Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay. The Minister mentioned the site levy of 7% and said he would like to introduce it in 2017. I am glad to hear that. Does the Minister agree that the vacant site levy introduced before Christmas is a joke? The yield from it is so little it will not speed up the development of sites. Is the Minister going to tell me otherwise? If an individual has borrowed the money to land bank, the Minister is not asking that person to pay tax on it or asking to pay a levy. The rate is 0.75% if he owes more than 75% of the money. Of course he owes more than 75% of the money. He would be off his head if he was not borrowing to acquire land for land banking. Will the Minister admit the State has refused to address the problem of land banking? Land banking is probably the biggest problem in terms of affordability around private housing in Ireland. Last week a site for 27 units was sold in Clontarf for which the developer paid more than €220,000 per unit. We have not dealt with the issue. It is an absolute scandal that the State has not dealt with land banking. The Kenny report published in 1974 is gathering dust on the shelves.

The Minister said that nationalising all aspects of housing is not the answer. Nobody is saying it is the answer. We expect the majority of housing still to be in the private sector. However, in the region of 30% of social housing units will need to be provided by the State. The Minister asked where the money would come from. He is probably tired listening to me saying, and I said it in the House yesterday, that if the Government is serious about building social housing through the local authorities it will have to challenge the fiscal rule. Italy, Spain, Lithuania and Austria will all break the fiscal rule this year. Why cannot Ireland do the same? We have a very good reason to do so. France will break it for security reasons because it is dealing with ISIS and we cannot break it to deal with the emergency in housing. I do not understand the reason the State is not challenging the European Union so that we can borrow money at less than 1% to build housing.

The Minister made the point that it takes two or three years to build houses. I am well aware that it takes a long time to do things. I have done it all my life. From start to finish, large projects take between two and three years.

With regard to a site like Taghmon, when the design is completed, planning is approved and funding is approved and ready to go, does the Minister know how long it takes to actually build them? It is about one year and no more - one year.