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

No, the issue is what section of a local authority is going to compulsorily purchase a building. Obviously, the housing department can do it . If there is a development department or if it is a local authority with economic development functions, they might do it for commercial reasons. If we are talking about compulsorily purchasing properties by the housing department for either social housing or affordable housing or, in some cases, for refurbishment and sale on the open market, and that is permissible. It is not the CPO rules but the funding rules for local authority that kick in. A local authority is not allowed to spend any capital funding on a building or the acquisition of a building without departmental approval. There are unit price ceilings. They are not allowed go above a certain price for the purchase of it. Those unit pricings do not take into account refurbishment costs. They have to be applied for separately. Refurbishment costs are not agreed in principle at the point of purchase but agreed afterwards. The local authority housing manager would have to justify, if they have a capital budget of X and they have to deliver Y number of homes, why would they spend a portion of X buying and refurbishing when the unit cost may be more expensive than, say, a suburban infill development in my administrative area, where I could develop more social homes? In some ways, the funding mechanisms for local authorities to do social and affordable housing absolutely militate against what happened with Ellis Court, for example. A local authority could probably not have done Ellis Court. Tuath Housing just took a decision that it would be a really good thing for it to persevere with a project and then be able to use it as an exemplar. No local authority manager would have taken that on. Under the current rules, It would not have succeeded. That makes no sense. In fact, in the urban core, that should be the default option. It should almost be that you have to justify why you are not going to do that. They were buildings that Tuath had to buy from the local authority. They were public buildings. If you are acquiring a private derelict for the purposes of mixed-use social housing, the level of risk on a local authority chief executive housing manager is expediential and the entire funding system militates against the taking of risk. I am not arguing that people should be reckless with the money. It is simply that Ellis Court is such a good example of that, and it stacks up financially.