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

On amendment No. 205 - being very clear on this - while pages 403 and 404 deal with the housing strategy, and not taking away what is there regarding Part V on the affordable schemes the LDA is doing, as well as approved housing bodies, the not-for-profit sector and local authorities, this amendment is about affordability permeating the entire planning system as an absolute goal over and above what can be done in delivering social, affordable purchase and cost-rental housing. It is key. How it is done relates to other measures such as active land management, affordable housing zoning and so forth. If we are not doing that in our planning system as an absolute key priority, it is a complete miss. Other countries do this and do it well. They do active land management and have been for decades. They deliver housing that is overall more affordable and much better than what we are doing because their planning systems are all about active land management and getting land at affordable prices. When you go back 100 years ago and look at schemes like Marino when they were built and the cost of housing as a proportion of the housing scheme, it was very low compared to today. The land was perhaps 2% of the overall cost of a new-build house in Marino whereas nowadays it could be 10%, 15% or up to 20% for land and site costs. The planning system, inadvertently, has done that. For very good reasons, it imposed all sorts of restrictions and conditions around how you build and why. There needs to be a counterbalance through policies like active land management, compulsory purchase of land before it is zoned and affordable housing zoning. It is absolutely critical that we do this. I cannot understand why the Minister would not want to include provision of a sufficient amount of affordable housing available to buy and rent as one of the key issues in national planning statements.