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

If they were, I would not support it. In the two models being discussed in Dublin city and south Dublin they are not getting land for free. My concern is that if cost rental does not happen, there will be a 70:30 split, 70% private and 30% affordable, which I would not support on public land. I am open to consideration of 30% social housing and 20% cost rental. My preference is cost rental delivered by local authorities, with the private developer purchasing the remainder of the land, with the money ringfenced to produce more land or social units. I am worried about cost rental, which could undermine some of the political support for joint ventures.

I am with Deputy Pat Casey on the approval process. The delegates know my feelings on the subject. They produced a very good report recently and I welcome its publication. Many of us would like to know, however, whether the timescale of 18 to 24 months that everybody has said is unacceptable is being shortened? Is there some way in subsequent versions of the report or others to show evidence of the consequences of the work being done in terms of design teams, etc? We do not know if it is working and if it is, we would like to see that it is. Although this may seem parochial, we have a right to raise matters in our constituencies; there are 186 new builds in Dublin mid-west, half of the number in the South Dublin County Council plan. Eighty-nine of them will not be delivered. They are on two sites where the Department will not receive Part A planning permission. We have told the manager this and given him alternative sites for the units and more. It will not happen on St. Mark's Avenue and in Balgaddy and there is no point in lying to anybody. It is not that we are opposing the provision of social housing. We want the units and have identified alternative sites, owned by the council, in areas which are close by and which would be more suitable. Of the 186 units the Department plans to deliver in the next three years in my constituency, only 87 are deliverable. A Simon Community planning application is going through the mainstream planning process, but there is no guarantee it will get through. I hope it will. I have made a submission in support of it.

The document does not include the rapid builds which should be included because they are Part 8 long-term social housing. It also does not include a significant development by Clúid Housing on Station Road of 65 units at Milford Manor, which is really good news for the constituency. There is more housing being delivered in the constituency which I would like to see included. Given that there are only 97 units in the Department's programme that are deliverable, can I take it that if the local authority decides to come forward with new projects, the Department will actively consider them? If I ask Danny or Billy in South Dublin County Council to develop a site owned by the council and they say to me the Department will not consider it, can I say the Department told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government that it will give due consideration to any concrete proposal made?

Approved housing body reclassifications have happened across the water and are the subject of consultation in the North. Are we concerned that it could happen here? Will it have implications for anything included in the plan? Is there any information the Department can give us about it?