Housing crisis demands action, says Dukes

Fine Gael demanded urgent action to ease the housing shortage in a private members' motion.

The party's spokesman on the environment, Mr Alan Dukes, said a measure of the depth of the housing crisis was that some commentators were taking comfort from the rate of increase in new house prices declining to "only" about 30 per cent.

"At a time when general inflation rates are less than one-tenth of that level, there is clearly something seriously amiss in the housing sector."

Mr Dukes said the number of applicants waiting for local authority rented accommodation had risen from 26,000 to more than 40,000, an increase of 16,000 outstanding applications in just under three years.

The Labour spokesman for the environment, Mr Eamon Gilmore, said: "For the first time in the history of the State, a young working couple in a professional occupation cannot afford to buy a house of their own.

"Council housing lists are the longest they have ever been.

"Rents in the private sector are unaffordable and we have record levels of homelessness."

The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Robert Molloy, said the problems recently experienced in the housing market were primarily a result of an imbalance that had developed between supply and demand for housing.

"This has occurred despite the fact that never in the history of the State have we achieved a better performance in terms of housing output.

"Housing output reached a new record in 1998 at over 41,500 units, almost 8,000 up on the level set in 1996. We are actually building new houses at twice the level of 1993."

Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) accused Mr Molloy of presenting a patchwork of Government housing measures as if it were comprehensive policy.

"The truth is there is no coherent government policy to meet the biggest housing crisis this country has seen since the late 1960s," he said.