Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I will probably be briefer than Deputies Wallace and Boyd Barrett. I want to discuss two main provisions in the Bill - that is all that is in it anyway. One of the provisions is clearly aimed at preventing local authorities from demanding of developers higher standards than those set out in the new national apartment planning guidelines. It is a monumental joke that we have not even seen these guidelines. We have no idea what they might be and we have to trust the Minister that they will be grand and everything will be great. One could not make this stuff up. Each Bill that has been tabled in the past few weeks has been worse than the one before.

Until now, local authorities were at liberty to set higher standards for minimum floor areas and other design criteria for apartments than those laid out in the 2007 Department guidelines. As we know, the 2007 guidelines increased the minimum sizes for one-bedroom apartments from the 1998 minimum of 38 sq. m to 45 sq. m. In a very positive development, Dublin City Council went one better and set the minimum floor size for one-bedroom apartments at 55 sq. m, which is 10 sq. m larger than the minimum set out in the national guidelines.

We are now being asked to remove that type of power from local authorities and force them to follow rules that the Minister makes up, which will apply nationally regardless of any context. It is disgraceful. We have to consider this in the context of the sustained pressure which Dublin City Council has been put under since it introduced new minimum standards.

A range of bodies have demanded that the standards be relaxed. We know that, to date, councillors have resisted that, and fair play to them. The Minister is now making sure that the democratic process and the will of councillors will not be upheld. Whose will is being upheld? We know that the Construction Industry Federation, Property Industry Ireland, IBEC and Brian Moran of Hines, a US investment company which is active in Dublin, have all pushed hard for Dublin City Council to relax its standards. This Bill will give them their wish, as the Minister wrests control over minimum standards from Dublin City Council, which, in fairness, has stuck to its guns.

Dublin already has plenty of small apartments - in fact, it has too many. It also has quite a large number of small houses and standard two-up and two-down houses.

These houses run between 45 sq m and 60 sq m. For single storey terraces, the size can be between 30 sq m and 50 sq m. Dublin is not short of small places for people to live. What research did the Minister of State do on housing stock in advance of the Bill being put forward? Did he count how many dwellings are already below 45 sq. m? Has a comprehensive survey been conducted of current housing stock to allow the Minister of State come to the conclusion that Dublin needs a relaxation of standards so smaller apartments can be built because we do not have enough of them? Do we have this information? I have not seen any evidence of it. It seems to be driven by the needs of vested interests rather than by building a city in which people might enjoy living. Perhaps I am completely wrong and the Minister of State will surprise us with these magnificent national guidelines which will be better than anything we have seen before, but even if this were the case, and I doubt it, it is absolutely unacceptable that we are discussing the Bill in the absence of this knowledge. It is just not good enough.

According to the Bills digest produced by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, the Government has taken on board the policy proposals contained in the Policy Options for Supporting the Provision of Housing at Affordable Prices report by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland. Included among these little nuggets is that individual local authorities should not be permitted to apply more demanding standards than the national standard. This has essentially been integrated unchanged into the legislation we have before us. This is not good enough.

Who wrote the report? It was commissioned by Anthony Foley of the DCU Business School on behalf of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland. What qualifications does this individual have to talk on housing? He is a senior lecturer at the DCU Business School and he is the head of economics, finance and entrepreneurship. His principal interests are European integration, industrial development, international trade, service exports, public expenditure, structure and trends, new ventures and entrepreneurship. Is he an expert on housing? I do not think so. His previous foray into advice to Governments and other policy makers was his paper on behalf of the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland which found, miraculously, that visiting pubs is a key attraction for tourists visiting Ireland. We have this expert in economics and entrepreneurship, who churns out papers on behalf of the drinks industry basically telling it what it wants to hear, offering policy proposals, which have basically been transcribed by the Government into this legislation, to allow developers to build smaller apartments regardless of whether we even need them because the Government does not have the evidence to state this.

The paper has headings such as interest rates and availability of finance in the chapter on future demand of housing, but absolutely no survey of, or figures on, how many 40 sq. m to 50 sq. m apartments actually exist in Dublin, how much need for larger apartments might exist, whether more one bed apartments are necessary at all and whether there is any need for more studio apartments or anything like this. We actually do not have this information. Later in the report we see figures on housing commencements in the Dublin region by number of bedrooms per unit, but there is no analysis of whether the 647 three-bedroom houses which were started in Dublin last year were needed over and above two-bedroom houses. The report concedes that the question arises whether the overall Dublin mix of houses is appropriate, but why should we let our lack of knowledge stop us from bringing forward the Bill in the last week before the Christmas break?

The Minister of State said previously that his changes will reduce the cost of apartment building in Dublin by approximately €20,000 per unit, allegedly, but we all know the cost reductions will not be fully passed on to buyers or renters. It is not good enough. The legislation will not do anything to address the supply. The Government has the power, seemingly, to magically increase supply overnight without having to fling cash at developers, which seems to be its favourite thing.

According to the Department, the total number of new social houses in progress in the second quarter of 2015 was 324. All of the 324 units in progress were built by voluntary and co-operative housing organisations. This is a bit odd, because according to the document there is supposed to be capital funding for 2,386 social housing units. Why are these units not in progress? We know a grand total of 20 social housing units were completed by the second quarter of 2015, and this is without even looking at the question of NAMA into which I will not get. It is time we faced facts. There has been an absolutely shambolic approach to housing in the State, and to bring this legislation here at the eleventh hour is a step beyond disgraceful. It should be opposed.

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