Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Vote 34: Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government

9:00 am

Photo of Shane CassellsShane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. McCarthy has made the point about areas that have required major regeneration. I put it to Mr. McCarthy - and during my time on the council I continually made this point - that if the ancillary facilities were built at the get go when creating the communities in which we live, we would not experience half of the social problems that come down the line later on. Local government has a massive role in this. This does not just apply to social housing; it is also for private housing. Planners in our councils have zoned vast tracts of land, especially during the 2000s, and they did not make in any of the development plans the actual requirement for the types of social facilities required. That time bomb is coming like a train down the tracks also. Big time.

With regard to councils meeting the housing targets, when the councils comes back to the Department with their plans and they say they will meet their targets, in trying to do with direct build how many viable landbanks on average do the councils have? By viable I mean ready-to-go landbanks or landbanks that will avail of the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF? We have no available landbanks in my county and we are one of the biggest commuter counties with nearly 5,000 people on the social housing waiting lists.

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