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

If the Minister of State and we are returned in the next Dáil, we will certainly push him on the idea of on-site inspection and the restoration of the clerk of works, as that is vital. The new regulations only identify somebody that can be sued and do not stop any of the bad practices.

The Minister of State made a point on how we compare with the rest of Europe but his information was slightly misleading. I made the point that we should definitely not compare ourselves with Britain and London, where the standards are appalling. Nobody wants to be benchmarked with them. The Minister of State's information from Germany was slightly inaccurate; he quoted a 70 sq. m figure for a two-bed property but that is a for a two-person two-bed property. The German standard for a family two-bedroom unit involving four persons is 88 sq. m. In that sense, what we are proposing is not excessive relative to European standards and is very much in keeping with them.

The bottom line is we are opposing section 3 because it concentrates too much power in the Minister's hands. It is not a good way to go. Removing the power of local authorities to set higher standards is dangerous. Housing is a long-term game and leaving it to a Minister who may be here for one office term is not a good way to go about things. We need more accountability, oversight and long-term thinking. The idea is strategically good as the larger minimum sizes we propose are not excessive by any means. They will stand to us. Reports done in Britain around 1961 set the idea in principle that additional space is a longer term investment that will yield, apart from increased well-being, return on investment in terms of quality of living.

With regard to power being centred in the Minister's hands, I will use the example of what is happening in Dublin's docklands when it is in the gift of a Minister to drive planning policy and achieve his own objectives without scrutiny or oversight from anybody else. We can consider what the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, has called Dublin's Canary Wharf. He has told NAMA to basically go ahead and build it, and it has complied. Dublin's docklands has 22 ha. of undeveloped land, 75% of which is in the control of NAMA. The Minister has spoken about this being a rare opportunity but what are we getting from it? We are getting more office space than was previously envisaged, which itself is an amount already deemed to be too much.

See this speech in context