Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Gilmore. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate which has extended beyond affordable housing, creating the scope for us to address the many other issues around housing developments and apartment buildings. I refer specifically to my constituency which overlaps the Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council areas where the glut of predominantly high rise apartments is more or less taking over any patch of land available to developers.

I agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick that the infrastructure that should be aligned to that development is almost always ignored, resulting in concrete jungles and the potential for major problems later. We seem to have learned nothing from the history of such developments in the past. While this topic is not intrinsic to this debate it is an important point that should be debated at length without undue delay.

The way in which some local authorities distribute and manage affordable housing is a matter of concern, for example, South Dublin County Council regards 15% as an adequate percentage to allocate for social and affordable housing. I represent part of that constituency and have a long list of people who would be very happy to avail of social or affordable housing in that area but the housing is not available. Dublin City Council allocates 20% which is fine. The problem is that developers, when submitting their planning applications, make no commitment as to how they will deliver that 20%. They are not obliged to do so within that application, although the Minister of State, at the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Ahern, said last night:

Each and every applicant for permission for residential development, other than certain exempted residential developments prescribed in legislation, must specify in the planning application how it is proposed to meet the requirements of the housing strategy with regard to the development for which permission is being sought.

I continue to write letters to local authorities to find out exactly how that percentage of social and affordable housing will be distributed, when it will become available, whether it is for senior citizens, and which type of housing it is. The buildings exist. I live around the corner from two large developments yet I do not know how the social or affordable units within those developments are to be distributed. This is a significant anomaly and gives the developer an unfair degree of wiggle room. This is unacceptable and must be sorted out.

The financial contribution is one way of dealing with the problem if the location is considered inappropriate or the cost of the affordable housing would be such as to make it unavailable. The money is ring-fenced for housing but that does not mean that the number of social or affordable units that would have been available in the first development is dedicated somewhere else, or this does not seem to be the case. Does ring-fencing the money for housing simply mean upgrading certain housing? While that is welcome it does not seem to deliver the required number of social or affordable units. These are major issues.

Local authorities must address the real cost of affordable housing and the income requirement. Hundreds of couples in my constituency seek affordable housing. They may meet the income requirement but the repayments are too high and they end up in a catch-22 as they try to save money for a deposit and to make the repayments, while also paying rent somewhere else. Affordable housing must be made genuinely affordable for these people.

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