Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his officials for attending. Everyone here, including the Minister, accepts that we need more social housing. It is important that we and the local authorities build more social housing in bigger quantities. We have seen applications for ten or 20 units. That is not going to solve the problem. There is almost the same amount of work involved in dealing with those applications as in dealing with the larger ones. We need to move on with big schemes, such as the Oscar Traynor development in Coolock, and to push them along.

Deputy Barry Cowen mentioned a Bill. The downstairs empty shops - not the upstairs - are probably a bigger concern to me. The country is littered with them. Many are in Ballymun. I have seen them in Sallins and right across the country. They were built in the Celtic tiger era when it was said that there were going to be certain shops for certain apartment blocks. They have just been left there. Some have been vacant for ten or 20 years at this stage. I do not know what the local authorities are saying but we need to deal with that. I have tortured Dublin City Council over compulsory purchase orders, CPOs. There are only 20 in train at the moment with the council, the largest local authority in the country. Nearly half of those relate to Finglas because I have tortured the council that much to put down CPOs on houses that have been left idle and are being vandalised for various different reasons. We need to up our game. The council needs to be told that it has to up its game. I have spoken to Brendan Kenny about this on numerous occasions and we are still in the same boat. We have not got to the point of issuing CPOs. Louth has issued CPOs for a large number of units, though I do not know how many. There are many units in Louth and in other local authority areas. What the hell is going on that prevents Dublin City Council from doing that? I do not understand it.

We have to look at affordable housing. Did the Minister have any discussions on the Ó Cualann model in Ballymun? What discussions have taken place to encourage a number of builders that would be prepared to buy into this process and use local authority lands? Have we set up a list of builders that would deliver this? One could then bypass procurement and pick from a list as one does with adaptions when doing adaptions. That way, we can overcome many problems in procurement and other issues and speed up the process. I would love to know how much discussion has taken place in the context of delivering more affordable housing.