John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are many examples of schemes in that territory that absolutely could go through the single-stage approval process. I hear many people criticise the four-stage process, saying it adds significant delays. Deputy Ó Broin referred to it just a short time ago. There is, however, a mechanism for those smaller schemes and it is not being used by the local authorities. They must start using that process. Then perhaps we can start looking at the level of funding and increasing it from €6 million to €8 million and so on, but the local authorities have to prove to us that they are willing to use that mechanism first. That is not the evidence on the ground, so I make that point to the local authority sector very strongly.

As for turnkey developments, and this applies to the housing bodies as well, it is attractive for developers to deliver schemes through a turnkey process because they have a guaranteed single purchaser at the end of it and, as for their financing arrangements, it reduces the interest rate they get from their lenders. As for the local authority sector and the local authority affordable purchase scheme that has been launched, I refer to one of the first three schemes in my local authority, in Waterford, that have been approved as turnkey developments in conjunction with a developer. The legislation has been framed to allow for a direct sales agreement between the purchaser and the developer in order to minimise the risk to local authorities but also because if the units were acquired in bulk by the local authority and subsequently sold to the individual purchasers, they would not be eligible for the help-to-buy scheme, which will help with 10% of their deposits. As for that risk, locking in the price at a certain point in time was referred to. The reverse is that we are saying to developers that we are looking for them to lock in a price now for something that will be delivered in 12 months' time but we are not giving a guarantee of purchasers of it. The committee had the Housing Agency before us last week. It said those contracts were being worked on. I appreciate that Waterford is seeing the first of these and that it will take time to work that out, but there needs to be some mechanisms whereby we maintain the direct sales arrangement but give confidence to developers to be able to deliver schemes at the agreed prices and to satisfy their funders. That is the difficulty I am experiencing on the ground in Waterford. I would like the witnesses' opinion on that.