decided to abandon the direct provision of council housing.”

Mr Boyd Barrett said no council housing would be directly provided by local authorities in the future. “It is a veritable counter-revolution in social housing policy,” he added.

He said the Government should revert to the direct provision of council housing and tell those on the housing list when they would get a secure council house.

Mr Quinn said he accepted what Mr Boyd Barrett had said about the crisis in housing.

“It is one of the most extraordinary contradictions of our times that on the one hand we have people who cannot afford to buy a house, who are on rent supplement in privately owned houses, and at the same time we have acres of ghost estates,” he added.

“When the history of this period is written from a distance of objectivity, people will ask how a whole community got it so wrong.”

Mr Quinn said he would love to see the houses in Nama converted into social housing, if that were possible.

“But I must honestly say to Deputy Boyd Barrett that it does not seem to make sense to build new houses at a time when we have an overrun of existing houses, irrespective of their ownership.”

Mr Quinn said the first step would be to look at how one could rationalise the oversupply and use private houses, or those owned by Nama, and convert them into long-term sustainable social housing.