Gavin Mendel-Gleason
Responding to the Report, Workers’ Party representative Gavin Mendel-Gleason said:
“These figures are not a good news story. The only area of so-called “housing delivery” that has seen significant growth has been the ‘Housing Assistance Payment’ (HAP) – i.e. paying for those who need housing to rent from private landlords. 70% of the government’s supposed “housing delivery” is made up of new HAP tenancies.”
The Housing Assistance Payment is a system whereby anybody who qualifies for local authority housing may opt to rent from a private landlord, with the state paying the difference between what the tenant can afford and what the landlord wants to charge.
Mendel-Gleason continued:
“Even Fine Gael recognise that the payment of subsidies to private landlords should be a temporary measure – not a long-term public housing system.
“Therefore, the massive growth in the number of people on HAP is a sign of the failure of the government’s housing strategy – not a success story. If we were building public housing in proper quantities, and if we put a stop to the flood of families being evicted by landlords into homelessness, we would not need to rely on HAP.”
The Workers’ Party representative concluded:
“Last year the government spent €650 million on subsidies to private landlords and hotels. That’s enough to build 3,500 homes which, unlike HAP properties, we would own, permanently.
“This government is so totally obsessed with propping up the private sector that it doesn’t seem to remember this is what “delivering housing” actually means.”