Dáil debates

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Housing Provision: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

 

6:25 pm

Photo of Mick WallaceMick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been involved in the construction industry for most of my life and for most of that time there has been no housing strategy. I am not sure that one will be introduced in the near future. I can think of four important elements to a housing strategy: quantity, location, quality and affordability. There have been huge housing problems in this country for some time because there was insufficient control over where houses were built - houses were built in the wrong places and too few were built where they were needed. In the history of the State there have been times when too many houses were built and times when too few were built in the right locations. Quality has often left much to be desired because of a lack of supervision and oversight to ensure building regulations were applied. In other words, the regulations are fine but the level of State oversight is not. In terms of affordability, a right to a house is a social right so a person who cannot afford to buy a house must be housed by the State. Almost 100,000 people are waiting on houses at the moment. Houses are too expensive in the private sector because of a lack of regulation - things are left to the markets. A new tax must be introduced on zoned development land that is banked. Some developers buy land, get it zoned for development and then hold it as a land bank, sitting on it and controlling the price of land.

This is a massive problem and contributes more to the overpricing of houses than anything else. It is usually in the hands of very few people. We will see this over the coming years because much development land and idle sites were sold by NAMA and the banks in big parcels to very small numbers of people and too few people will control it and there will be a cartel once again.

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