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

I thank Deputy Mick Wallace for raising the issue of housing and the question of State land. He might not realise it but we are actually on the same page on much of this. People seem to keep missing that. Himself and many others who are not in government keep mentioning this magic target of 10,000 social houses annually. We agree on this and have set aside the money that will get us to that point. Over the next four or five years we will deliver 10,000 social houses annually and we will continue to do so thereafter. Some Governments might do more, and we might do more ourselves if the taxpayers' money is there, but we are agreed on that figure yet people keep talking as though we are not. It was recommended by the committee on housing and homelessness, we adopted it, the funds have been set aside for coming years and have been ring fenced in order to deliver, as a minimum, 50,000 social houses. We are on the same page. That is separate to affordable housing. Deputy Mick Wallace wants 10,000 affordable houses also, but we are on very similar territory there too.

We agree about the use of State landbank and the very important role that it can play in delivering housing, increasing and accelerating its delivery especially in the social and affordable area. That is what we are trying to do. The plan places a particular focus on maximising the output of housing on landbanks owned by local authorities, the housing agency and the broader public sector. This is what we want to do. We also want to maximise taxpayers' money and its use to drive housing activity for social and affordable housing but also to get private housing back going too. If we are to solve the problem it must be across all tenures. The first task was to map the land and track what we had because all the land that was owned by the State was not known, we had to go find it. In April 2017 we published a list of 1,700 ha of land belonging to the State, 770 of those sites belong to local authorities and about 30 belong to other State agencies. In total all those sites could accommodate up to 50,000 houses. This land bank is under the control of housing authorities and given their broader role as planning authorities they are crucial in operationalising social and affordable housing delivery from the sites. Importantly, in addition to that, local authorities are already working on 11,000 social houses which are part of 700 construction projects. There are 11,000 social houses in the pipeline which is not enough. We would like to treble that and add to that further. A sum of €6 billion has been set aside to drive this and deliver these houses. Once again, the number of houses which Deputy Wallace seeks and which I seek and which we need are the same and we want them in a hurry. I wish that we could produce them tomorrow, but we cannot. The Deputy will see much more social housing being delivered in the coming years. We have gone from 75 social houses two years ago to 500 last year, to 2,000 social houses built directly this year and nearly 4,000 next year. Those are figures for direct build. When one adds in Part 5 acquisitions and other houses, there will be around 6,000 social houses built next year and that does not include leases under the HAP scheme. It is steady progress. We all want to get to the figure of 10,000. I agree with Deputy Wallace. We will get there but it cannot happen with a switch. We had to put the plan in place, make it happen and provide the money to do that. I have also set aside LIHAF funding to open up sites which will deliver social, affordable and private houses. We have set aside an extra €75 million of funds for LIHAF, which consists of a fund of €50 million for LIHAF and €25 million specifically to open local authority sites in order to deliver housing.

Anyone who builds houses on State land will have to sign up to a reduction in the price of those houses to the market. Naturally, if they are being given access to a free site or a low cost site belonging to the State, there must be a pay back in the price of the house which will be passed on in the cost to the customer or in providing access to affordable housing. We will try to get the maximum from those sites. We have set aside €6 billion but in order to stretch that it makes sense that when we open these sites we would allow a combination of social, affordable and private housing, by which we can get a lot more houses for everyone which will bring prices down. We are on the same page.

NAMA has to work with its debtors. They have debts to repay. Everyone knows about those situations for the builders and developers with those debts. They have to repay those debts and NAMA cannot force them to deliver social housing and sell them for free. They are entitled to work out their debt on their sites and lands which is what they are doing.

Regarding NAMA, people with skills will be used in relation to the loan of €750 million. That is other money that will be used to deliver housing. Naturally, if that housing is delivered on State sites, there will be payback to the State. They will not go in and deliver a house which will be sold on the private market without any payback to the State or any nod towards affordability. It will be dealt with on a site-by-site basis.

Regarding all the sites which I mentioned, the local authorities have all been asked to bring forward their plans by the end of September so over the coming weeks they are expected to come back to the Department with their plans for each site, showing how they will be developed for affordable and social housing with some private units too. Those plans have been submitted and are currently being analysed. There will be much more in this area in coming months and it is a positive development.

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