Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While many elements of the Bill are welcome, we will oppose it unless amendments are accepted that protect and maintain Part V obligations at 20%. I urgently request sufficient time for a meaningful debate on housing in general. Inaction or poor action on the part of the Government has sleepwalked the State into a housing crisis that many would describe as a national scandal. Up to 100,000 people are on housing waiting lists and it is not necessarily a true reflection of the real housing needs. Despite the fact that we might not agree wholeheartedly with everything the Minister of State says, he was right to say that housing is in short supply. The rental sector is in crisis. More than 1,000 children live in emergency accommodation in Dublin and beyond. Although there is massive demand for social and private housing, there is no supply.

There are people in rental accommodation who can barely get by and who cannot and will not, in their present circumstances, qualify for a mortgage or, more alarmingly and worryingly, for a local authority housing list. They cannot necessarily qualify for rent allowance, housing assistance payment or rental assistance schemes. In other words, the State is providing no solution for them. Another cohort of people is those in severe mortgage difficulty who, we have recently been told, have been asked to sacrifice their homes in exchange for an assurance from their financial institutions that they will not be pursued for the negative equity. This is based on the assumption that they qualify for social housing and are placed on a local authority housing list. The problem is, they do not and will not qualify for the housing lists. Many Deputies regularly meet people in this bind.

Yesterday, 60% of those who visited my clinics had housing issues. One couple told me they were paying €650 per month in rent with one person working and earning €35,000 per year and three children. They have the costs associated with rearing and seeking to provide a home for those three children, including school, medical expenses, transport, clothes, food and heat. They are on the bread line and depend on family for assistance. They ask what solution, resolution, options or prospect they have of being assisted by the State. Would it not be right and proper for them to qualify for a local authority house that might cost approximately €300 in rent per month? This would ease the burden on them and the locality in which they reside by offering €300 extra into the local economy. However, there is no available mechanism by which they can be helped or resourced by the State, given that the qualifying income for such a couple to be eligible for a housing list, irrespective of their person outgoings and the percentage of their income available to put towards rent, is €28,000. These figures have not been amended since 2011, although the crisis has worsened to a great extent since then. This is just one example. There are many others, which we could all relate.

The problem is that we are considering old solutions and ways of doing things and not asking everybody who is in here with a responsibility to provide solutions to engage in a meaningful debate that might bring about resolutions and proposals on which everybody could agree and for which funding could be sought. This is the greatest, gravest issue facing society. I am not alone in my constituency. The Government's proposals to deal with the issue in Offaly as regards the Government, Department or local authorities being funded in a way in which they can provide units is 33 over the next three years. There is a waiting list of over 2,000, and that is just those who qualify. As I said earlier, if 100,000 people are on housing lists, there is a forgotten cohort that should also be on a housing list or be in a position to be helped, resourced and accommodated by the State. That could bring it up to 150,000. In the county I represent, it would probably increase the list to 3,000. Meanwhile, the State plans to provide 33 units. This is why the House needs to have a serious debate.

As I said earlier, we accept and support many elements of the Bill, however there must be a greater holistic approach to this problem, crisis and scandal. There must be a twin-track approach by private and public sectors. Whether people like it or not, the Government must offer solutions to allow the private sector to provide homes.

The pillar banks are not in a position to lend or they are not willing to lend. We were promised a strategic investment bank. A home investment bank should also be established to finance housing construction.

The proposal to reduce the 20% social housing obligation to 10% to encourage private developers does not go far enough. If we do nothing about the people to whom I referred, they will remain hidden from the statistics and reports brought before the House, and they will be forgotten. This crisis needs a radical response. It is not good enough to provide 33 units when there is a need for 2,200 in my county alone. The Government was aware of the problems in the public finances when it came to power. It promised that things would be done differently and that it would not necessarily follow the programmes developed by the previous Government in rectifying the public finances. As it turned out, it did much the same as its predecessor despite giving the impression that it would find a softer and easier way. During the first four years of its term, it allowed the housing crisis escalate into a national scandal. We need to take a two-pronged approach to this crisis. The Government needs to be proactive in encouraging private development.

There are regular announcements on building programmes that will not have the necessary impact. We should have the opportunity to analyse and debate proposals to solve the crisis. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coffey, should be available to respond to suggestions made in this House and his own proposals need to subjected to scrutiny in order that the public can be assured that everything is being done to address what has become a scandal. We have a housing crisis, a rental crisis and a lack of supply. We have heard the rhetoric in recent months but there is no recognition of the scale or human cost of this scandal because many of the people who should be included in the statistics are being ignored and forgotten. I ask the Minster of State to broaden the debate by setting aside time for Members on all sides of the House to bring forward proposals that he and his officials might, in their wisdom, implement sooner rather than later.

The amendment to Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 is my main bone of contention with this Bill. I wholeheartedly disagree with the proposal to reduce the social housing obligation on developers from 20% to 10%, although I agree with the proposal to end the practice of cash in lieu. Between 2005 and 2011, Part V provisions yielded up to 15,000 units. That is no mean feat. The provision could have delivered more to the State, however, and with the necessary tweaks it will deliver more. I agree with the proposal to double the threshold from five to ten units before Part V becomes applicable. I do not agree with the proposal to remove the option of providing affordable housing. It should be a matter for local authorities to measure the availability of housing in their area against the demands on the waiting list. Affordable housing could help those who are not eligible for local authority housing because of their income levels. We will debate the need to amend these income thresholds on another occasion, but in the meantime, people who do not qualify for social housing might be able to purchase affordable housing with the assistance of local authority or private sector loans. The Government should also investigate the potential of a home development bank to address these issues.

I support the vacant site levy in principle but we may bring amendments to the provision to reflect the differences between country towns and large cities. I am conscious of how many towns and villages were decimated because of the loss of retail trade and commercial activity and depend on outlying sites for the residential development they require. Local authorities need to be more adventurous in their development plans and more lenient in their zoning to allow mixed residential development on such sites. Existing derelict site legislation already allows local authorities to deal with properties, for example, by resolving any title issues that might be acting as an obstacle to development. I do not think they have made sufficient use of the existing legislation but I would welcome the provisions in this Bill if they strengthen their hand in this regard. I will be consulting local authorities in the coming days and weeks to find out why they have not used the existing legislation to deal with the problems of dereliction that exist in many of our towns and villages. Local authorities have made only limited use of compulsory purchase orders in recent years. When I first became a councillor 20 years ago, there was much more activity at a time when there were fewer residential developments. Perhaps we are in a similar situation now. There is an onus on the State and local authorities to assist towns and villages which are struggling to regain their vitality. The Government needs to provide the funding required to regenerate these areas.

I welcome the provisions allowing local authorities to reduce development charges retrospectively to encourage development. Local authorities will be able to reduce development charges on sites with existing planning permission. This provision was introduced after a number of representations were made. While I welcome many aspects of the Bill, I hope a more holistic approach will be taken. Perhaps the Minister of State will elaborate on his proposals in this regard. However, I would not kowtow to representations from CIF on this provision as a one-size-fits-all solution. I received representations from a private company which is seeking to construct housing for the elderly which would allow people to trade down.

It told me that the 20% obligation in the mix would not be right. We have many elderly people on the housing list, too, who need accommodation to meet their current situation, which was not the case some years earlier. I acknowledge that it would be wrong for them to be disbarred from being in a community such as the private sector is providing.

We have made proposals to assist developers in that area. For example, we would have a reduced capital gains tax for people who sell their homes to buy a home such as that when trading down. We would go further and have no property tax for five years to enable people to do so. That in itself is an incentive for people to make such a move. In doing so, they are leaving bigger homes available to those who wish to trade up. There must be a wider effort by the Government to adopt a parallel, twin-track approach to address these issues.

Against that background, however, I commend the Minister of State on those elements of the Bill which I support. I hope that on Committee Stage we can debate, scrutinise and analyse the contents of the Bill with a view to gaining more universal support for it. Ultimately, we will be able to produce a Bill that is more effective and will meet the thrust of what the Minister of State set out in initially proposing the legislation.

I respectfully ask the Minister of State to use his influence with his colleagues to provide time for a more wide-ranging debate on the current crisis in the housing sector, including rented property.

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