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

I will speak to the three amendments of mine. A change in this Bill does not in any way delay any development. In fact, if you take Shanganagh Castle as a case in point, it is the involvement of the LDA that has delayed that development by more than three years. To their great credit, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county councillors unanimously approved a broad outline of a scheme for Shanganagh Castle as far back as 2017 and 2018. They did so because of really good work by councillors from all parties and none, including my party colleague, Shane O'Brien, who was formerly on the council. Not once has any council member of any party delayed that development. The delay first arose because former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, would not fund Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to deliver the scheme the councillors unanimously agreed some years ago. Then, because of the LDA's involvement, it was delayed even further. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council had been the lead agency in that scheme and it put in the planning application. It was the county architect who did all of the heavy lifting, and as that scheme progresses, the LDA will have to hire in consultants and project managers etc., many of which the local authority has in house. In fairness, the Minister is not responsible for this delay but it was his predecessor who delayed Shanganagh Castle.

The two difficulties we have with that development are that the cost of the affordable cost rental properties are very high at €1,200 per unit. The design standards for the apartments are for smaller build-to-rent apartments, which is problematic, and we still do not know the price of the affordable purchase homes, which is genuinely problematic for folks.

With respect to Kilcarbery in my constituency, which the Minister mentioned, that is a good argument as to why the model the Minister is outlining in this Bill should not proceed. We should keep in mind that Kilcarbery is not an LDA site. Again, the previous Government would not fund a development on that site with 30% social housing, 30% affordable rental housing and 30% affordable purchase housing, for which we campaigned for years, and so South Dublin County Council was left in the situation of selling 70% of the land to a private developer. None of the homes on that site will be genuinely affordable because the local infrastructure housing activation fund money will be used to give a small discount on the market price of some of the homes for sale but they will still be in excess of €300,000 and the bulk of those homes will be pushing up towards €400,000. That is the market price there.

The Minister also mentioned cost rental and, again, this is an interesting example of how backward Government policy is on this because South Dublin County Council was forced to sell that land at open market value. A developer bought that land and built out houses and now the Minister, through the cost rental equity loan, has given an approved housing body money to buy back, at full market value, a property to then rent out at cost rental. The consequence of that is that the rents are too high. Those rents should be well below €900, particularly out in the suburbs, but I estimate that they will be somewhere in the region of €1,200, which is not far off some of the market rents in those areas.

There is this mad situation where the Government had public land which it could have built on. It could have rented out and sold those homes at genuinely affordable prices and it has failed to do so. The only delay I am aware of on any site, and this is directly relevant to these amendments because it may become a site the LDA is interested in, is Oscar Traynor Road. As the Minister knows, a majority of Dublin City Council councillors, including those from Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, left-wing parties, Independents and half the Fianna Fáil team, voted against a proposal that would have seen a significant number of the homes there sold at unaffordable open market prices. Councillors have worked hard and have worked up an alternative proposal. My understanding is that the mayor, Councillor Hazel Chu, and the chair of the strategic policy committee, the Labour Party's Councillor Alison Gilliland, have forwarded that to the Minister and have repeatedly been trying to get a response from him to see if he will fund that development. If the Minister funded that development, 100% of the homes on that site would be affordable instead of 50% of them, and it is questionable whether 50% of homes will be affordable.

The Minister is right that these amendments up to No. 75 show the difference but the delay in all of these sites is down to ten years of delay on the Fine Gael side. We need to hear from the Minister that where a local authority has a site and where there is a majority or unanimous support from elected members to develop a fully affordable scheme with genuinely affordable prices at that site, we need to step up to the plate and fund it. The difficulty with the LDA Bill and with these sections we are trying to amend is that if this goes through, not only will those developments be further delayed like in Shanganagh but the cost to buy and rent the homes will be way above what modest income working families and many other families can afford. Therefore, I will be pressing all of these amendments up to No. 75.