Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I heard some of the debate on the monitor earlier. Part 5 of the Planning and Development Bill involves social engineering. We try to provide a social mix in whatever building we undertake but even in local authority housing strategies there is no Part 5 in certain areas. There is no Part 5 in Ballymun, for example, because there is already a huge amount of social housing there. The thinking behind it is to try to have a social mix. If we build private apartments and allow them to be turned into social housing, we would undo the regeneration work. We discussed this matter at local level when I was on the local authority in Ballymun for four or five years and there was substantial political agreement on that. I accept that a few councillors from other parties, who did not represent Ballymun but represented other wards in the same Dáil constituency, did not agree. I do not want to name people here but Deputy Crowe's colleague, whom he mentioned, would be a Dáil candidate and an elected representative for another ward in the constituency, but not Ballymun. There was substantial support for this plan which is about trying to give an area a chance to breathe. If the State invests large amounts of money in regeneration it does so to get away from the vast high-rise local authority estates we built in the past. We do not do that anymore — we try to have a mix of private, social, affordable, voluntary and housing association accommodation. I hope that model will work into the future. Some of our huge high-rise estates — be they in Ballymun, Fatima Mansions, St. Michael's or O'Deveney Gardens — are the sort of places that could be considered for this model in future. It is a case of giving it a chance. People on the ground in Ballymun will say that even the first private development there quickly went wrong because it was filled with rent allowance people overnight and nobody controlled them. If it is a local authority estate or building, at least there is some management by that authority but there is little such management by many landlords.

This is a development on the thinking that local authorities have already done. If one builds a private development in Ballymun tomorrow, there will be no Part 5 application on it because the local authority's housing strategy recognises that in an area which already has large-scale social housing, we need a social mix. It does not stop anybody from living in the area, however. Anyone who currently wants to live in Ballymun or any of these places must go on the waiting list for a local authority house. There will still be a couple of thousand local authority units in Ballymun but it means they cannot have rent allowances in the new units that are being built. I would not see that provision being there for eternity but it must be given a chance, otherwise we are talking about the opposite of Part 5, which is to say that all the poor or unemployed should live in one area, turning it into a type of ghetto.

We are putting a great deal of time, energy, State expenditure and community involvement into such regeneration projects. The regeneration of Ballymun for example was discussed for years and has now been going on for five, six or seven years. Everyone has co-operated on it and wants to see the area lifted up. It is a case of whether one wants to give the area a chance to breathe, but nobody is being prevented from living there. There will be the same number of social units in Ballymun in future as there currently is because as the flats are being taken down everybody in them is getting a social unit. As vacancies arise they will be available but the private, developer-led units will not have rent allowance tenants.

See this speech in context