Martin Brady (Dublin North East, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2006. Along with my colleague Deputy O'Connor, I represent an area of Donaghmede where many apartments are being built. There is quite an amount of development, including high density development.

One of the complaints I have noted is where a builder or developer buys 100 acres of land, for example, and the first phase of housing or apartments may go on sale for €340,000. Three weeks' later, the exact same residence, built at the same cost of labour and materials etc., may be €40,000 dearer. This cannot be justified. It is total exploitation of house purchasers and a type of extortion. Representatives of developers and auctioneers should be brought before the Joint Committee on Environment and Local Government to explain and justify how this occurs.

Management committees are also a form of extortion and exploitation. People, mainly young people, are being charged anything from €1,100 to €1,500 a year for maintenance when there is absolutely no maintenance to carry out. There might be no grass or open space whatever, and people are still being charged without option. If the people do not pay, they are threatened. I spoke to a person who works in the Oireachtas and who was at a meeting last night where there was a threat of eviction, among other things.

Nobody knows who these management companies are. They are governed by company management and no other law. I have spoken to the relevant Minister about this, and he informed me we do not have control over these situations. We should take control. It is very important we do not allow this to go on and that we protect the consumer. The Director of Consumer Affairs should be brought in on this, as well as the Competition Authority. The whole trading practice is unfair, and it does not happen in any other business.

I compliment the Minister on what is being done on affordable housing, which is working very well. It is being rolled out fairly quickly. Many parts of the shared ownership schemes need to be tightened up. When a person applies for shared ownership in the local authorities in Dublin — I do not know about elsewhere in the country — the person is refused if not in permanent employment. In other words, a large percentage of workers on contracts in most of the big companies cannot qualify for the shared ownership scheme or affordable scheme in Dublin city or Fingal, and that should be examined.

Density should also be considered. Houses and apartments are getting smaller. This is quite noticeable when looking at or measuring a showhouse and considering the property that is being bought, which can be much smaller. This can be verified. That practice is wrong. Streets being constructed in developments can be so narrow that two cars cannot pass on them. That also must be looked at, particularly with regard to emergency service access, as vehicles may not be able to access streets. The whole issue should be considered and brought before the relevant committee. I intend to do this.

The management committee issue must also be examined, and a group representative of such committees should be invited in. Some house purchasers have told me they are setting up their own organisation called the House Purchasers' Organisation, HPO, to stop these unfair practices.

We are also mentally conditioning buyers, particularly young people, into queuing at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning to buy houses because they are persuaded into believing that if they do not do so, the house supply will run out and they will be left out. That is also wrong. We must take a firm grip on these unfair practices and sort them out once and for all.

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