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

I wish to reply to the Minister in regard to amendment No. 187. The fundamental disagreement here is that I do not believe one or two Ministers should have the authority to decide whether considerable tracts of public land should be sold, including to private actors.

One of the great values of the section 183 process in local authorities, to which I will come in a moment, is that there is a level of democratic accountability and scrutiny of both the substance of the decision and the decision itself. Land being transferred from a local authority to the LDA, which the LDA could then decide to sell on all or a portion of to a private interest with the approval of one or two Ministers by way of a phone call or email, is not an appropriate way to deal with what is possibly one of our most valuable public assets. I will, therefore, be pressing the amendment.

I will speak briefly to amendments Nos. 188 and 189, in the context of having tabled a formal opposition to section 56. That formal opposition to section 56 has been requested by the Association of Irish Local Government. In some senses this is one of the most negative elements of this legislation, even if one were in favour of a single centralised State agency to displace councils and develop housing, which is what I believe this will become. The Minister claims otherwise but we take a different view on where this will go and that is fair enough. Section 183 has two functions and it is important that the public and other interested parties listening in understand them.

First, there is a transparency function. When a local authority is considering transferring any piece of land for residential or commercial development, from a small ransom strip to a large piece of land, the director of development has to publish a report stipulating the purpose of the transfer of the land and the financial return to the local authority. If that financial return is lower than the market value, the manager must outline the reasons for that. There are many cases where that might be done because it would improve economic opportunity, create jobs or provide a community dividend, etc. That public, transparent process is the first function of section 183, which would be lost if section 56 of this Bill goes through.

The second aspect of section 183 is that the full body of elected members then has to vote on that process. Therefore, what section 56 of this legislation proposes to do is remove all the transparency and accountability and all the mechanisms by which local authorities outline what to do with what is essentially public land, which belongs to the taxpayers and the wider community. It would deny elected members a vote. I do not accept the contention that that is being doing to speed anything up. Let us look at some of the lands in question. Shanganagh Castle, for example, was sold by the Department of Justice to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council almost 20 years ago. The delay in that project was not because the councillors were in any way divided over the development of that land, as Deputy Boyd Barrett will tell us. He knows better than the rest of us because it is his constituency. Councillors had been screaming at the Departments responsible for the environment and housing for years to fund the site. They put what they wanted to see into the local area plan by unanimous vote, which is remarkable but positive. The Minister's predecessor, Eoghan Murphy, refused to fund it. The delay of 20 years in Shanganagh is due to central government not providing the funds.

St. Teresa's Gardens is the same. Dublin city councillors are agreed on what they want on that site and there is no difficulty in getting councillors to support it. The difficulty is that, before elected members have even been asked if they want to transfer it to the LDA, it is already up on the LDA's website. The great tragedy of that is that it will split the cost-rental housing from the social housing. Dublin City Council will buy back the rented social housing if this project goes to the LDA but the LDA will retain the cost-rental housing. Then, in 30 or 40 years when the principal loans raised to build those apartments are paid down, it will be the LDA that benefits from the revenue surplus, not Dublin City Council, to which it would be hugely beneficial for recycling back into the maintenance of already underfunded stock. And so on and so on. It is never, in my experience, councillors who delay the development of sites. It is central government not providing the funding.

The Minister is on record saying he wants to reassert the role of local authorities in the delivery of social and affordable homes. That is great rhetoric but how he puts his money where his mouth is by giving local authorities the money to deliver that. Oscar Traynor Road is a perfect example. By a large majority, councillors have said they want 40% social, 40% affordable cost-rental and 20% affordable sale, not unlike Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council did. Yet, all they are getting from Department officials, according to a report that went to Dublin city councillors, are delays and hurdles. Let me be very clear: I fully accept their intentions but I do not understand why Deputies McAuliffe and Higgins would seek to amend this section. It should be scrapped. It has no place in this Bill. It undermines local authorities' transparency and accountability and we will be pressing our opposition to this section.