Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 October 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Appropriate Use of Public Land: Discussion

9:00 am

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I know there were a lot of questions, so I am not criticising witnesses for not giving an answer. However it is worth getting an answer to dramatise the problem we are facing with waiting times in Dún Laoghaire, because they are shocking. A wait of eight years is shocking. That relates to the question about the plans for direct public housing provision by the local authority itself. I accept that we need affordable housing. Of course we do. People who are not eligible for the list have to be housed, and even more so when the median price in Dún Laoghaire is €527,000. However, if we are trying to meet the demand to reduce those shockingly high lists, it seems to me that the planned council housing provision cannot impact in any significant way on them. On a site where we could have got 500-odd units we will get 200. After Shanganagh I do not see where the rest is coming from. The witness said that 197 are coming down the line. Re-lets will account for 150. I was not quite clear on how many Part V units we hoped to get. If we add it all up, we might get 1,500 over the next two or three years if we are lucky. So much for council housing, against a list on which people have been waiting for 17 years. I do not see how we are going to get anywhere close. In the intervening years more people will join the list, which will further reduce the impact we have on it. We have to have a plan to house anybody on that list. We do not have one. One way or another, we have to ramp up the planned provision of public housing. I would like the witnesses to answer that. I know part of this is to do with Government policy, but that seems to be a statement of the obvious fact that we are not going to be able to meet the need for public housing.

On affordable housing, do we not have a real dilemma? The witnesses are alluding to it. They have to be careful in what they say but if €50,000 below the average price is considered affordable, and the average or median price in Dún Laoghaire is €527,000, "affordable" means nothing in Dún Laoghaire. It is complete nonsense. We cannot deliver affordable housing on that basis, at Shanganagh or anywhere else. We have to have another scheme. Clearly the Government scheme cannot deliver affordable housing on the basis of that price minus €50,000. To what extent does that conundrum slow up progress at Shanganagh, and is it likely to slow up other sites? In other words, how can we get the affordable housing we want to get, when we cannot get it because it is totally unaffordable?

The Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown submission states that as part of the public spending code we have to consider public private partnerships, PPP. Could the witnesses elaborate on that? I want to know what that means. Does that mean that when we are looking at Shanganagh we have to consider the possibility of selling part of it off in order to finance the unaffordable affordable housing and the public housing? That is a mess. In that context, would it not be easier to just build council houses? Then we would just have to go to the Department and say we are building 500 council houses. Maybe we would need to alter the eligibility scheme for it, maybe we could even decide on our own affordable scheme afterwards. However, that mess seems to be delaying the whole process.

Lastly, I take Ms Henchy's point Mary on Cherrywood. However, is it not fair to say that we have no control over when housing is going to be delivered there? Hines has just flipped some of the land to Cairn Homes, and Cairn Homes has told its own shareholders that it is drip-feeding to keep the price up. They have actually told the shareholders they will drip-feed and not build all of it out, in order to keep the value of the property up and to keep the dividends flowing to the shareholders. Is it fair to say we have absolutely no control over that? Is there anything we can do to take hold of that process? Ms Henchy can remind me of the planning permission that did go through with Hines. Was it 1,200 units? I am told it will start at the end of the month. When are we getting the Part V allocation from that? Will that come upfront? What price will we pay for it? Has that been negotiated yet? It has been bandied around that Hines will sell the houses back to the council for up to €430,000, on land that was originally sold to them by NAMA. Can the witnesses give us any further information on that?

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