Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

All the Deputies who have spoken have peculiar ways to solve a problem which really requires a simple response. We have to go back to the genesis of the problem about 15 years ago when the Government of the day decided to shift responsibility away from the local authorities and handed it to special housing bodies and the Department of Social Protection. I remember speaking on the issue in this House at the time when I made myself quite unpopular in certain areas by saying it was crazy stuff and would not work. They told me that it would, that they had tested it. They had not and it did not. Now we are reaping the whirlwind from the seeds sown at the time.

We have to put the onus back on the local authorities to set themselves in motion rapidly. I cannot understand why it takes up to four years to draw up plans to build a housing scheme to provide affordable housing or serviced or serviceable sites on lands already zoned or which are capable of being zoned. One way or another, that combination of efforts would result in two things. It would help to reduce the cost of housing generally. Whether we like it, the cost of housing for the average buyer, let alone those on local authority housing lists, is way too high. It is not possible for a family or an individual to pay €400,000 for a house, the cost in some of the pressured places in this city and adjoining counties. They also have childminding and educational costs to meet. One would need an income of €150,000 to fund such a loan. There is no use playing around on the matter; that is the way it is.

I suggest we have an emergency plan to deliver serviced sites. The local authorities could do this, as they have sites available. Some of us have done this and availed of them in the past. Incidentally, at the peak of the boom I was involved in the development of a number of serviced sites in my constituency, comprising about 100 houses built for those on the local authority housing list. When they were finished, they were exactly twice the value of what they had cost to build. The local committee had to pay €25,000 for each for the sites, while the approved housing bodies received them for €1. That was the difference. I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot do more of that to deliver houses quickly. By the way, the houses were built before the paperwork was finished in the local authority. That is a sad reflection, but that is the way it was.

There are multiple facets to the housing issue with which we could deal quickly. However, we have to put the onus back on the local authorities. We must ask them how quickly they could produce the goods. In a constituency such as Kildare North, for example, we need nothing less than 1,000 houses at this stage to stabilise the market, provide the urgently required housing and stem the flow of homeless persons. The problem is in the here and now, not two years down the road. Some claim that it is recent. Some of us were dealing with these issues at the peak of the boom. There were people homeless then.

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