Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I oppose the Bill. Once again, it is satisfying the developer. This is a dangerous path, and we have already seen the results of tinkering with Part V. Part V was introduced to try to force developers to deliver social housing for cities in particular. It has not worked and was never going to work in the way it was introduced, and it needs to be tightened and strengthened. Instead, the Government, in this Bill, is trying to let former developers, and the vulture funds which have bought many development sites in this city and elsewhere, off their duty to provide social housing. Some of it is to compensate for the State's failure to deliver social housing in terms of local authority building. As a consequence of the Bill, we will have more of the same.

The Bill will underwrite the policy of this and previous Governments to subsidise social housing through supporting private landlords. This is very evident in the proposal in the legislation to allow for the social leasing, or whatever it is called, as an opportunity for developers in the future in order that the local authorities do not have the right to purchase. Sometimes, people forget that the 20% social housing provision is an option, not a grant by a developer of a house or an apartment. During the height of the boom, local authorities found it very difficult to take up the options that were available to them. We can discuss whether it was good or bad in terms of houses, for example, whether it was preferable to take the money from a developer rather than an option on houses in Castleknock.

The Government thinking on social housing has been wrong for a number of years and this is the source of some of the chaos in social housing. I will return to the regeneration schemes. We have not delivered social housing in the way society understands it. Local authorities, in the main, stopped building a number of years ago before the boom times when money for social housing began to dry up. Of late, money for social housing has been drying up substantially, given that most of the money has been diverted to one of the 200 social housing bodies which can get access to other forms off the Statute Book, whereas if the local authorities were granted the money, it would be seen as a loan or support for local authorities, in which this and the previous Governments were not keen to invest.

I continually refer to history which teaches that unless we change, we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. At the very least, in this State in times of housing crises, major social housing programs were developed. They did not all end up in chaos with people demanding regeneration in Ballymun, Dolphin House or Fatima Mansions. Although the programme of social housing from the 1920s to the 1950s might have provided rough, crude houses, they have settled down over time and, in some cases, are much sought after. Fairview, The Tenters and most of Dublin 12, including Crumlin, Drimnagh and Walkinstown, are much sought after by people who would love to live in those areas. Those social housing schemes were built at a time when the State had very little money but understood the need to invest in and provide for the needs of its citizens.

What was formerly regarded as an investment in a social service for the future is seen instead as current expenditure. The motivation is profit instead of service provision.

This Bill falls into the trap set by speculators and landlords. I do not refer to the one-off landlords who bought a house in boom times and are now struggling with the mortgage on their second homes. The problem is caused by the big landlords who are holding onto sites in the hope of increasing their profit margins. The lands in Dublin owned by local authorities or the Government are for the most part serviced by roads and other infrastructure. An investment in building houses on these lands would help to meet the social housing needs of our population. Rather than take this approach, however, the Government is encouraging private landlords to get involved in social leasing through the housing assistance payment scheme, the rent assistance supplement and rent allowance. The local authorities are leasing properties when they should be building social housing themselves.

The reduction in the Part V provisions on social housing from 20% to 10% is a retrograde step. We should be ring-fencing 20% and councils should be allowed to purchase houses even if it means taking an arm's length approach. Certain councils in England which were prevented from building houses instead established bodies operating at an arm's length from the councils to enable them to draw down funds from the Government and the private sector. However, this ethos suggests that local authorities should operate primarily as corporate entities rather than service providers. Councils should also be able to accept money if it means building two houses in an alternative location rather than one on the development site. I recall a discussion on whether it would be beneficial to construct social housing on Shrewsbury Road given that the council might construct five to ten houses in Ballyfermot or Crumlin for the price of one on Shrewsbury Road. However, this approach to addressing housing needs is part of the reason for the chaos that now exists.

The regeneration plans for my area were severely hit by the downturn. The redevelopment of St. Theresa's Gardens is proceeding in a minimal way. Regeneration of Dolphin House has been promised for I do not know how long and it will now proceed in a piecemeal manner. The social housing programme for St. Michael's Estate was partially completed last year but the remainder of the estate is an empty field. Local representatives held a meeting last Friday with the regeneration board for St. Michael's Estate. The local authority, the regeneration board and local residents are in favour of using the part of the site ring fenced for private development for social housing. I understand this will involve site 1B, which is adjacent to Thornton Heights. This development would help to address the housing needs of senior citizens in the area and thereby free up existing family homes.

However, the proposal is encountering obstacles due to bureaucracy and a failed regeneration model. A considerable number of regeneration programmes have failed around the country but some of the biggest failures were in large-scale regeneration of flat complexes. Even the regeneration of Fatima Mansions, which was a success in some ways, has had a knock-on effect on local authority housing lists because many of the previous local authority flats were not replaced in the same numbers on site or elsewhere. This skewed the local authority housing list in those areas. It is likely that residents in the first two blocks in Dolphin House will be housed before people who are on the homeless list because while the redevelopment of that complex is going to proceed, it will not deliver the same number of replacement social houses. Dublin City Council's housing stock has collapsed because of its regeneration programme. In Chamber Street three blocks of flats were demolished and we were left with an empty field. Nothing is being build in Cherry Orchard and the local authority is now putting the land up for sale in the hope that it can extract money from one of the vulture funds in order to build houses elsewhere. The council is starved of funds to build badly needed houses and the only housing development in the area is being build by a voluntary housing body.

Blame for this problem is not limited to the current Government. The policy of successive governments was to move away from investing in local authority housing to a system of housing support through rent supplements and allowances. Governments opted to subsidise private landlordism over public housing, and this Bill continues that trend. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coffey, recently criticised local authorities for setting standards for apartment dwellings that are higher than the national standards and suggested this was one of the reasons why private speculators are not developing sites in Dublin city. Imagine criticising a council for setting a standard on which it had widely consulted. The Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, might take the time to read the Dublin City Council's successful apartment living document, which is the basis for the council's decision to introduce higher standards. The standards are aimed at moving people away from houses and into apartments. The reason people did not want to move into apartments was because they were too small and not suitable for rearing families. The new standards also address other issues, such as small pocket parks, services and access to transport.

All of that is in the document, so it is wrong to ask a council to move away from the position it has taken, just because the speculators are saying it is too costly to build houses.

It is not too costly because the price of building houses in Dublin has dropped in recent years. The cost of building apartments is still below the price for which houses are being sold today on the open market. We have seen the headlines in recent times about some developers looking for standards to be dropped. They are trying to ensure they can squeeze the biggest profit from sites they already hold. They might then open them up and start building.

Increased house prices and private rents are adding to the problems that ordinary decent workers face in Dublin and elsewhere in the State. Higher rents mean that people are ending up on local authority lists, yet those councils cannot help them. If they are on social welfare they cannot get rent allowance, but they cannot afford to rent privately. The reason developments are not happening is that most of the lands previously held by NAMA are now held by a different type of speculator offshore which has a profit margin in mind, be it 50% or 100%, which is well above the normal margin of 20%.

The normal cost of building a house in Dublin, including land costs, would be €200,000 yet I have seen houses for sale in Crumlin for nearly €300,000, which is a huge profit. They are not spectacular houses, they are basic model homes which are being sold to make a substantial profit for the developer. Fair dues to him in some ways, but at the end of the day the provisions in the Bill will contribute to an increase in house prices. They will also contribute to a dependency on private landlords by the State into the future, whether it is through local authorities under the housing assistance payment or HAP scheme, or directly because they are not building enough social housing. The Minister of State should substantially reconsider this Bill.

I welcome the derelict sites levy but there is a problem with it. Dublin City Council has a derelict sites tax and can compulsorily purchase vacant land, but only if it has the money to do so. If the council is starved of funding it will not have the money to buy derelict land. Even if it was bought, the council would probably have to sell it because the Government is not encouraging local authorities to build housing, so there is a problem.

There is enough serviced land already in this State, it is just that people are sitting on it in the hope that the price of housing in the capital will go back up to boom-time levels. It is already moving in that direction. In some areas of Dublin the price of housing has doubled, while in other areas it has risen by only 50%. Nowhere in the city, however, will a person be able to buy a house for the same price it was sold for three years ago. The substantial increase in house prices will cause problems in the future but this Bill will not address that. This is a cash cow for many developers who are currently sitting on land that could be developed. Others cannot develop it even if they wished because they do not have access to funds. That is something else that needs to be addressed.

This Government and the previous one have not invested in local authority housing as they should have. It has been proven that if one goes down the road proposed in this Bill one will end up contributing further to the housing crisis that we already have, both in Dublin and elsewhere in this State.

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