Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness: Discussion

Photo of Eoghan MurphyEoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely, I can do that; it is no problem.

The serviced sites fund of €43 million for 1,400 homes was allocated at the end of last year. We will do a second call, I hope in the last week of March or the first week of April. That is the current timeline for the second call. In Dublin and Cork, where the money has already been approved, we will see work getting under way this year and completions in 2020. For the second call I hope to get the regulations finalised this week and issued next week. I will be out of the country on Government business for St. Patrick's Day and will return for a Brexit Cabinet meeting ahead of the Council summit towards the end of March. After that, I would like to have a second call so it will probably be the last week of March or the first week of April.

With regard to cost rental and what is happening in the various sites the Senator asked about, we are expecting the procurement for St. Michael's Estate to get under way in the first quarter of this year. I was out with the local community very recently speaking about the plans in more detail. Dublin City Council, as local authority, will take the lead on this and has set up engagement with the community through a forum. It is progressing very well. I continue to tick-tack back and forward with the European Investment Bank on cost rental as a whole and I will come back to this.

With regard to Shanganagh, we are still working with the local authority and the National Development Finance Agency to compare the various development approaches for the site that have been presented. A project board is in place and we are getting there or thereabouts.

A valid tender for the Enniskerry Road project has been returned by the three main contractors from a list of six that pre-qualified in the restricted tender process. That is the stage we are at in respect of the Enniskerry Road project.

We are engaging with the European Investment Bank, EIB, because it is our intention that EIB funding will be made available, certainly in the case of St. Michael's Estate. The EIB has stated the scheme which has been presented would be valid for an application. The EIB is engaged in a three-stage research programme in relation to cost rental in Ireland. We know that there will be more than one scheme. Our ambition is for cost rental to be as big a part of the rental sector as it is in any other European country, but it cannot be done quickly. We will have to build up to it over a number of years and it is important for us to get it right as we do. Research is ongoing. The National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, has modelled how its cost rental proposals might work. We are talking about a below market rent of between 15% and 25% in the initial years. Market rents will continue to increase over a natural horizon, but cost rental rents will not. Over a time horizon of between ten and 15 years, we are talking about rents that potentially will be as low as 40% below market rents. When we can get cost rental at scale, we will really start to see significant benefits for a large proportion of people who are renting. That is what is happening on the cost rental side.

Each of the 31 local authorities has submitted a vacant homes plan. I can make the plans available to the committee in order that members can look through the ones of relevance to their local authority area. When I was in the Seanad three weeks ago, I went through exactly what was happening in Senator McFadden's local area. I set out the interesting work the officer in her area had been doing, for example, in inspecting homes to see how many of them were actually vacant. The picture that emerges from this work is very different from the high level work. We know that the CSO number does not really give a true picture of vacancies because it includes homes that are for sale and for rent and holiday homes. The CSO has been helping the Department to drill down to get a more accurate picture of what is happening in respect of vacancies. Officers have been appointed in all 31 local authorities and funding for 2019 has been provided for them. I will provide the information for the committee separately.

The Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2018 has been initiated in the Dáil. The debate on Second Stage has been concluded. We hope that having been passed on Committee and Report Stages in the Dáil, the Bill will be brought to the Seanad in the sitting week ending 19 April.

I understand the committee will soon engage in pre-legislative scrutiny of the heads of the proposed Land Development Agency Bill. We are almost there with it. We are completing some final technical discussions on it with the Office of the Attorney General. When we have finalised it, we will be able to bring the Bill before the committee. Two important aspects of it need to be noted. First, the LDA is up and running and working on site. Second, if we want to get a significant capital provision of €1.25 billion for the LDA from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, it needs to be on a statutory footing.

I refer to the inventory of State lands. Approximately 1,700 ha of local authority and Housing Agency lands have been mapped. The map is available on the Rebuilding Ireland website. There are two sets of data - one for publicly owned sites and one for lands committed to social housing. Local authorities are responsible for updating their land data on a quarterly basis and they are doing so. The LDA is also looking at the public land bank. It is assessing what the public land bank might be able to deliver separately from local authority land. That work is continuing and the Rebuilding Ireland element is available online.

A key site at Dundrum hospital has been identified by the LDA which will be responsible for drawing up a master plan for the site. We have a dashboard for the eight sites identified by the LDA. Between 12 and 15 further sites will come into the LDA pipeline during the second phase. Under the current dashboard for the progression of projects, the initial design and development phase on the Dundrum site will come to a conclusion later this year - perhaps in the third quarter - with the detailed design and planning phase commencing shortly thereafter and a planning application being lodged at the very beginning of next year.

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