Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Another issue of concern is the position of the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA. Will the Minister of State clarify whether it will be penalised in the same way as everybody else and challenged to deliver on housing? I refer here not to the property developers over which NAMA has a stranglehold but to the agency itself. I received a reply to a parliamentary question last week which contained some rather disturbing information in the context of our current housing shortage. The reply noted that a stability programme update was published by the Department of Finance in December 2009. As we know, NAMA was established in February of that year. It was projected at that stage, the reply notes, that we would need approximately 30,000 houses per annum to meet requirements. After seven years in existence, however, we have NAMA clapping itself on the bank for its plans to have 4,500 houses built in the greater Dublin area by 2016 and possibly an additional 20,000 around the country in the next five years or so. That is incredible. Is it any wonder we have a housing shortage? With all the property it controls, including development sites, NAMA should be playing a major role in addressing the housing shortage. It should be working with and funding developers towards this end. As Deputy Kyne said, not everybody has the wherewithal to undertake the scale of development that is required to meet our housing need. NAMA's failure in this regard is a major cause of the housing shortage in this country.

Going back to urban regeneration, different market conditions prevail across the country, as I have outlined, and property hoarding is not occurring in Mayo and other rural counties. At the same time, however, we do have dilapidated market towns in these counties, and we must come up with a plan to bring them back to life. While we can seek to ensure the towns recover, it will never be the case that they will have multiple retail units on the scale there was before the recession. These towns require basic services and basic shops. In the past, small market towns had many shops selling the same types of goods, but we must face up to the reality that this is no longer sustainable. Some of the derelict commercial properties in the centres of these towns will never come back into commercial use. They are an eyesore and a reminder not only of the decline that has taken place but also of the changes in the way in which people now spend their money. Many consumers go to larger stores or make their purchases online. That does not mean there is not a place or a need for certain services in these towns, but the reality is that not all of those commercial premises will be returned to use.

Rather than penalising the owners of such properties with vacant-site levies, we need well-designed tax incentive schemes which would make changing them to residential use affordable for their owners. Mayo County Council is working on a study to explore the repopulation of these towns from commercially zoned to residentially zoned where appropriate. This approach has already been undertaken to great effect in the town of Louisburgh, which has been transformed from commercial dereliction to a site of vibrant town housing. That initiative should set an example for other local authorities. An approach based on incentivising property owners rather than beating with them a stick will facilitate older people, for instance, in moving from the countryside into a safer environment. This might be part of the solution to dealing with the problems we are seeing in small towns throughout the country and could be tied in with efforts to address the social housing shortage. I hope the Minister of State will give this proposal serious consideration. Otherwise, these small market towns will be nothing but monuments. We must take the bull by the horns and allow some recognition that the situation is rural counties like Mayo is different from that in Dublin and other cities.

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