Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Ó Broin and O'Callaghan for supporting my amendments. The Government should accept the amendments and the rationale behind them. This is not about whether we agree or disagree about Part V. I am absolutely happy with it, and said so in the introduction, and further on, I have amendments that seek to increase the proportion of Part V of social and affordable housing above 20%. The more social and affordable housing we can get, the better. This is saying that the development strategy as part of the development plan should not allow an option to reduce the Part V requirement, as it is now called, to below 20%.

Section 219, which is the more detailed housing strategy, currently states there must be a minimum of 20% of either social, affordable or cost rental. That is what the new section 219, which is the new Part V, states. It must not be less than 20%. However, this then gives a get-out clause on it so that you get less. There is the option to have less than 20% social housing on the basis of so-called undue segregation, which is a term, as Deputy Ó Broin indicated, that is often laced with prejudice. There is the idea that, as has been said, somehow problems are inevitably produced if you have big council estates.

Our problem with Part V is that it has become a substitute for the large-scale provision of social and affordable housing, not that there was a decision to have a requirement of private developments to have a proportion of social and affordable housing. Happy days. That should have been in addition to the continuing construction of large-scale social housing but it has become its substitute. The Government abandoned the direct delivery of those things and effectively outsourced it to Part V. That is what has happened. The consequence is a massive housing crisis.

To be honest, the Government has recognised the need to change from that. It is moving very slowly back towards beginning to build social and affordable housing itself again directly. However, here it is providing a get-out clause. That get-out clause is presumably along the lines that if we already have a lot of social housing in an area, we do not need more. There is a problem with having more of it, so we will allow the developer not to give the 20% social and affordable housing in a particular development. That is not acceptable for many reasons, the most urgent of which is we desperately need more social and affordable housing and there should not be a get-out clause on that.

To repeat, if the Government wants to do something about so-called segregation, it should raise the thresholds. This discrimination along tenure lines is not the way forward.