Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Labour Party supports the Bill before the House which seeks to restore the affordable housing units that the Government handed back to individual builders and developers in the 2002 amendment to the Planning and Development Act 2000. When that amending legislation was rushed through the House on the last sitting day before Christmas the Labour Party strongly opposed it, pointing out that it would result in a significant loss of affordable housing sites and units for those who need them.

I listened to yesterday's speech by the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and have read the text today. It is easy for Government to muddy the water and try to confuse people in this complex technical area. It is worthwhile therefore to trace the history of Part V which arose from the debate in the late 1990s when house prices started to rise dramatically.

In the period following the 1997 election of the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government house prices rose dramatically. At one point in 1998 they were rising at a rate of 40% per annum. There was much concern that this would prevent young working families from purchasing their own homes. I argued at the time that the Government should establish a commission on housing to get control of the situation. That did not happen. Instead, there was a succession of Bacon reports and various individual suggestions.

One idea which the Labour Party proposed was that 20% of private development land be set aside for social and affordable housing. The former Deputy, Eithne Fitzgerald, floated the idea but it was not original. We borrowed it from the British Labour Party, which was making similar proposals after being elected to Government.

The former leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Quinn, raised the matter on the Order of Business, suggesting to the Taoiseach that the Government take up and pursue this idea. The then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Dempsey, included it in the Planning and Development Bill published in August 1999. The proposed implementation method, however, would have failed to deliver the measure as proclaimed. Some newspaper reports at the time described it as a radical new idea, others claimed it would deliver 10,000 social and affordable housing units a year. Unfortunately, the way in which it was proposed to be implemented meant it could never happen. The lengthy Bill was published in August 1999 but was not enacted until July 2000. It provided for a complex process where each local authority was required to adopt a housing strategy. This was a new idea, something local authorities had never done before. It had, therefore, to be piloted in County Louth. After the adoption of housing strategies, they had to be incorporated in county development plans. Only after the county development plans were confirmed to include housing strategies and target percentages were set for social and affordable housing would this apply to planning permissions sought after that date. It did not come into practical effect until the end of 2001.

From August 1999 to the end of 2001, anyone who owned development land knew the 20% requirement was coming down the track. They did what any landowner or developer would sensibly do. They hotfooted it to their local authorities to get planning permissions on their lands in order that the 20% would not apply to them. I raised this scenario on Committee Stage and pointed out it would frustrate the legislation's purpose. The then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Dempsey, accepted this. The Bill was amended on Committee Stage to deal with any planning permission obtained between the publication of the Bill in 1999 and the coming into operation of the county development plans at the end of 2001. If the developer had not begun construction of a house to the outer wall stage, the planning permission would wither and the developer or landowner would have to apply for a new planning permission. There was nothing new in this. Developers and landowners apply for new planning permissions all the time. For most large developments there will be up to nine applications to include house type changes and so forth. The idea of applying for a new planning permission if it withered was not new.

After the 2002 general election, the Government came under pressure from sections of the building and development industry for the withering provision to be removed. The Government willingly caved in. The essential change made in the 2002 amending legislation was not the one described by the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Ahern, as providing flexibility. There is debate as to whether this was a good or bad idea. The major change was that all planning permissions granted between August 1999 and the end of 2001 automatically became full planning permissions and the 20% quota would not apply to them.

When the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, claims that the 40,000 social housing units built last year were units to which the 20% requirement did not apply, he is both right and wrong. He is right that this is the case. However, he is wrong because that was the effect of the 2002 amending legislation. The 20% does not apply to them because the 2002 amending legislation made those full planning permissions.

The then Minister informed the House that there were 80,000 units to which those permissions would have applied at the end of 2002. By anyone's mathematics, 20% of that figure is 16,000 units. At the end of 2002, 16,000 affordable homes that should be available for young families were gifted back to individual builders and developers. That is why the affordable housing scheme in Dublin is operating by way of a pathetic lottery. Young people, trying to get an affordable home, apply to their local authority for their names to be entered into a drum. If they are fortunate, as with the national lottery on a Saturday night, their names are pulled out. They are in this situation because 16,000 homes that should be available are not. That was the essential change made in the 2002 amending legislation. In effect, the Government robbed young people of opportunities to acquire an affordable home. It did so to benefit individuals and companies in the building industry.

There is a need to change the way the affordable housing scheme operates. The Minister claims that fewer than 3,000 units have been provided under the scheme. Up to 400,000 housing units have been built in the State since Part V came into operation. Even if we allow for the fact that half of those were one-off houses, built on sites of fewer than five units, on sites of less than 0.1 of a hectare or unzoned lands, approximately 40,000 affordable homes should have been provided under Part V if it was working properly. Fewer than 3,000 have appeared to date. Even the Irish Home Builders Association acknowledges that Part V, when fully operational, should deliver between 5,000 and 6,000 units per annum.

To ensure delivery, it must be a requirement that the agreement on affordable housing should be made before planning permission is granted. The arrangement that applies is that it is attached as a condition to the granting of planning permission and the agreement is subsequently made. This is why arrangements of buying out of it or offering land in lieu exist. The agreement must instead be made prior to the granting of planning permission. The planning applicant must be required to propose in the initial planning application how the social and affordable housing commitment will be made.

The 20% target needs to be increased, particularly in areas of serious affordability problems. A much higher proposition of newly zoned land should be made available for social and affordable housing. When Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's housing strategy was assessed, it was pointed out that 50% of new house purchasers would not be able to afford to buy in the area. We argued that 20% would never meet that but their need was used to justify the increase of zoning more land to build houses these purchasers could never afford. The proportion of newly zoned lands devoted to social and affordable housing needs to be significantly increased.

The affordable housing and shared ownership schemes need to be married to maximise the purchase opportunities for young families. There are a series of traps in public housing policy. A person whose earnings rise above the limit for social housing is taken off the housing list. There are different limits for the shared ownership scheme and affordable housing scheme. For many young families on a housing list, by the time their turn comes around or their names come out of the drum if it is a lottery, their earnings have increased and they no longer qualify. These traps must be removed from the system by amalgamating social and affordable housing and shared ownership schemes to enable the maximum number of people to purchase their own home.

There must be a fundamental change in public housing policy because the existing policy consigns people to continuing poverty. It is absurd that people in private rented accommodation and in receipt of rent allowance lose that allowance when they get a job. People are required to keep their incomes low, to stay poor, to qualify for public housing. If their circumstances improve over the years in which they are on a public housing list, they will no longer qualify and will be moved into another category where they must start all over again.

We need a new public housing policy that is appropriate to the times in which we live and which is not based on the 19th century Victorian attitudes that underpin much of existing policy. Instead, it should be based on 20th century welfarism, which assumes people want to improve their circumstances and will ultimately seek to purchase and own their home. I hope to return to these issues at a future date.

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