Dáil debates

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Bill 2016 [Seanad]: Second Stage

 

3:35 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This legislation is directed towards trying to deal with the housing crisis and at the beginning of any discussion on that crisis, we must start by reminding ourselves of the human reality. It came home again in the past week when a man in Dundalk died on the street as a result of exposure to the cold. It is almost two years to the day since Jonathan Corrie died close to the entrance of this building. Those very stark and awful facts are set against a background of the homelessness issue not getting any better since Jonathan Corrie's death but rather very considerably worse. For all the work, talk, plans, publications and announcements, the issue has worsened and people continue to die on the streets. The number of people on the streets in homeless and emergency accommodation has increased. In particular, it is a shame beyond shame for any Government that there are now 2,400 children who are homeless, with 85% of those in the city. It is beyond shameful.

I do not doubt the Minister has put much effort into this but it is not working because, overwhelmingly, there is a reliance on the market to deliver. In everything the Minister does, there is the fear and "sensitivity", a word that almost made me scream, that the Government feels it must have for a thing called the "market". We should remove the euphemism of the "market", as it is a euphemism for developers and landlords. That is what we are talking about when we mention the market. We are talking about people who want to make money from property. The Government's entire policy is directed towards incentivising them and removing obstacles; in essence, it is not doing anything that might annoy them or suggest to those people that they might make less money from property and housing. These vested interests are clearly telling the Minister and his Government, as well as Fianna Fáil, if we take into account how it reacted to the rent certainty legislation, what cannot be done because it would mean those people would not make enough money. The Government is rolling over and saying that is acceptable. Everything the Government does is circumscribed, essentially, by the fears, anxieties and greed of the developers, landowners and landlords. For that reason, it ends up doing things that at best will achieve very little and at worst may be counterproductive. That brings us to this Bill.

We should be clear about this Bill. As Deputy Coppinger has stated, the primary reason we have not got the famous supply of housing is that NAMA, landowners and developers have not seen it as profitable to deliver housing. There are problems at local authority level and I do not dispute that. They are inherent to the democratic process of planning and public consultation but to say that is the main issue is the knee-jerk view of the developer and landlord class. That is what they always think. They believe the problem is bureaucracy, red tape and inefficient public bodies rather than themselves. That is not to say there are no problems or delays in the planning process but even with the legislative streamlining being proposed by the Minister, it will make no difference. The problem at the level of the local authority and An Bord Pleanála is a lack of staffing. The Minister can legislate all he likes but it will not make any difference in terms of timescale. If it does make a difference, it will be because the quality of planning oversight will reduce in order to meet the deadlines being set by the Minister. There will be bad development, bad planning decisions and so on because the Government is not providing resources but is demanding that the stuff be rushed through. The Minister is not addressing the central problem.

If the Minister manages to speed up the process he will still be at the mercy of developers. I received an interesting piece of anecdotal evidence during the week indicating that many of the planning applications in Dublin are now for student accommodation and hotels. I believe Mr. Denis O'Brien is moving into the provision of student accommodation. It is always a bad sign when he moves in any particular direction.

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