Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am very happy to give way when there is such a correction. I have some concerns about the bypassing of the planning system in the way proposed. I recognise that there is a crisis, but in bypassing a system, a process can be made more expensive and difficult, as in the making of submissions. Sometimes submissions are full of good ideas. I am concerned that we could potentially lose out on good conditions that could be attached to planning permission as a result. I am also concerned that we may be circumventing the Aarhus Convention, as people are entitled to be consulted and have a role in the process of deciding on environmental issues in an area.

One of the issues we have included in our housing document, which we have brought to the Minister's attention on a number of occasions, is the favoured mixture of tenure and size, with scaling for value when the amount of houses built can reduce the cost. It appears that this is the case in what has been proposed. It is the approach that should be taken, but the only concern I have is the amount to be paid for sites by the private sector. That income will be important to build other local authority houses in other areas or to provide for the involvement of tier 3 housing associations. There are some tier 3 housing associations in my area and although there are some minor criticisms about cherry-picking, housing of a very good standard has been delivered by some of the larger organisations or associations.

Last week the Central Statistics Office indicated the sheer scale of vacant units. I accept the point made by the Minister - I have made it also - that all of these vacant units are not in the right place or perhaps in high-demand areas. Nevertheless, there are many in high-demand areas and they could be released in Dublin. We should not confuse them with local authority voids, as very often people confuse one with the other. These vacant units tend to be available in the private sector and it is a question of putting imaginative schemes in place. I noted that a number of initiatives were identified in the report and hope they will help to free some of these units. For every 1% of vacancies in the Dublin area, we could release approximately 5,000 units. They may well be suitable as student accommodation or not suitable for families, but the knock-on effect would be to release other units. I will wait to see how some of the initiatives play out, but it is important that this aspect be addressed. It is addressed to some degree in the report, but we will see how it works in practice.

There are a number of other issues. For example, there appears to be a reliance on the HAP scheme. I found it difficult in some respects in my area and it does not add to the supply. It is not a particularly sustainable approach in the longer term as we keep having to pump money into something that must be renewed over time. It is useful as a short-term initiative, but it is not a solution in the longer term. One cannot avoid the prospect of having to build a sizable number of houses into the future, probably every year for the next ten or 15 years.

The mortgage-to-rent schemes are torturous and I have dealt with a few of them.

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