Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government

Quarterly Progress Report Strategy for Rented Sector: Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government (Resumed)

2:00 pm

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am also keen to get an update on the implementation of fast-track planning. That would be useful. I would like to raise three other issues. Obviously, one of the actions under this pillar is the report into the overall cost of private housing construction - not just construction but the all-in costs. Can we get an update on the progress of that work? Could we also have an indication of whether it is the intention when the report comes, for it to come with policy recommendations, which will then be considered by the Department and Government? Any information Mr. McCarthy has on that would be very useful.

On the local infrastructure housing activation fund - to avoid acronyms because I got into trouble the last time - there are two concerns which many of us have expressed from the start, although, again, I think the scheme is a good idea in principle. The first issue is, notwithstanding the general comments about affordability in the launch documentation from earlier this week, there is no clear obligation on the private developer who will benefit from this infrastructure investment to provide homes in a certain price range. If I am wrong, I would like to be corrected but certainly, looking at a number of the LIHAF projects in Dublin, including the two in my constituency, there is no way of knowing at this stage what the price range of the properties would be at the Grange or at the Clonburris SDZ, for example. The same point could be made in respect of the Hines site in Cherrywood. The first concern is, while the infrastructure fund is a good idea, it is only a good idea if it not only produces a return in terms of housing units, but if those housing units are affordable. I would like to hear Mr. McCarthy's response to that.

My other big criticism of the scheme is that it is a very small amount of money over the three or four years. That has been proven by the scale of the applications. I think the amount involved is €800 million. Does Mr. McCarthy know if it is the intention of the Minister to review whether there will be a second round? How many of the projects that were not successful would have been successful on the criteria if there had been a larger fund? How many of them would just not have been successful? I am not asking Mr. McCarthy to name the projects but to give us a sense of what is involved.

Finally, there is the thorny issue of house completion figures, to which we will continue to return. I am still really concerned that the methodology for calculating the figures, including the figure of 15,000 for last year, is wholly inadequate. I know that Mr. McCarthy has received freedom of information requests and all sorts of other things from a number of external experts, but I am specifically keen to discover if the Department knows how many estate homes were completed and registered with the building control management system database in 2016. That is what we are really trying to find out. If we had that figure, we would be able to compare it to the number of ESB connections to see what we are actually looking at in terms of completions. How many estate homes were completed and registered on the database in 2016?

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