Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will only take approximately ten minutes. I wish to give notice of this to the Technical Group. The relevant Members are not here, but I do not want the Bill to collapse because they are not present. I offer apologies from Deputy Stanley to the Minister of State. He was unable to be in the House today to speak on behalf of Sinn Féin on this Bill. He asked me to step in at the last minute and that is why I am here.

I agree with much of what the Minister of State said in his opening remarks. While we have had differences of opinion many times in this Chamber and across the floor in the areas of housing and homelessness, I do not doubt the Minister of State's sincerity in trying to address this problem. We have differing priorities and ideas on how we should address these problems, particularly the problems of homelessness, the lack of provision of social housing and the over-dependency on the private market. In all honesty, though, I do not doubt the Minister of State's sincerity in trying to deal with this issue. We will work with the Minister of State on the programme he has put forward. We do not believe that it goes far enough, but anything that increases house building, helps to eradicate homelessness and regulates the private rental market to give rent certainty is welcome.

I understand completely what the Minister of State is trying to do by bringing forward national guidelines. There are two ways of looking at it. By having national guidelines there will no longer be an ad hocapproach throughout the State to the building of apartment blocks. Some will argue this is a good thing while others will argue that is not the way to go. That is because we cannot consider each county or location and decide that prescribed national guidelines must be implemented for all of them. There are different demands, densities and demographics in each area. This is why local development plans are important and have come into their own.

One of the few remaining powers that local authorities have is setting their own local development plans for five years.

We have already heard from the previous speaker, Deputy Cowen, that some local authorities have very high standards while those in others are not as high. Reference was made to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Dublin City Council. Deputy Cowen outlined some of the problems Dublin City Council has with the guidelines. They make the purchase of the apartments concerned extremely expensive. The apartments are designed not to attract the people who need them most. I do not know the breakdown of the housing list for Dublin City Council, but in Cork City Council 50% of those on housing waiting lists are single applicants who would be the type of people who, if they were to enter the property market, would consider apartments rather than three and four-bedroom houses. We need to build apartment blocks that are affordable and accessible to everyone, not just those on a particular pay scale.

The difficulty I have with ministerial guidelines taking precedence is that I do not know how it will work in practice, given that each area is different. In theory, it sounds great, but I do not know how we will implement it in practice. I also have some concerns about the guidelines. I understand, based on what we have heard, there will be smaller floor sizes, lower floor-to-ceiling heights and revised elevator and car parking sizes.

While there is no doubt that we have a housing crisis and we need to kick-start the building of housing as quickly as possible, we need to ensure that the type and quality of housing that we will undertake as part of any build will be one that lasts long into the future. We have seen the mistakes of the past. Housing estates in my constituency have been knocked down because of poor planning, design and standards. I can understand national guidelines coming into play and the rational behind that, but I do not know how it will work in practice.

I have some concerns that the Minister is moving to a position whereby he can override local development plans. I do not know whether that is the best road to go down. Elected representatives who represent those who elected them would have greater knowledge of local environments than a Minister. We have local development plans because they reflect local demographics, population, environment and the social and economic aspects of a particular city or a local authority.

The Minister has proposed an amendment whereby he will now have the power to override the local development plans of local authorities. I do not think any appeals process is built into that proposal and perhaps the Minister of State or his officials could clarify the position. If a Minister gives a local authority national guidelines and tells it that is what he or she wants it to implement, despite the proposals being contrary to the local development plan because of higher or lower standards, there does not seem to be any mechanism for local authorities to appeal such decisions, which is one of the flaws in the Bill.

We need to solve the problem and build houses and apartments, but we need to make sure they are of a high quality, and are affordable and accessible. One of the issues we have is that the Bill will give a lot of power to one individual, namely, the Minister of the day - it may not be the Minister, Deputy Kelly, after the next election. The Bill proposes to take from local authorities their ability to formulate local development plans and give it to a Minister who can then override local development plans.

As I said, we support any measures that will improve the housing situation. We have questions about the Bill but we will not oppose it on Second Stage because we feel that would not achieve anything. We want to submit numerous amendments on the areas about which we have concerns on Committee Stage. Just as I respect the sincerity of the Minister of State in trying to resolve this crisis, I hope he will respect that there are people on the opposite side of the Chamber who may have different views but whose sincerity in trying to resolve this issue is the same as his.

I hope on Committee Stage we can have a very robust and open debate on what we are proposing in terms of amendments, and can get away from the back-and-forth debate across the Chamber. Much good work on legislation is done on Committee Stage. Even though we have concerns about the Bill, and probably would not support it if it remained as it is, if we allow it to proceed to Committee Stage we will put forward amendments and have an open, frank and robust debate. It is to be hoped some of our concerns and amendments would be taken on board by the Minister of State. We will see where we stand after Committee Stage and will then make a decision on Report and Final Stages.

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