Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am thrilled sitting listening to the developers' handbook.

For too long, in this country people have had to rely on the private sector to provide housing. Obviously, everything in this Bill reeks of that. In relation to when this vacant site levy will and will not be invoked, I had an amendment ruled out. The Government is actually reducing the levy on vacant sites and while I am thrilled to hear from Deputy Wallace about the way developers think, we need to introduce serious emergency legislation in this Dáil to deal with the emergency that is out there. Obviously, this will not deal with it.

Developers are sitting on land and we are in thrall to them to make it available for housing. Why not pass a law in this Dáil before the summer recess to compulsorily purchase all of these vacant sites at a nominal rate? That is the only way we will get our hands on the land that we need to provide housing in this country. If we are sitting waiting for developers, out of the goodness of their hearts, to provide it, it will not happen.

Everything that is in this legislation reeks of incentives, such as cutting development contributions to local authorities and making the market good for developers to suddenly provide us with housing, and it will not work. Developers are not interested. As has been outlined, they are only interested in profit. They do not have a social conscience.

Why are we throwing taxpayers' money at these developers in the hope that they will suddenly wake up some day and provide land or build houses? It will not work. Why is the Minister of State completely relying on it? There are people hoping some provision will emerge from this building some day soon that will build some houses. The Minister of State is responsibility for Construction 2020. There are no houses available. He is not building any and it has not gone unnoticed.

This Bill, that we are cutting and dissecting line by line, is ridiculous because the only way that we will get houses built in this country is the way they were provided in the 1970s and 1930s, that is, by funding local authorities to build them. Developers, even in the good times, would not leave aside 20%. They will not leave aside 10%. We will deal with that when those amendments come up. I will not intrude on that discussion. However, I am quite sickened here listening to all of these incentives that we must throw in the lap of developers that they might provide a few crumbs from their land banks. It is galling for people.

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