Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister, the Ministers of State and his housing officials. Everybody here accepts we need to accelerate the supply of new homes across a range of homes and reduce the cost of construction. That is a given. I have said many times on this committee that I do not buy into any ideology. I do not exercise too much time on who is building the houses. It is about delivery of homes; housing units. That is an important point to make. Unlike previous speakers, I will not be asking questions. I will use my valuable seven minutes to engage with the Minister, because it is rare we have three Ministers or Ministers of State sitting in front of us and I wish to share my thoughts. I am conscious there are many people listening, including many sitting county councillors, whom I greatly support, as do all of us here. They are my audience here today. I have flagged to every one of them that this meeting was on. I have sent them the link.

I have no difficulty with everything the Minister has said in his statement. I will not go back. I am not suggesting it is a history lesson. There have been mistakes and I think we all accept that, but I acknowledge the work of our sitting county council officials. It is not an easy station. It is not an easy place to be, in housing, turning down people and telling them they are on €41,500 and do not qualify for social housing. This is the reality of it.

I had a couple with me the other day who felt quite rejected. Someone from outside of the housing authority suggested that what they needed to do was to become unemployed, to come back in 12 months, and then to reapply and they would get a place. Is that not a very disappointing suggestion but that is the reality of it?

I want to turn to today because I like to live in the present. Today, the Cabinet has signed off and there is a press release on a new housing measure in efforts to boost supply. At the outset yesterday, the Taoiseach suggested that this issue would continue for a number of years. Some other bulletin this afternoon said that this measure will go on for 12 months, so there is something of an issue around that.

What I would like to talk about to the Minister here is that there are two new words the Taoiseach spoke about yesterday, which struck me as somewhat surprising in the context of what he was talking about. These are the gifting of planning levies for a period of time to developers. Remember that our planning levies are a supplementary development levy scheme and they arise from an exclusively reserved function of the elected members of councils. Here, we are undermining local government yet again. These levies, I repeat, are an exclusive function of the elected members to adopt a contribution scheme within a local authority. The Taoiseach's words in the RTÉ press coverage last night and this morning were that we were talking about "social infrastructure". It is infrastructure - one call it social infrastructure if one likes - but the Taoiseach then talked about socialising the cost. Since when did socialising the cost came into this?

I completed a house in the past 12 months and I know what I paid in development levies to my planning authority. These were levied by the authority, and rightly so, and I paid them. I am unsure where they are going and this raises another issue as to how we fund our local government system. That, however, is a debate for another day.

Why are we gifting, what could be up to €25,000 per housing unit in certain circumstances and locations, to developers? These are the same developers who asked about a fast-track strategic housing planning scheme. They said that this would sort out all of their problems. We also know the architects within the Custom House, who supported them in their development of this scheme. Many of us on this committee cautioned around the issues of the strategic housing scheme and we know where they went. Some went to very high places in housing and planning and some fell out of those high places, but that is another day's work. We know who we are talking about, however.

At the end of the day we must remember that it is not the Government that is paying for this, it is the taxpayer who is paying. The taxpayer is going to bail out developers yet again. Many of these developers are the same people who have planning permissions, and are sitting on sites for planning permission. These developers say that these sites are not viable. When I am in a business and it is not viable, I move to something else, I make some arrangement to make my business viable, or I get out of business. But no, here we are, bailing them out. It is simply a gift.

One suggestion is that this waiving of fees will be for 12 months, another is that it should be for two to three years. There is a bit of an issue around that which is also very important.

Why did the Government not consider the possibility of giving the levy charged to that house or residential property back to the first-time buyer? Did the Government look at the VAT situation and could it have reduced the overall cost for builders through the VAT system, which would be a clean tax revenue system? Was this issue discussed with the CCMA? I understand it was but, again, we have no idea what is going on with the CCMA because that association seems to be a law unto itself and seems to also have some special status and arrangement with the Minister's Department.

It is important to ask how temporary this measure is. That will be worked out in the detail and I accept that the Minister does not have all of the finer detail, but I just want to say that it should be worked out. There are serious concerns with removing this levy from our local authorities. I presume local authorities will continue to put on and index their levy on their scheme, and that the cost will be found by the State, which will use the taxpayers' money to reimburse the local authorities. There are serious concerns here and the Government needs to spell out the issue in respect of that.

As I have said, and I have checked today that under the legislation, the adoption of a development contribution scheme is a reserved function of the elected members of each planning authority, namely, its city or county council and its councillors, and applies to the administration area of each council. It is the imperative of councillors, therefore, that they are fully consulted about the changes. The organisations tell me that they have no knowledge about these changes other than what they have read. There are serious concerns about the scheme and that is an issue.

I also took the time, about which the Minister would be very familiar, to look at the Minister’s own local authority of Fingal and its development levy scheme. The Minister will recall that there are levies for transport, the airport’s western access route, the airport roundabout upgrade, and there are matters in respect of surface water and the development of local parks in Donabate, Lusk, Rush, Naul and north-west Balbriggan. All of these great schemes in the Minister’s constituency, of which I have no doubt he was fully supportive of, are to be funded by levies. I acknowledge and accept that the Minister has to work out the detail but there is a real issue here about the perception that the State and the Government is using taxpayers’ money for many very well-heeled developers. I will leave it at that. These are concerns and I ask that the Minister take them on board in the coming weeks? We can engage on this at another time.