Pat Casey (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the few councillors here from Wexford. They are gone now, so I do not have to welcome them. I also welcome Mr. McDonagh. I refer to what Deputy Timmins said earlier. It is refreshing to hear the openness with which Mr. McDonagh has come to this meeting. At times during this debate, I wondered if we lost an opportunity at this point in time, but that boat has sailed. I was listening upstairs before I came down and heard Deputy Timmins address the area of NARPS, which Senator Higgins also mentioned. It is fine to sit here and ask with hindsight if we could have achieved a lot more from NARPS than we did. We equally have to reflect on the time when NAMA was established and the sense around it. The focus on getting a financial return from NAMA as opposed to a common good return was an opportunity lost when we reflect on it. My observation from what I have heard today is that we could have achieved a lot more. I was involved in Wicklow in respect of one development that NAMA offered, but when you looked at the location and the size of the house it was not deemed to be good social housing. There were other factors that played into why properties were not easily transferred to local authorities.

I was equally interested in the word FELIPE that Mr. McDonagh introduced. I will go to the "P" aspect, which is an area I am passionate about. Having served on the housing committee in 2016, I was here for the introduction of the national planning framework, which was put on a statutory footing at the time. While I had no problem with it being put on a statutory footing, it is the implications of that, down the road, which we are now beginning to see. They have been significant. There is a complete lack of flexibility within county development plans to move population growth from where it was designated in the original centres. Deputy Timmins finished the Wicklow County Council development plan two years ago. We allocated 38% of our population growth to areas that did not have the infrastructure to deliver that population growth. We dezoned land in 16 of our 21 towns where we had services on the land, and we could have built houses. I raised this lack of flexibility at the time and have done so over and over. We have seen six planning permissions refused in Wicklow either because we have exceeded our population growth targets, or it is R2 and not R1 land, or both. That is despite the fact that the majority of R1 lands have been built on. At the time we adopted that plan, a number of our towns had already exceeded their 2031 population targets, never mind that the plan was to end in 2028. I hope a lesson has been learned from that process and that now that we have commenced a complete review of all county development plans, we will not apply that strict regime where we cap population growth and allocate population growth where there is no infrastructure while we dezone land where there was infrastructure. I am probably in full agreement with Mr. McDonagh in regard to planning.

I want to spend time on the financing of housing development because I have not fully got my head around it, and why the system in Ireland seems to be completely broken at the moment. I heard one statistic recently about our four pillar banks indicating that 70% of their lending is to developers who are building for approved housing bodies, local authorities, or both, which in theory are backed by the State. However, our pillar banks are sitting with €166 billion that we cannot seem to activate into the market. I had not heard of the Basel ruling until recently and I am trying to get my head around that. What is Mr. McDonagh's opinion on financing?

What do we need to do to get more finance for developers so as to have more development? The Housing Finance Agency’s lending criteria are probably too strict. Maybe it needs to be a little more flexible with some of the developers that might have a slightly chequered history but that have been developing for the past several years.

It is fine getting the capital investment initially but, at the other end, we need to ensure people are able to buy the properties. Do we need to do more in this regard? Financing is critical because, if it is not right, we will not have any developments. The State cannot continue to put up €6 billion every year. We have to get a considerable amount of additional private equity into the system; otherwise, it will not work. Maybe Mr. McDonagh could give us his insight into and experience of financing.