Frank O'Rourke (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this amending legislation. As my colleagues have said, it is crucially important that this is passed without further delay if we are serious about dealing with the housing crisis that exists at the moment. It makes absolutely no sense that someone coming out of his or her first extension of planning who had substantially completed the development would be prevented from finishing the development and would have to go back. In essence, the proposal coming from the Department was that they would have to reapply to the local authority for an extension of duration. If there was then a third party objection, that could mean a further 12 or 18-month delay. I know the Minister would not condone that.

When we brought the issue to the attention of his officials they saw the sense in the point we were making and the error of their ways. They looked positively at trying to address it. Developments would have been shut down. If they continued to work on the basis of good faith, unauthorised development fines would then be levied on them and then, obviously, everything would cease. As we all acknowledge, labour is currently extremely difficult to find in the construction industry to get work done. If sites were closed down for a long period, that labour, expertise, talent and support would be lost. Not to amend the Act would have been a grave mistake in my view and my colleagues' view. That is why we set about trying to get this amended as quickly as possible. In my constituency of Kildare North, quite a number of sites will be falling into this situation this month and next.

It would be a terrible shame if developments of 100 or 150 houses had to be closed down. We need to ensure developers can power on with the delivery of such houses, many of which will come back to the local authorities through the 10% rule to assist with the current difficulties.

This welcome amending legislation will deal with an oversight in last year's Act. I am delighted to have played a part in bringing this to the attention of the Department in conjunction with my colleagues, Deputies Cowen and Casey. It is good that this positive measure is being speedily addressed here today. As we have all said in this House on numerous occasions, the only way to deal with this crisis is to increase supply. The problem at the moment is that the level of supply is insufficient. When supply comes back into the marketplace, that will deal with all of the housing issues with which we are familiar, including the current homelessness crisis, and will help with rents and in many other ways. Local authorities are not building - this is a major absence, in my view - because they are not being resourced to do so. They benefit from private developments because they get a percentage of those houses back. There is a win in this for everyone. If we are serious about delivering houses and dealing with the housing crisis, we should bring forward appropriate positive measures to facilitate the proper delivery of houses and allow strategic development to take place. That is what this is aimed at.

We spend a lot of time in this House talking about delivering and building houses. It is as if we had never built a house before in this country. We need to look at the different options. We need to give local authorities the resources they need to deliver houses on their own landbanks. Numerous Deputies have said that local authorities can build houses. Anyone who thinks they can do this at present is living in fantasy land. Local authorities will acknowledge that they are not resourced to build houses and do not have the expertise to do so. If we are serious about getting local authorities to develop and deliver housing on their own lands, we should resource and empower them to get designs done and put such projects out to tender. This would enable contractors, working under the supervision of the local authority, to develop housing to the point where it can be returned to the authority in turnkey condition. We are talking about local authority contracts on local authority land. The role of the local authority is to oversee such projects, implement them and ensure they go to tender. Local authorities do not have blocklayers, plasterers or plumbers. Such services have to be contracted or subcontracted. This way of delivering houses should be considered if we are serious about dealing with the housing emergency that exists.

If the Department cannot give local authorities the resources they need to do this work, it should consider the option of small public private partnership schemes, which worked successfully in the primary care section of our health service and in road construction. That is another way of doing this work. We should also consider the role of the private sector in helping to deliver houses. It cannot be the sole provider of houses, but it can play a major role in delivering houses because it is resourced to do so. When planning permission is granted in accordance with proper planning guidelines, a percentage of the income can come back to the local authorities. There are ways of delivering houses and meeting the demand that exists. Housing must be supplied in a coherent, strategic, proper and practical way that involves taking action rather than continuing to talk in this House as if we do not know what to do. We are not reinventing the wheel. We need to get on with the job.

We have all worked on local area and county development plans. If we are serious about developing and delivering houses, we must do so in a strategic manner. Various local area plans are under review in my constituency. I will not go into them in detail because I do not want to compromise the process. There are question marks over the zoning of prime, shovel-ready land that has been identified by the local authority for the delivery of houses. We need to look at that strategically and practically. Planning applications that relate to strategically-located and well-serviced land should be looked on positively if it is a case of a natural build-out from previous existing developments. We should allow such land to be zoned, if it is in keeping with good planning guidelines, in order to allow construction to happen. We should not be allowing construction in areas where the infrastructure is not present and where houses cannot be built for another eight or ten years. We need to act in a collective, practical and sensible manner. If we are really genuine about dealing with this crisis, we need to take a joined-up and practical approach. We should not take an approach that keeps us talking about the issue without delivering on it.

I welcome this Bill. I am delighted it is being treated with the urgency it deserves. We need to ensure the contractors who fall into the category to which I refer keep building because that is what will ultimately help the people who are attending our clinics every week.

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