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

I thank the witnesses for taking the time to come in. I appreciate they are operating within Government policy so while, in the privacy of their own offices, they might have their own views on some of the issues we are about to discuss, I accept they are constrained by that Government policy.

To put in context the concerns of some of us, one of the reasons many members of this committee are getting so exercised about land is because, the more we look at it, the more we see there is a mismatch between the targets for the delivery of social housing in particular, and also affordable housing, and what is being promised through Rebuilding Ireland and the other mechanisms. By way of example, we know from the most recent housing needs assessment there are some 73,000 households on the council waiting lists, 40,000 households on HAP and another 19,000 households on RAS, and in Dublin in particular, RAS is experiencing some real difficulties. This means there is a real social housing need for about 132,000 units yet Rebuilding Ireland will only meet 23% of that need through units owned by local authorities and approved housing bodies. Mr. Ward will know that, in the local authority we share, the figures are just a little better, and some 27% of need will be met on the basis of the Government's targets. However, when we look at land, particularly the larger tracts of land, many of us are wondering how we can make the case for a larger delivery of social housing on that land to meet the growing need.

The issue of affordability is the same. We still do not have a measure for how many people or households need affordable rent or affordable sale. One very important piece of research was published in June and it has not got enough attention, although we will look at it in committee in the new year, and I flag it with everyone I talk to in this regard. Eoin Corrigan, Daniel Foley and a number of other ESRI economists have done a very detailed study looking at affordability since 2003. What they found is that, of the people renting and paying mortgages but not getting social housing supports, 32% are paying more than 30% of their income on accommodation. More worryingly, in the bottom 25% of income earners, the percentage of people spending more than 30% of their income is 70%, so one can see already, just in those initial figures, there is a huge level of need. One of the worrying aspects of the study is that this is not just a current problem because the authors note that their modelling back to 2003 shows it is a structural feature of our system. I say this because not only will we meet only about 23% of real social housing need by 2021 on the basis of the Government's targets, but we have no notion of how far we will be from meeting affordable rental and affordable purchase need.

I would like the witnesses to say as much as they can within the limits they are operating under. My concern is that the conversation we have just had with the Department and the Land Development Agency is essentially about taking very large tracts of public lands and constraining the extent to which they can meet social and affordable housing need because of the use of the joint venture structure. For example, if the various local authorities represented had all of the advantages the Land Development Agency has and did not have to do the value for money exercises for the larger projects, if they did not have to go through the cumbersome approval process and had more flexibility in terms of tendering and employment of staff, and if they had the very large multi-annual funding the Land Development Agency will have, I presume they would be able to deliver larger-scale, mixed income, mixed tenure projects like Shanganagh without needing help from anybody, apart from a little oversight from the Department. If the witnesses are willing to put it on record, and I understand if they are not, surely that would be a better way of meeting that need.

I will outline one of the dilemmas we have. We all support the Shanganagh Castle project, which is a brilliant project and, from everything I know from talking to the chair and councillors locally, it is designed to meet the needs there. One of the difficulties we have with Kilcarbery, and I do not want to mention the war, is that while it is a really great project in its design, is well integrated, has land for schools, has a community centre and has retail, the great tragedy is that 70% of the units in the joint venture will not be affordable, or certainly the vast majority will not be. Although Mr. Ward has only come in at the end of it, we are trying to find if there are not better ways of using the public land to meet social and affordable housing need. That is not to say one could not use some of that land for market price houses, but surely it would be better if the local authority was selling those houses and recycling the profits back into the housing system to meet other needs.

My questions are twofold. First, if the local authorities had all of the powers and advantages the Land Development Agency is going to get, could they significantly increase their output above the current targets under Rebuilding Ireland? What are the current constraints in place preventing them from moving forward at a faster pace, for example, with the kind of proposal under way in Shanganagh? Second, with regard to Cork, some issues were mentioned in the presentation around the possibility of needing to review some of the potential constitutional restrictions on accessing private land. I would be interested to know if the witnesses had a view on that.