Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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No. I will just make a few general comments and observations. First of all, I thank the Minister and Ministers of State for being here this morning. I feel privileged to have three Ministers here to answer questions.

We must all welcome the increased expenditure allocation for housing. My concern has always been the percentage ratio of capital spending to current expenditure. My belief is that capital expenditure is ongoing, never-ending and never gets us anywhere. We are spending an extra €223 million on capital expenditure, whereas there is an increase of €183 million in current expenditure. I would like the balance to be tipped more towards capital than current expenditure.

I will focus on vacant units and urban regeneration, which come under the aegis of the Minister of State, Deputy English. There was greater scope to address the housing problem more quickly by examining vacant units. Realistically, we are looking at over 170,000 properties which, within a short space of time, could be brought back into use as homes for people. In that case, we would not have the infrastructural problems identified with developing new sites, because water services and road networks are already there for the vacant units.

By returning vacant properties to normal use, we would also be revitalising our town centres. That is a critical point. One of the stumbling blocks identified in the vacant units policy concerns the certification process. There are some blockages coming down the road because we are talking about obtaining disability access and fire certification for old buildings. Such old buildings must also be compliant with planning regulations. Will authorised certifiers be willing to sign off on these issues? In fairness, as regards fire safety standards, we might not be able to certify off-the-cuff solutions that will have to be inventive in order to get old buildings back into use.

If the vacant units had been completely managed by local authorities, with additional capital being put in, we could have returned many more homes for people more quickly than by building new properties. That is my personal observation because it is my area of responsibility.

Planning has been presented here as a two stage process but, in fact, it is a three stage one. We have the pre-planning process with the local authority, which is defined as a four week period.

That four week period is only to get a meeting, not a result. People still have to deal with Part V of the Planning and Development Act and maybe high-level planning issues prior to them going to the nine week pre-planning process. The fact that it is not time bound can leave us exposed in regard to the fast track planning process. At committee level, we highlighted the lack of public consultation with local councillors about large scale developments. In fairness to the Minister, he reacted to that. During the nine week process, they have to go back to the rural areas to give them an outline of the projects that have been put before the board at the time. On reflection, that should only be needed for a material contravention process, where the local representatives have had no input. Previously, any large scale development would have been part of a county development plan or a local area plan. The only real need to engage back with the local authority at local level was in regard to a material contravention. The positive that will hopefully come out of this fast track planning process is that at the end of this three year process we will know how to submit a proper planning application for a large scale development and how to deal with that process in the long term. If we get that alone out of the process it will have been worth it.

I suppose my heart is still in the local authority, which I only recently left it. I was chairman the year the Putting People First document was launched. I looked forward to the introduction of the local property tax because it felt as if it was giving power back to the councillors to make real decisions on whether to increase or decrease the property tax, and how to spend it. In fairness, it was sold very well. However, the public believed the local property tax would be a new source of revenue for local authorities but it was not. It was just replacing the local government fund. People still believe that local authorities have this new source of revenue called the local property tax. Phil Hogan did a good job on selling that one. After the first year, we all become aware that the local property tax was not returning local democracy. The local authorities are losing 20% in terms of the national equalisation fund. Local authorities that were doing reasonably well lost at least another 20% back to central government to be spent on capital projects.

I am not going to argue against the need to spend it on housing, but we equally need to look at the local authorities. Over the last seven years they have suffered enormously in regard to the provision of services. We all have seen services being cut over those years. Local property tax is defined as the revenue received from the local property tax to support the provision of local services by local authorities which are responsible for a range of services including, among others, housing; recreational amenities such as public parks, libraries, open spaces and other leisure amenities; planning and development; fire and emergency; maintenance; cleaning of streets; street lighting and so forth. In some local authorities over 40% of their local property tax fund is taken from their control. They have no say whatsoever in how that is spent. We need to address that. I appreciate that €77 million of local property tax is being spent on housing and I have no problem with that. However, we need to bring other services along with that.

The local property tax baseline that has been used for local authorities needs to be revisited. The methodology used to calculate it needs to be looked at. It needs to be calculated taking account of the case on the ground. It is a historical issue that needs to be addressed. If we are going to address the deficiencies in local authority services, whether it be in housing maintenance and repairs or in the inspection of properties which we spoke about at the last committee meeting, every property in local authority ownership should be inspected on an annual basis, as should properties in the private rental market that are being taken on. Resources are needed to provide that type of service. Part of our brief is looking at the funding of local authorities. We need to see exactly how the baseline figure is calculated.

For my sins, I was chairman of a local community development committee, LCDC. I was around for the local enterprise partnership, LEP; the local area and community plans, LACP; the local action group, LAG; the local economic and community plans, LECP; and the local community development committee, LCDC. The one thing that I looked forward to-----