Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I apologise for being late but I did read the presentations before I came in.

I will make a general comment and will then ask a series of very specific questions to tease out the details. As both of the witnesses will know, I am strongly in favour of a strategic land management agency. I strongly favour the idea of having a central body that considers the totality of public land holdings, and that it has the power and funds to take them away from agencies where they are not strategically utilised to the best extent and transferred elsewhere. That is the right thing to do. I have no issue with that whatsoever. If that was all that the witnesses were here to tell us about then I would be warmly welcoming it and indicating that we would assist them with the legislation.

My problem is twofold. The first is that the agency would be involved in residential development. The agency has yet to make the case as to why it is better placed to do that than local authorities if they were properly funded and if they had various restrictions lifted from then, which I shall come to in a second. I also have to say that the tenure mix that the Mr. Coleman has proposed is not in line with either local requirements or housing need. I have detailed direct involvement in one large joint venture and I have been keeping a very close eye on the other two. My comments on the financing models and tenure mix is not borne out of some speculation. I have spent two years tracking these ventures in my local authority area in Dublin city. That is really where my strong concern is.

Can the witnesses tell us what additional powers they hope to get from the legislation? Is it just the standard compulsory purchase order powers that local authorities already have or are they seeking something additional? If so, can they detail that and explain how it differs from the powers that councils currently have?

Is it fair to say that the majority of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, will probably go into land acquisition and compensating CPO claims? Do the witnesses have a sense of the breakdown in terms of site development and their own direct involved in the delivery of units as opposed to private sector financing for that and land acquisition?

In terms of units, can the witnesses confirm that where there are social units there will be additional money from the capital programme, for example, from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, to purchase those back as would be the case in the other joint ventures that are currently under way; and that the cost of the social unit would not be included in the costings and instead would be additional funding supplied by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government?

In terms of affordable units, can the witnesses clarify where there have been discussions about seeking access to, for example, the serviced sites fund? Will the Rebuilding Ireland home loan facility be one of the primary mechanisms used to make the units affordable? The witnesses in their presentations outlined the price range but did not tell us how people will access such units.

In terms of the sale of land, I have been very clear that there will be no land giveaway. Land will be sold, if it is to be sold, to developers as part of joint ventures. Will the land be sold at market rates? Will there be a discount as a result of, for example, the site servicing costs and, therefore, could it be that the developer gets the land cheaper? For the 60% of units in the overall target that would be sold at the open market price, is there not a discount even though the purchaser pays market value? That market value might be less because the sites are serviced. Can the witnesses confirm that all of the profit generated by the sale of open market priced units, if there are private developers in the context of a joint venture, will go to the private developer?

In terms of the social housing targets, for me this is the really incorrect bit of what the witnesses are doing. Every time I see a reference to Part V in the literature I want to pull my hair out. Part V applies to private land and private developments. It does not apply and it is not a planning framework for public land. I am in favour of mixed income and mixed tenure estates although I have a slightly different model to that of the Government. I would like to hear the justification put forward by the witnesses for the 10% figure. What it means is that on very large sites we will dramatically reduce the capacity of the State to deliver social housing. I suspect the reason the social housing component has been reduced from its current rate of 30%, in the joint ventures in Dublin city and South Dublin County Council, down to 10%, has much more to do with the fact that the Department wants to use joint ventures to keep this off balance sheet to meet EU financing rules. Therefore, the tenure mix is not about meeting needs but meeting a pre-prescribed set of financing commitments, which will limit the ability to meet the social housing need.

In terms of the social and affordable units, can the witnesses confirm that they are not in addition to the targets set out in the national development plan and Rebuilding Ireland? Are they just within those targets? If so, there is no additionality.

One of the things that concerns me is that people say local authorities cannot do this work and that is why we need a new agency. One of the advantages that an agency has that local authorities do not have is that it will not have to comply, unless I am incorrect, with the very complex approval and tendering requirements laid down by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government or, for example, the very cumbersome value for money exercise that local authorities must currently comply with for projects worth over €20 million, which we will hear about later. I thought if local authorities were given those advantages and additional CPO powers then they could do everything that the agency can do. I am interested in hearing the thoughts of Mr. Coleman on that matter.

I sat through and was very involved in the Kilcarbery joint venture. One of the frustrations for elected members in the community was the competitive nature of bringing in the private consortium, resulting in elected members in the community having less involvement in the planning outline. The managers are very involved in planning the scheme outline. However, because it is a competitive process, it is secret and elected members of the community only know the outcome at the end.

That is a concern. Are any of the existing sites local authority sites? Is it intended to acquire local authority sites and, if so, why? We hear a lot around the dogma of sustainable and mixed tenure communities. Again, I am in favour of mixed income and mixed tenure communities, but can either of the witnesses point to a single piece of research that has been produced in an Irish context that supports sustainable and mixed tenure communities on the basis they have outlined, that of only a 10% social housing component? I am asking that because there is a growing body of research that says if there is only 10% social housing it actually increases the sense of isolation of lower income families in communities. What is the policy basis or evidence for the witnesses' commitment to that?