Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is an honour to address the Chamber for the first time as a newly elected Deputy for Meath West. I thank the people of the constituency for giving me the chance to represent them in the House. Like many constituencies throughout the country, one of the biggest issues facing the people in it is that of housing. With more than 4,500 people on the housing waiting list in County Meath and a dearth of property available for rent or sale in the private housing market, we have a perfect storm. Just last week, a family in Navan occupied a boarded-up home. They broke down the hoarding and went in to occupy the home out of sheer desperation. This is the point at which the crisis is in our county. People are resorting to such action.

I am very aware of how difficult the situation is and I listened carefully to the Minister when he came to the House on 22 March and made a statement. That evening he asked that Deputies would come in with solutions and not just outline their problems. This was a very fair request by the Minister with regard to broadening the discussion and engaging proactively with the Department. I was a member of a local authority for 17 years and all I ask is that the officials in the Department meet us half way to tackle the issue.

Most of the speeches I have listened to this evening have been very broad brushstroke speeches. In the week after the general election I and the five other Deputies for County Meath met at a cross-party meeting with the housing SPC chairperson and the director of services for housing and his senior executive officers to discuss the challenge facing them on the ground. The biggest problems on the ground for the local authority system are mostly procedural issues. One of the main stumbling blocks to the provision of social housing in my county is the time lag between the allocation of funding and the stage when a project is shovel-ready. I and many other Deputies and councillors in County Meath are frustrated and feel thwarted by the system and the way it is currently structured. Local authorities need to see that process move more quickly to see projects come on stream.

The Minister referred to landbanks in his speech earlier. In our case, in County Meath, there is quite a significant landbank in the ownership of the local authority. In my town of Navan we have 28 acres of prime land bought for the provision of social homes. In this major urban centre, where thousands are on the housing waiting list, this land was purchased in 2007 at a cost of €717,000 per acre, and there is not so much as a sod turned in that field, let alone a house built in it. The loan repayments back to the Housing Finance Agency on that sum of €20 million is sucking €1.5 million out of the scarce resources of the council annually. This time last year a senior official from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government came to a meeting of the county council. I questioned him on that piece of land and he stated that the capital acquisition cost and the development cost associated with it would be covered, but nothing has happened to move this project any nearer to fruition. How can we cut through the barrage of red tape which has hog-tied this process and move on this project and so many others like it around the country? In the two years since we have started to have to repay the Housing Finance Agency, €3 million has gone off the current account of Meath County Council, which we could be using for social amenities, roads and so forth. That has been going on for nine years. We need to start with those simple issues, as I have outlined. All I am asking the Minister is that officials from his Department be deployed to work with officials in local authorities to cut through whatever issues are preventing this land in Farganstown, Navan, from providing much-needed social housing units.

Prior to joining this House, I worked as a journalist. I interviewed senior figures in the Housing Agency who told me that, as a policy, they did not agree with large council housing estates any more because it would lead to the "ghettoisation" of areas. I thought that was a terrible phrase. I disagree with it totally, and my fear is that that ideology permeates the whole thinking process in the Department in trying to address this issue. Some of the finest homes in this country are in council estates, and I hope that the incoming Government will seek to empower local authorities to get back to that basic principle, help those who need urgent assistance and provide homes.

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