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

I move amendment No. 9:

In page 8, to delete lines 15 and 16 and substitute the following:

"(c) to ensure the delivery of vibrant and sustainable mixed income communities,".

To expedite the process, I will speak to my three amendments Nos. 9, 38 and 86 now. For me, amendment No. 9 is important. There is a very unfortunate language that has become pervasive in a lot of housing policy documents. It started many years ago in housing policy documents approved by previous Governments, but it has become a way of talking about social housing, in particular housing for working class people that, in my personal view, is inaccurate, is not backed up by evidence and is deeply patronising to the communities who live in that housing. We often hear some people talk about large local authority housing estates as, in all circumstance, producing ghettos and being centres of crime and social alienation. We know from very significant research from Tony Fahey and Michelle Norris and others over a decade and a half that the overwhelming majority of our local authority housing estates are really good places to live. They have settled and sustained communities. While there are issues in terms of under-funding of key resources, they are places where people are happy to live and want to live. They are places in which their children want to live. Most of us in this room who represent people living in large local authority housing estates know that people would chew off one's right and left arm to get a house in one of those estates because they are seen as vibrant communities.

Unfortunately, when people talk about mixed tenure, there is a tendency for the thinking to be that there should not be too many working class homes in one place. If is perfectly acceptable under existing law for a large private development to offset its Part 5 obligations to have 10% social by locating that social in another area and having 100% private housing in a development, often many hundreds of apartments or houses. The idea that having more than 75 or 90 social houses in a particular location, in all instances, is inherently a problem is a mistake. The research from Tony Fahey and Michelle Norris makes it clear that the issue is not tenure, it is income. One of the reasons the majority of our local authority housing estates are great places to live is because they have great mixed income and sustainable communities. People may all have the same tenure or they may have mixed tenure between tenant purchase and so on, but that mix of income, occupation and people makes those communities sustainable.

The language I seek to replace in this section is, therefore, problematic. It is patronising. Instead, we should be positive and say that the priority of the LDA or whoever is developing public housing - and the Minister will know that, in my view, it should be the local authorities but we have already had that discussion - should be "to ensure the delivery of vibrant and sustainable mixed income communities". Tenure is a secondary issue. It is really important that we get this language right.

For example, there are a number of mixed tenure communities that were built during the Celtic tiger era that are, unfortunately, as segregated as large monotenure estates. Even though they appear to be mixed tenure on paper, the social housing is all in one place, affordable housing in another and higher-end private housing in a third. Within such housing estates, therefore, the level of segregation is very significant. As we move towards more apartment developments, the same phenomenon arises because it is financially more viable for the social housing required under Part 5 to be in a single apartment block. I am trying to find much better wording to describe what should be a key objective of all of us who advocate for increased amounts of public housing. The priority should be sustainable, vibrant mixed-income communities. We should really dispense with this old, out-of-date, patronising language, which stigmatises many working-class communities very unfairly.