Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will facilitate the Acting Chairman in that regard. Many questions were asked during the debate and I will not get a chance to answer all of them, but we can come back. to them. We had a good discussion at the committee on the issue.

On behalf of this side of the House, I thank everybody for his or her contribution. It has been a wide-ranging and well informed debate in which many issues were raised. It is important that we take them on board and try to work with the Opposition as we have in the past. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and I recognise the work put in by the housing committee in the past year and a half. It is a constant process of engaging and trying new ideas. That is what we are here for, to try every idea to address the issue. In the House we recognise the urgency of dealing with it. It is important that the message get out that it is urgent for all stakeholders that are working with us across the system. There are plenty of ideas, schemes and actions which need to be driven with urgency. We all have a role to play in that regard. We acknowledge that we need to keep pushing.

Some Members have expressed a fear that a review of the housing action plan in Rebuilding Ireland will cause a delay. It absolutely will not because it is a review that is ongoing. The Minister has said very clearly on numerous occasions that it will not delay progress. We were very clear about this from the start. There has to be a constant review of the actions being taken and the adding of more because all Members have new ideas. We are all learning. That is what we are prepared to do and what the review is about. The Action Plan for Jobs was an annual review which involved adding new actions every year and the process worked very well which did not suit most in the Opposition because it was a success. In the first year of the Action Plan for Jobs not everyone bought into the progress made because not everyone could see it. In the past three or four years, however, it took off and smashed every target set for it. Likewise, with the housing action plan, we will be able to do with it takes t solve this problem. That will mean reviewing and adding actions as we go along. That is exactly what the Minister is doing and part of the discussion this morning will feeds into it. Members should, therefore, have no fears about it. The purpose is to push things along, as opposed to delaying anything.

I will address the issue raised by Deputy John Curran first because it is relevant to what happened at the committee meeting yesterday. With regard to tapping into the resources of the credit unions, we absolutely want it to happen. The Department has been engaging with them for many years and certainly in the past few months. We have met them umpteen times to make this happen. There are funds available. Not all of their funds should be put into housing but a certain amount should. They also want to be involved in seeking solutions locally and that is happening. The required changes are coming through the Central Bank. We are ready when it is. The credit unions are also ready. It will not suit every credit union, but it will suit their overall investments portfolio and how they invest money which we need. We are committed to making it happen and it is something we want to see happen. I want to be very clear that it will not be delayed from our side.

We all agree that not enough progress is being made on the issue of vacant properties, but we have to remember that they are private properties; they are not ours. Where properties are owned through local authorities, we have taken serious action and over 7,000 vacant social houses have been brought back into use in the past few years.

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There is enough money allocated this year to end that problem. There should no longer be any voids of social houses. We have led this by example. There are enough schemes out there now, the repair and lease back scheme, the purchase and renew scheme, and other schemes that will be announced in the future to deal with vacant properties. The numbers that people keep quoting, of 190,000, are the census figures. They are not our figures. I do not fully believe that all of those are available for housing. It is probably much less, but the Deputies are absolutely right that there are at least a couple of thousand and we need to get our hands on them. We want them as well but we recognise that they are private properties. We have to engage with the owners and we have used the carrot approach, but in the reviews, we will look at all approaches, both carrot and stick, to try to make this happen, because they need to be brought back into use and that is what we are committed to.

Politicians have a role to make this happen. I still meet people on a daily basis who are not aware of the schemes and yet we have all our councillors, all the Deputies in here, and we know about the repair and lease back scheme and we know there are different versions that might suit different people better as well. Let us put the word out there. We are engaging with people who tell us that they have vacant properties. Put them in touch with the local authority and let us make it happen. We have provided the money and the money is there to make this happen, but we need to get the message out there that we want it to happen as quickly as we possibly can.

Likewise, on the matter of State-owned lands, we have identified over 800 sites. We have asked local authorities to take the lead on these. There are a number of options to make that happen, but we need to drive that urgency. I ask Deputies to ask all their councillors at a local level to drive that urgency to have those lands developed. We have resources to make it happen and we have identified the sites, but the onus is on each local authority to drive it on, and we will facilitate that as well as we possibly can. There is endless opportunity there.

On the infrastructural fund, somebody raised the question about the delay of three or four years that it takes for infrastructure to happen. We are saying that one can develop the houses in parallel with the infrastructure. It is not a case of waiting for a bridge for two years and then starting to build the houses. One can phase the developments, start the construction of the houses and have them ready when the infrastructure is ready, if it is a road or a bridge. It is a little different if it is other infrastructure. Common sense applies here. One can move on much of this activity in a planned and phased way. It certainly will not delay housing. We have already seen some local authorities coming into us and saying that they are applying for funds to start building houses on those lands. That is the proper order, because that is what the local authorities are meant to do. There are other versions of the infrastructure fund that we can use to try to open up sites as well, but again, it is to try to kick-start and develop as well.

There are other matters that we can touch on and we will do that in the weeks ahead. We are absolutely committed to making this happen. Everyone says that there are not enough programmes. We know that we cannot fix it overnight, but the quarterly reports will show that we are making steady progress here. The trends are going in the right direction. It cannot all be visible. We cannot see all the houses we want to see. However, much progress has been made, even compared to where we were last year, with projects at local authority level. We now have over 600 projects. Some are for 20 or 30 houses, and some are for many more, but they were not there a year ago. Now they are in the system and moving, and we need to push them even harder again. Likewise, we need to see the private sector coming forward. Some of the planning changes we will do, that the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced today, will be discussed here next week. We need the help of the House to make that happen, so that those sites can move on and start delivering houses as well. Progress is being made. We recognise that it is not nearly enough and we have to keep it happening, and that is what we are here to do as well.

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