Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is another example of the Government bringing forward legislation to deal with an issue it has by and large ignored and neglected over the past four years. It has made a big play out of addressing the issue of social housing and the lack of housing in general since the beginning of the year, while well aware that little practical provision will be made in terms of housing provision prior to the next general election. It is clear from the figures we have seen that only a tiny percentage of those on the waiting list will benefit from new local authority housing before the Government's term of office ends.

In regard to the four-year programme, the number of households waiting to be housed in Laois stands at 1,800, while the figure for Kildare is heading towards 8,000. Under the new housing programme announced, only 49 housing units will be provided in Laois over the three years. This will not even make a small dent in the housing waiting list, with new people joining the waiting list daily. A whole section of the population in Laois and south Kildare earn just over €25,000 gross and any legislation that does not deal with this issue is flawed. These people earn just over €25,000 gross, with an add-on of €500 per child or dependant allowed. However, those who earn between €25,000 and €27,000 are out of the loop for social housing and are disqualified from applying for a Clúid or Respond house or a Laois or Kildare County Council house.

These people are not earning as much as €45,000 or €50,000. Generally, they would need to earn that gross amount to have any hope of ever been able to get a local authority loan, never mind a loan from a bank or building society. We go from one extreme to the other in this country. In the boom time, I used to get two or three letters a week inviting me to come in to the bank as it had a loan available for me. Now we cannot beat money out of the financial institutions. The Minister of State has often mentioned the squeezed middle. These are the people who are earning just above €25,000, which disqualifies them from social housing, and those who are earning below €45,000. These people are caught and will be renting until kingdom come, but unfortunately for them, there is no control over rents. The Government has failed to introduce rent controls and has failed to deal with the rental sector thus far. These people, many of whom have young families and children, are caught in an awful predicament. I know many such people throughout counties Laois and Kildare who are caught in this predicament.

Several points need to be made about this Bill. Just four years or so ago, the Government parties were very critical of Fianna Fáil for cutting the minimum wage. Why in the name of God has the Government now cut the social housing provision under Part V to 10%? It has halved what it was under the previous Government. Who lobbied for this? Did Tom Parlon and the Construction Industry Federation lobby for that change or was it IBEC? Who lobbied for it? The 20% provision was working quite well.

It was 18% in County Laois. That was composed of 9% rented housing and 9% affordable housing, which was a very good scheme. Some discretion was available to local authorities to vary the percentage down if they wished, which worked very well.

I wish to highlight another issue relating to Part V which does not concern the Bill. Part V housing provision must be dispersed throughout a housing estate. The Fairgreen housing estate in Portlaoise has approximately 450 units. Another estate is The Bellingham, called after a British terrorist, Lord Bellingham. That will tell one the type of developer who built the estate. In those two housing estates the developer got away with lumping all of the social housing into one corner. In the case of The Bellingham, the houses were built face to face with just a footpath, not a roadway, between the houses. It is appalling and an example of very bad planning. Social housing legislation must ensure housing is dispersed or peppered, as is the more usual term, throughout the estate.

In the estate in which I live, Cloonlusk Abbey, my neighbours are council tenants. One cannot tell the difference between the social housing and private houses in the estate. Many of those who live in the estate do not even realise the four neighbours to my left are council tenants. They are very good tenants and we are very lucky to have them in the estate. They look after their houses very well. It shows that social housing works when it is properly dispersed in a housing estate.

I question the proposal in section 15 that the levy of 3% on vacant sites will not come into force until 2019. What is it about 2019? We face the problem currently. Developers and banks are sitting on sites since the collapse in property values, which is causing a huge impediment to the construction of houses. These sites are an eyesore and the cause of problems for people who live in those neighbourhoods.

I drafted and published a Derelict Sites (Amendment) Bill that sought to address the problem of developers and banks sitting on abandoned sites. There are 123 such sites in County Laois alone. They are a particular problem in Mountrath, Rathdowney and Ballinakill where in some of those towns a number of such sites are grouped together. Tackling the issue by imposing meaningful penalties on those who are deliberately sitting on such sites would contribute greatly to freeing up land for housing in addition to tidying up towns and villages and helping the tidy towns committees that look after them. Some banks and financial institutions do not register the sites in their names because they do not wish to pay the derelict sites levy. They are trying to hide and leave the question of the site ownership cloudy so that local authorities cannot go after them.

I also question the provision to enable developers to avail of lower development contributions on planning permissions that have yet to be activated and where houses have yet to be sold. If houses were built and planning permissions included a provision that development levies would be paid - in most cases they were modest – they should be paid. To do otherwise would constitute a write-down for the developers, bankers and financial institutions that own many such properties.

Section 31, in effect, does away with the need to provide affordable housing. Affordable housing was one of the great successes of housing policy in the past decade or so. Affordable housing is needed as the cost of housing is increasing and it must be provided for in the Bill. In order to have proper social integration one must have a mix of social, affordable and private housing in the one estate. There are great examples of where such a mix works, where it has been done properly. Affordable housing must be revisited. Otherwise, people will be priced out of the market again. Affordable housing acted as a great leveller and ensured prices did not become excessively high in some areas. It is regrettable that such a measure has been left out of the Bill and I urge the Minister of State to revisit the issue.

I welcome some aspects of the Bill, including the provision in section 33 to remove the provision by which developers could make a cash payment or provide sites elsewhere rather than provide the required number of social housing units. However, I do not welcome the Part V provision in section 33 that can be met through social leasing. Where in the name of God is the Minister of State going with such an approach? Previous speakers outlined the problems involved in renting and leasing. The Bill allows developers to provide a long-term lease on a property in order for it to be leased to local authorities for a defined period. At the end of the ten, 15 or 20 years the local authority would not have anything to show for the expenditure. It would not have a house and the people living there would not have a home. They would have to move on somewhere else or the local authority would have to start the process again. If a house were owned by a local authority, the local authority would get rent and it could sell the house under a tenant purchase scheme, if it so wished in order to get another pot of money, but most importantly, a family would get a permanent home. Leasing is madness. It is like what the Tories are doing in London. I do not know from where the Minister of State got the idea. Perhaps it was from the Construction Industry Federation, IBEC or the Tories, but for God’s sake he should return to the drawing board and delete the leasing option from the Bill. That is the most reprehensible part of the Bill and I could not support it for that reason.

I regret that the Minister of State has missed the opportunity to tighten up the legislation on social housing, in particular the measures relating to social and affordable housing, an area that badly needs to be addressed. I look forward to the Bill being improved but we could not support it in its current form.

See this speech in context