Debate contribution: Housing Emergency

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 15 October 2024.

MLA

Mr Paul Givan

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

15 October 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Housing Emergency

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4592903

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. It is a delight to represent my colleague and good friend Gordon Lyons. He is engaged in important business in America this week on behalf of the Department. I am coming home when it comes to the Department for Communities: it is one of the Departments that is hugely important, because it touches on so many aspects of people's lives. Today, we are dealing with housing, and Cara Hunter summed it up well when she talked about the importance of a house and what it means to people: a safe place and somewhere for your family to live. The absence of that creates difficulties and challenges in people's lives and can have a really negative impact. I thank everyone for their contributions and will turn to them in due course. First, the Assembly has already passed a motion declaring a housing crisis. That was in April this year, which demonstrates the ongoing importance that Members give to the issue. The Communities Minister recognises and shares the concerns that Members and others continue to raise on housing supply, the issues that impact on it and their consequences. Minister Lyons remains concerned by the high need for social homes, the increasing waiting lists, the pressure on the homelessness system and the increasing pressure on our private rented sector. Many Members have spoken about the lengthy waiting list for social housing. That is important, but we also need to ensure that there is provision for housing for everybody in our society. Often, getting on to the housing ladder is incredibly difficult for young people. It is right that we create a society in which people aspire to own their own homes. It cannot always be that the solution is social housing. It is a vital component of the housing market, but many of the contributions spoke to the provision of social housing being the default position: I want a society in which people can access their own affordable home and buy their home. That is something that we should all support. Those who believe that it should always be a social house often own their own home, yet they seek to remove the right of some to purchase their own home. That is something that we need to give serious thought to. The housing Minister has stated on numerous occasions in the Chamber that we need a whole-system approach to address the issues that impact on supply. That means that the challenges that impact on supply cannot be addressed by the Department for Communities alone. An Executive commitment and funding to match it will be required. It is important to note that decisions on the allocation of any available capital are for the Executive as a whole to make. That is why I welcome Sinn Féin's support for bringing forward the housing supply strategy. Minister Lyons is working on that this week. Whilst he is not here, he is still engaging with officials on that. Sinn Féin has been pressing for that strategy to be brought forward, and I am confident that, when it is brought forward, it will get support, because the Minister has been doing extensive work. However, the resource needs to follow. My party does not hold the Finance Ministry, so, when that strategy is agreed and supported, let us make sure that the same pressure is applied to other Ministers to enable my colleague to bring forward the proposals that will be in the strategy.

The Minister has been engaging with all Ministers and will continue to do so. That is why it is important that we recognise that a whole-system response is required. In proposing the motion, your colleague Mr McCrossan, who is one of the most capable Members in the House, failed to provide constructive opposition. He offered no solutions. He showboated around criticism and highlighting fault. He lacked the detailed knowledge that, to quote Ms Mulholland, the "housing nerd" has on the issue. He outlined the need for collaboration on councils' local development plans. On the construction industry, any recognition of the inflationary pressure on the costs associated with building new homes was absent. That pressure is replicated elsewhere, and collaboration with other Ministers is required to move forward. I welcome Mr O'Toole's comments. He assured us that the SDLP intended to be a constructive Opposition. That was lacking, however, when the initial commentary was made; indeed, there was a lot of political posturing around the Assembly not being up and running and paralysis. I say this to the SDLP: you stood in the shadow of Sinn Féin when it kept this place down for years. You did not step forward. We want to get the Executive working on a stable footing. However, for SDLP Members to pontificate as though they are paragons of virtue when it comes to political stability is not lost on us when we look back on the many years when the SDLP was one of the leading parties: this place was not particularly stable then. The housing Minister is working to bring his final housing supply strategy to the Executive as soon as possible. From the outset, that strategy was developed recognising the necessity of the whole-system approach and so that it would be responsive to a Programme for Government. It will provide a framework to drive that priority forward. Recently, as part of the work to finalise the strategy, the Minister met the Infrastructure and Finance Ministers to discuss the need for ongoing collaboration and action on some of the strategic issues that impact on supply. That included crucial issues that I have mentioned, such as water infrastructure, planning and finance. Many Members spoke about those issues. At those meetings, the Minister emphasised once again that action will be required to address those issues, if any of the supply strategy is to have a chance of succeeding. We are at a point where it is more important than ever to sustain and increase the annual level of new housing starts that has typically been seen here over the past decade. Over the last few years, the number of homes that we were building has started to fall, but, without full Executive commitment, reversing that trend simply will not be possible, and we will inevitably slide into a housing crisis similar to those being seen in London, Edinburgh and Dublin. Alongside finalising the strategy, Minister Lyons has continued to push forward with what he can do, as housing Minister, to address housing issues. Minister Lyons continues to allocate the majority of his Department's capital budget to the provision of new social homes. In the past three years, his Department has invested over £510 million in the social housing development programme to start over 5,000 new social homes. This year, the Minister would have liked to start 2,000 new social homes, but his Department was not provided with the capital resource to fund that. I do not necessarily blame the Executive for that. This is where I appeal to colleagues that, rather than criticising the Executive on the issue, we in the Executive should consistently make a case to the Labour Government. They were meant to come in and get rid of Tory austerity, and many in the Chamber championed and heralded the day when Labour would take over; in fact, the SDLP is the sister party of the Labour Party. Yet the Labour Party is bringing in even more austerity. I wonder why the SDLP MPs sit on the same Benches as the Labour Government. They might need to revisit that, given the way in which the Government are failing to provide this Executive with the resources that they need. No Executive Minister is happy with the budget that they have received. Minister Lyons was particularly disappointed, because starting 600 social homes this year is not where we need to be. He has stated that he will do everything that he can to increase that number. Additional funds have been allocated in the June monitoring round, which is welcome, but the overall budget remains short of what is required. The Minister will continue to bid for further funding to support the social housing development programme and help to deliver much-needed additional new social homes. I thank everyone for their comments and their contributions to the debate. Setting aside some of the political points, I think that every one of us believes in and agrees on the need to provide much more support for people who need homes.

We all deal every day with constituents who come to us with housing issues, and I think that, collectively, we want to get to a better place with the matter. The housing Minister is leading on that work. With the support of colleagues in the Executive and the Chamber, we can deliver to meet the need.

1,477 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:26 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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