Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness: Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government

2:30 pm

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am answering the Deputy's question. Before the end of next year, 1,500 rapid build units will be built. They will be in multiple locations, primarily across Dublin. Different local authorities in Dublin are building different numbers and that is the way it will work.

Many people thought HAP would not work in south Dublin either but 1,200 HAP tenancies have been set up there and more than 500 homeless HAP tenancies have been set in Dublin. I think HAP will work in time in Dún Laoghaire but there are other big projects and publicly owned land in Dún Laoghaire that can deliver significant quantities of mixed tenure, which will be about affordable, social and private housing on some sites, whether it is the Cherrywood development or other projects. My understanding is that there are about 400 housing units either under construction or very close to being under construction within that local authority so we are moving ahead. We recognise the need and pressures around social housing in Dún Laoghaire as we recognise them in many other areas.

In response to Deputy Mattie McGrath, it is important to say that of the 12,500 housing units built last year, more than 6,000 were one-off houses in the countryside in places like west Cork and Tipperary, so quite a lot of one-off houses are being built at the moment. We need to make sure that they are built in a way that is consistent with county development plans and local area plans. There are obviously issues around ribbon development and there are different zonings, be they A1, A2 or A3. I cannot get involved in individual planning cases but if there is a policy issue around that which the Deputy wants me to look at, I will certainly look at it.

In respect of voluntary groups and approved housing bodies, much of our new social housing will in some cases be built, leased or acquired by approved housing bodies. I opened an interesting model last week, which is the NAMA NARPS model facilitated through Respond!, that involved the allocation of new units in Cork. There are different financing and management models that will include a lot of approved housing bodies. To help them, we are setting up a one-stop-shop within the Housing Agency, particularly around procurement and legal issues, to increase the capacity and economies of scale within approved housing bodies. Many approved housing bodies in Ireland are quite small in terms of their operations. There are a few big ones but many of them are quite small, especially the specialist ones dealing with elderly care and mental health.

In respect of stages and approval processes, the criticism that many of the projects that have been planned in recent years have been moving very slowly through the system is a fair one. Some of that is financial while some of it concerns differences of agreement between the Department and local authorities around design or costing. The approval process is under review at the moment and I think we will see significant improvements on it. In fact, I think we are already seeing significant improvements on it. We are now sending multidisciplinary teams composed of a planner, a quantity surveyor and an architect down for face-to-face meetings to try to short-cut an approval process as opposed to having a back-and-forth correspondence that may go on for months. We also have a delivery unit within the Department whose job is essentially to project manage and work in tandem with the Department and local authorities to make sure barriers to decision-making are removed and that we get schemes moving as quickly as possible.

I take the points made by Deputy O'Dowd about treating people with respect. Given the pressures, the number of people on housing lists and the number of families and individuals who are homeless at the moment, there is a danger that people dealing every day with many distressed people can become hardened to that and it becomes process-driven as opposed to more personalised and compassionate. We might raise those points at a management level to see how we can deal with concerns around the respect and dignity that people need to be shown.

I take the point about people coming home and not being able to get on a housing list. To be honest, I had not thought about it before. If someone had a property and they sold it, they would have been a previous property owner and, therefore, there is a restriction. Even if the person sold the property, if the property was in negative equity and the person still had debt, effectively he or she would not have any asset left either in cash or property and he or she would be restricted in terms of getting on a housing list. That is something on which we will try to follow up.

I take the point about the NAMA offering. I think that has been a source of frustration. Some of the properties may have been in areas that were not suitable in the same way that many vacant properties are in areas where there is little demand. I find it difficult to believe that if the figures given by the Deputy are right, and I think they are pretty close to being right-----

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