Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I wanted to address some questions to the team from Fingal County Council. I thank them for the detailed presentation they supplied to the committee. The initial part of their statement outlines the scale of housing need in Fingal. Fingal has more than 250,000 people and is the second biggest of the local authorities. It is a diverse borough but with a significant housing crisis, which may be concentrated in particular parts of the council area but it affects everywhere. Let us take that as read.

It is mentioned in the statement that the council is surpassing its housing targets. Any uninitiated person reading that would choke on her corn flakes. The homelessness crisis is getting worse. The statement later refers to 600 families with whom the council is in contact who are either in emergency accommodation or have received notices to quit. That is a huge chunk of the homeless families in the country and it is an increase on the figure from the previous council meeting, which was reported to me by our councillors. Why did the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the council set the target so low? It would seem to me to be a conspiracy on the part of the Department to set low targets that are going to be achieved. It is not doing anything to make inroads into the housing crisis.

My other question concerns the Land Development Agency, LDA. The presentation states that the LDA has identified two sites in the Fingal area on which the agency intends to focus immediately to open up and unlock the potential to yield more than 1,000 units between both sites. The presentation names the two sites. I suppose the council is a passive recipient of Government policy in that sense but is there a point a which council management can say it does not agree, for example, with an action that is effectively privatising 60% of the housing that would go onto one of its own sites? Have the council officials had that conversation with the Minister at all? One of the sites mentioned is Churchfields in Mulhuddart but that is not in the plan. It is in Damastown in Mulhuddart. The proposal is to put 1,000 to 1,200 dwellings there, which I support and called for before the council officially came up with its plan, and did a lot of work to suggest what the mix of that would be. This would be one of the most significant developments that Fingal could undertake.

Blanchardstown is a centre of homelessness. This site, the last significant piece of council land in the area, is crucial. There is some land in Dunsink but that area is not considered part of Blanchardstown as such. I wager that most of the people who are showing up in the Fingal housing figures are from the greater Blanchardstown area. Has Ms Geraghty discussed this site with the Minister? When I raised this issue with the Minister of State, Deputy English, he did not know anything about it, yet he states his Department is in weekly meetings with local councils.

Ms Geraghty states that it is proposed that the lands will support approximately 1,200 units with a tenure mix of social, affordable purchase, cost rental, older persons accommodation, etc. While I agree with having a tenure mix, the devil is in the detail. How much social housing should be on the site? What does Ms Geraghty mean by the term "affordable purchase"? Does she mean an affordable mortgage scheme provided through a local authority or the scheme introduced by the Government, under which people secure a mortgage which can be used to purchase anywhere in the country? What does Ms Geraghty mean by the term "cost rental"? This has not been discussed on the local authority. I certainly have not heard from our councillors that it has been discussed. I note it has been advocated in many quarters. I would like to hear a plan setting out the mix the local authority has proposed to the Minister.

On the Church Fields site, Fingal County Council's submission states: "The site is infrastructure constrained and requires construction of new distributor road, green infrastructure and upgrading" of another road. It continues: "A submission for funding under the Serviced Sites Fund has been made in order to fund this infrastructure." When was that submission made? When will a response issue? The submission states that construction will not commence until the final quarter of 2019. Why must this take so long? The local authority started work on this almost a year ago when meetings were first held with councillors to get feedback. To hear it will be almost two years before anything will happen in an area that is a homeless black spot is simply not good enough. I know the area extremely well because I live right beside it. While another road is needed, roads can be built quickly in this context. Could a road not be built at the same time as housing construction, rather than waiting for all of that infrastructure to be developed before any work commences? This is an emergency and there is an imperative to move rather than wait for two years.

Is it Ms Geraghty's view that there should not be private housing on this site? The reason I ask is that this is the local authority's last chance to make a significant inroad into the housing problem in Dublin 15.

On the costing on this particular site, my understanding is that Fingal County Council has €160 million in its budget for social housing. How much of that is ring-fenced for this project and the other two major projects? How much will the development overall cost? For how much has the local authority asked the Department? Are there other sources of funding available? The reason I ask is the process seems to move interminably slowly. I understand the council agreed to Clúid Housing developing a much smaller housing project about two years ago and nothing has happened. It must not take a decade to develop this site. There is an imperative to move quickly.