Minister O’Brien’s plan to tackle housing crisis is all ‘spin’, says Moynihan

The Minister for Housing’s rhetoric on the housing crisis is all “spin”, says Labour’s housing spokesperson Senator Rebecca Moynihan.

Senator Moynihan was speaking after Minister Darragh O’Brien says his department’s plan to solve the crisis was “radical.”

“The Government has bottled the opportunity to have a vision for our housing system that puts affordability for people front and centre,” she said.

“It’s hard to read the constant spin from a Minister who has no interest in actually introducing radical changes in housing like a vacant home tax.

“There was an opportunity to introduce this and a range of other measures in this year’s budget but instead of doing so government ploughed ahead with their favoured carrot approach for investors.

“Their talk and their policy is very different,” she says.

The former Dublin City Councillor said that the Government has “no impetus” to bring vacant properties back into use.

“A strong vacant homes tax would actually be able to bring former homes, including permanently empty apartments and derelict houses, back to use.

“By introducing this and improving CPO powers and funding for local authorities to repurpose empty homes, government could get more houses into supply.

“This week in the Oireachtas committee we heard that Dublin City Council were not using their CPO powers and I’ve no doubt that this is replicated elsewhere throughout the country.

“Our local authorities are absolutely fundamental to the delivery of housing and so they need to have robust powers to provide homes.

“This is goes further than CPO – we need our local authorities to have the power to carry out compulsory sales orders and compulsory rental orders.

“Having a safe, secure home is a human right, it’s the benchmark of a decent society and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed to deliver this since 2016.

“The broken market needs heavy State intervention, with strong local authority powers, to strongly motivate those with vacant homes to bring them back onto the market.”