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

I thank Ms Timmons for her presentation. Local authorities are prevented from entering voluntary agreements in standard residential developments and SDZs because developers do not have to enter those agreements if they do not so wish. The point of increasing that is to make it a viable option. Dublin City Council voted to have a 29% social and affordable requirement in the Poolbeg SDZ but the receiver appealed it to An Bord Pleanála and effectively won the core point of his appeal, that such an agreement would have to be voluntary. That is now working itself out but it will cost the State a significant sum of money to purchase the land. It would have been much better if An Bord Pleanála had the legislative foundation to uphold the original Dublin City Council decision.

That is why I think there is a need to have some increase whether it is 30% or 20%, as others have suggested, within the SDZs.

At present developers are entering into voluntary agreements, for example at Shackleton Park, as Mr. Hogan will know, from his former job with South Dublin County Council. Due to the difficulty of accessing bank finance developers of very significant projects are quite open to voluntary agreements as it gives them a certain degree of additional security when they approach banks. There is an argument for making this a more secure option that could assist some of those projects being developed at a faster level.

One of the outcomes of the review in 2013-14 was a reduction to 10%. There is a growing body of social policy evidence to say that 10% is too small for any possibility of integration of the very small number of lower income households in a larger private housing estate. While nobody had the answer to what is the appropriate level to encourage the integration, which Government policy promotes, there is no evidence to suggest that 10% is high enough. In fact, there are bodies of evidence from Britain, Australia and the US, and some research here, that shows 10% is too small and contributes to the isolation of lower income households within a larger housing development.

The witnesses are correct about the significant change in wording and that is a correct interpretation of my intention. Do the witnesses know of local authorities that currently do not need an increase in social and affordable housing? I ask because all of the local authorities we have talked to have housing lists and affordable housing needs greater than the level of supply available.

In terms of the potential increase in price for the remainder of the development, I made the remark before the witnesses came in that the Goodbody report was published earlier this week and highlights that too much of what has been built is above an affordable price point. Therefore, surely if one has an increased Part V requirement it means there will be a greater level of affordability for those people who currently cannot buy in developments with only 10% provision.

In terms of policy uncertainty, we are going to have a series of other changes. For example, the Joint Committee on Climate Action is going to have to consider changes in building regulations that the nearly zero energy building requirements, as Mr. Hogan and other witnesses rightly know, will create. We are going to have a period of policy uncertainty. We know for sure that we do not have enough social and affordable housing and this is one way of increasing that. The Government cannot say we are going to have lots of uncertainty because of the initiatives that the Minister wants to introduce yet at the same time criticise the Opposition for creating alleged uncertainty because the Opposition wants to introduce those things. There is going to be uncertainty over the next period but so as long as it is well flagged and is left at that level for a period then the industry will cope adequately.