Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the discussion and debate on this Bill. It is a very important issue because at the heart of this Bill is a fundamentally positive objective, namely, to allow for the fast-tracking of the introduction of modular housing in strategic development zones. I do not think anybody would object to the principle involved, but there are significant difficulties, some of which were mentioned by speakers opposite, and I would like to add my own tuppence worth to the debate. It is essential we get housing for as many people as possible as quickly as possible, given the severe crisis we are in and the state of the collapse of the building industry, which thankfully is now turning a corner and beginning to change. In my constituency, there have been many new starts and I welcome that.

There are issues with modular homes. Let us be very frank about it. They are low cost, they are efficiently built, they are transported by vehicle and they arrive on the spot very quickly. The size of them can vary, but generally they have to be smaller because the vehicle has to transport the prefabricated structure. Where are they going to be, how long will they last, who is going to live in them and for how long? What sort of environment will they be placed in? These are key issues that have to be determined. They are critical, but it is essential that construction goes ahead. I just want to point out some significant issues that need to be addressed.

If we look at the historical situation in housing, the biggest and most awful construction we ever had was out in Ballymun. That was built in a housing crisis. It was built to Deputy Wallace's specifications, the higher the better, and so it was. They put into it not people who did not have families, but people who had children.

The environment did not sustain family size or family life. One need only look at them on television as they were brought down, eventually, which was a good thing. They served a purpose but they did not serve it for long.

In my constituency, I can look at three types of fast-track housing. I am in public life a long time. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle probably beats me on length of service, and the Taoiseach does so by approximately a year. In the 1970s, when I was first elected, the first debate I went to in my local authority was on prefabricated housing. It was a wonderful idea by some brilliant designer who would build an estate where the dividing walls between the houses would be of concrete blocks but the front and back walls would be prefabricated, and that is what they did. They put the blocks up, they brought in the prefabricated structure and, lo and behold, after two or three years the houses were riddled with damp and with all sorts of problems. One could not put a bath into the bedrooms because they were of too small. That did not work. We had other experiments, as I am sure others had all around the country.

We had a housing estate in which some bright spark - it may even have been the then Minister - decided we would build houses without chimneys because it was so cheap to use electricity and they would be built quicker. The houses went up with no chimneys and, lo and behold, with the oil crisis they had to retrofit chimneys to them taking up half of their living rooms, and we had another problem.

The other experiment was with so-called "Walt Disney" houses. These were thought up by a wonderful architect. There were maybe ten or 12 houses, not built in a straight road but at right angles to each other so that when one walked out of one's front door one looked straight in to the living room of the family right next door and somebody coming to visit did not know where a person's front door was. It was a catastrophe.

At the end of the day what works best is the standard traditional-type housing which is in the older estates generically. That works well because residents have privacy, they have good quality build, they have front and back gardens and they have a place at the back where they can bring in their bikes, cars or whatever. That is the ideal. That is what we want to see.

As no doubt the Minister of State intends, with the money in the Strategic Investment Fund which he mentioned and the special purpose vehicle, NAMA, we as a government ought to supply served sites, with water and sewerage, to builders who will commit to building affordable or social housing, in other words, providing them the land with no need for expenditure on their part on either water supply or sewerage and asking them to build houses at an acceptable price. Can we do that? Of course we can: why not? Gormanston is in my constituency. It was an Army camp and most of it is not active anymore. It is owned by the State - land cost is nil. It is in a sustainable location. It is beside a motorway and has a railway station. It has a lot going for it. If we use our heads and look at such sites around the country we can build the houses we want built at the price people can afford where there will not be the speculation there was in the building boom and we will not end up with the likes of Priory Hall, and we will have control of them.

There is a difference between the ministerial powers to direct a local authority and what I think should happen. In the absence of the recommendations by the tribunals, we do not have a regulator in place at present but the Government is committed to that happening. The powers the Minister is taking onto himself in this Bill must transfer to the regulator when he or she is in place. In other words, the politician is there for the policy and the regulator works out the details with the local authority. It is fine and proper for the Minister to sign up and say what should happen in planning policy and what the specification should be and for the regulator to ensure that happens. That would ensure there would be no political interference in any decision-making, which other Members may have raised here, and it would make a lot of sense.

It is high time we looked at empty houses in rural and mixed urban-rural constituencies. When I go around the constituency of Louth, I see dozens of houses that are empty. There are houses that were not finished, perhaps, during the Celtic tiger. There are houses that people have left because they lost their jobs and went abroad. There are houses that are empty for three or four years. If the Minister of State saw fit, he could instruct the local authorities to undertake an analysis of empty houses in their areas that may be in private ownership, in disputed ownership or merely lying idle and abandoned. There is a golden opportunity to get in and do something about it. That would reap a significant benefit. I estimate that in County Louth, including the south of the county, there are between 100 and 150 houses that could be occupied within a shorter period of time than one would think.

I would also like to think that we would have a new target in urban renewal and I hope the strategic development zone, SDZ, is where this is at. However, I have a problem with smaller apartments, especially if they are smaller because there is a profit incentive or motive. I have no difficulty if the apartments are constructed within an existing house, shop or whatever. If one looks at the 1911 Census, one will see there were hundreds of people living in the centre of towns. There is nobody living there now and the reason is, obviously, they have gone out to housing. In the centre of a town one has services such as electricity, water and sewerage. One has buildings, whatever their purpose, constructed in whatever time they were. If one wants to encourage development, one should allow people to construct within existing buildings the apartments that are needed. Rather than define a small size, it should be purpose built to the existing size. I do not want any dumps or dives. I do not want to have to go down dark, dank and smelly stairs, as I have, to meet housing applicants in desperate places in which they ended up during the so-called "good times". We do not want to repeat that. I want to ensure that does not happen. That is a core value we should have as well.

The other issue I raise on the Bill, which is developed there, is about planning. When I leave here tonight, I will visit a place in County Meath to look at a drain. What the hell am I going looking at a drain for, at probably 7 p.m.? I am looking at a drain that is coming from a flood plain. The councillors in Meath some time ago decided to build houses on this flood plain and the planning permission was given against, I believe, the advice of the planners. Now that the builder has gone in there, the residents of the existing houses are concerned that the drain they are taking off this flood plain will flood them because it will be right beside their houses. That is a bit of a nightmare, if one happens to live there. It is a nightmare for planning generally. When one looks at Athlone and the appalling trouble on the Shannon, one asks why in the name of God do we allow building on flood plains. I have no problem with housing where there have been houses and people have lived traditionally in rural areas, but why do we allow planning on flood plains? It is a joke. There are housing estates I have visited in east Meath where in fairness to the OPW it has a strategy for dealing with it, but the people are concerned. It should not be happening. I ask the Minister to address that issue.

I also see other issues in planning. One of them is this cozying up to developers. The cozying up to developers is what destroyed this country during the recent boom. Developers ran the show. They designed houses which was fine, they designed estates which was fair enough, but then they designed access routes and every damn thing. In County Meath - this is something which is on the Minister's desk - one developer believed that he was encouraged to buy up land that would have a link to the motorway on which he would build a soccer stadium for a club and he proceeded on that process as he believed it to be, but another developer decided he would come in with his little local area plan and look for rezoning there.

When the detail came together, the planning permission went to the person who lived elsewhere and had produced his own development plan. At issue is the fundamental question of developer-led area action plans and planning. It is a very serious issue, which has been examined. It is with the Department and has been sitting there for four months. It has been going on for a while and has been examined previously by other investigators. Could we please have it in the public domain in order that we can know the outcome of the €100,000 we spent on it and on planning in Carlow, Dublin, Cork and Galway? The allegations should be addressed.

While we must be very careful what we do, we must build houses as quickly as possible. What I propose for places such as Gormanstown makes the most sense. It is practical, it works and nobody can be caught out. The State owns the land, the services are provided by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and there is clarify about the cost before it starts.

On the modular homes issue, we have had many experiments and will have many housing crises. I want to be sure the families going into those modular homes will have as good a quality of life as anybody else and that the homes do not become places where nobody wants to go or which are put up for special letting. There are very serious issues about it. Will a person who takes such a home be able to get a transfer some years later? The Bill digest identifies a number of significant positives of modular homes. It identifies that the value of the homes decreases very significantly very quickly. The Government must address this and ensure it does not end up with something it regrets.

I welcome the Bill and the debate. I do not object in principle, given the crisis, to the powers that are changing and what the Minister is doing, and I have no doubt the Minister will act properly and appropriately. That said, I ask that he ensure the powers will transfer to the planning regulator, that he re-examine the issues I initially raised regarding county councils identifying empty homes in their areas, and most of all, that he look to see if we can fast-track hundreds of houses on State-owned land. Let us provide the infrastructure by special vehicle, fix the price of the houses and look after those who need them.

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