Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have no issue with a future Minister for housing. It may well be a good idea and I am open to it. I am being totally frank and honest. If we want a Minister for housing who will drive all of this and be the tsar at the top of it, he or she would need to have control of the levers or be the person answerable for all the levers at the very least. In recent years the former Minister of State, Mr. Paudie Coffey, and I certainly did not have access to all the levers. I will say this out straight. If we are to have a Minister, he or she will have to have control over certain taxation measures.

Let us be frank about this. Will any Government take those powers away from a Minister for Finance? I would be amazed if that were allowed to happen. That is the first point. Approximately 38% of the cost of building a house goes to the State. That has to be addressed. However, that is up to the Department of Finance and not the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The person to be in charge has to have that area.

When it comes to public expenditure, whoever is the future Minister in charge of allocating funding etc. has to consider the overall pie that I spoke about earlier, involving education, health care and everything else. By the way, I have to say I got great co-operation from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin. Getting €4 billion at an incredibly difficult time was a huge amount to get. However, into the future, I would bet my bottom dollar that that will not be handed over either. There is the area of social protection and the lever relating to rent supplement. I was very interested in Tuesday's contribution by the CCMA regarding that lever.

There is the whole role of NAMA. Who has responsibility there? What is the future of NAMA? Should it be turned into a housing agency? I know many people have issues with NAMA. However, it is simply a fact that it will have a role in housing into the future because of the nature of that entity. NAMA was set up with a commercial mandate. Unless that is changed, it cannot act in other ways. That is just reality. We have to accept that or change it. If we change it, the European Union may have issues with what is on balance sheet and there are a number of areas.

I believe it would be tokenistic to appoint a Minister for housing unless those three or four things I have mentioned - I daresay there are others - are all wrapped into that Ministry. One could envisage some sort of relationship being built with the Department of Finance, but at the end of the day, if a Minister for Finance is controlling those decisions, the Minister for housing is not truly in full control of it.

On the Constitution, I have the privilege - for another few days anyway - of sitting at Cabinet. One has to act at all times in accordance with the law and obviously we take advice from the Office of the Attorney General. One cannot produce legislation that is contrary to the Constitution. The Chairman sat there and he knows that. One must work within that and keep it between the ditches, so to speak. There will be debate. I saw the articles in the newspaper in which the Master of the High Court made his comments, but he is not sitting at Cabinet.

I am sorry, but I must take the advice I am given. I respect the advice, and that advice is from the highest legal office that supports the Government.

With regard to the vacant site levy, I fundamentally believe we have to address the issue of hoarding land because, basically, it is just being left there. The number of underdeveloped sites between the two canals in this city is incredible. I wanted to instigate certain powers in respect of local authorities to address that, and I wanted to do it fairly quickly. On foot of the constitutional issue and the advice I received, however, I had to push it out and, for proportionality reasons, I was obliged to drop the percentage.

I had similar problems when it came to addressing rental issues in a number of areas. For example, we are all well aware of the issues regarding vulture funds. I met the people from Tyrrelstown. In fairness, I was asked to do so and was glad to do so because they are very decent people. Again, if we were going to introduce legislation which was going to prevent the sale, there were questions from a constitutional point of view and there were also issues in regard to the rental sector and other considerations. That is just fact.

We have to take the advice. I am just throwing it out there because everything has to be out there. I believe in property rights but we have to consider whether there is a balance. Maybe we can change it. Maybe we should not change it, but perhaps we should. I certainly believe we need to talk about it. That is why I am putting it out there.