Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am more concerned about amendment No. 186 after hearing the Minister's response than I was before. I am also concerned about section 56, which I am formally opposing as well. There is a significant gap between what the Minister is saying and what the legislation allows for and there is a significant gap between what he is saying and what is actually happening in practice. The legislation allows for public land and local authority land to be acquired by the Land Development Agency. Then, if the Land Development Agency does not use that land it can sell it on to a developer or an investment fund purely with ministerial consent. These sorts of schemes are already happening. In that situation, there will potentially be private delivery of homes on what was public land and then the council or the State will step back in to take up a long-term lease, which would mean paying an exorbitant cost for 20 years to 25 years. It is win-win for the investment fund or developer that ends up getting the public land and it comes at a huge cost to the public, the State and local authorities. That is what is happening now and that is what the Bill allows for. If our amendments are not accepted and this section is not deleted, that is exactly what is going to happen. It does not matter what the Minister says about the LDA supplementing, not supplanting, local authorities because the Bill allows the LDA to supplant what local authorities are doing.

Deputy Ó Broin is correct that the biggest obstacle to local authorities building social homes is the Department and the Government not providing funding and approval for schemes. The recent report from the ESRI was damning in that regard. It stated that the excuses being made about funding not being available are just not true. It looked at the most conservative financing model it could come up with in terms of what could be drawn down and borrowed at historically low interest rates and, on that basis, it projected that we could easily double the amount of capital spending on social homes to deliver twice the amount of housing. It was scathing of the current expenditure on private sector subsidies to deliver social housing. I urge the Minister to read that report in full, if he has not done so. If he has done so, I urge him to implement it in full and scrap the provisions in the Bill that would allow public land to be sold on to private developers and investment funds. That is what it allows. If the Minister is genuinely against that happening, he should amend the Bill to stop it. It is as simple as that. Why have these provisions in the Bill if not to keep the door open for that to happen? That is the critical thing. With more than 8,000 people living in emergency accommodation and more than 120,000 households on housing waiting lists or in insecure HAP tenancies, we simply cannot afford to continue with this lack of delivery of social and affordable homes. One sure way of delaying the delivery of the houses we need is to sell off public land to private developers or investment funds that can then sit on it until prices increase or engage in a slow delivery that suits the full market prices they are trying to achieve. I am now more concerned than ever about this section.