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

I move Amendment No. 3:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann notes that” and substitute the following:

“— the number of individuals or couples with a housing need that are neither eligible to apply for social housing because of the low income thresholds, nor able to afford to purchase a private home at current prices, far exceeds the approximately 100,000 on the social housing list, possibly by a factor of three;

— since taking office in 2011, Fine Gael have not delivered a single affordable home through any Government scheme;

— the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness contains no targets and no clear funding stream for the delivery of affordable housing;

— the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil Confidence and Supply Arrangement for a Fine Gael-led Minority Goverment has no targets or proposals for the delivery of affordable housing;

— Fianna Fáil have facilitated two Fine Gael budgets despite neither containing any credible proposals for delivering affordable housing;

— Fianna Fáil’s Budget 2018 proposals contain no targets or proposals for the delivery of affordable housing;

— the €90 million Help to Buy Scheme is driving up house prices and by the most generous estimate will help no more than 1,000 home purchases;

— the €200 million Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF) is unlikely to deliver significant numbers of genuinely affordable housing and may deliver no affordable homes in Dublin;

— the €25 million affordable housing fund announced in Budget 2018 will only deliver 650 affordable homes;

— the revised local authority first-time buyers mortgage will be of limited value if genuinely affordable homes are not available to purchase;

— the introduction of Rent Pressure Zones has not constrained rents by 4 per cent, particularly with respect to new tenancies;

— no affordable homes will be delivered by any Government scheme in 2018; and

— no precise definition of affordable rental homes has been forthcoming but the indications that such rents would be pitched at approximately 80 per cent of market rates, or worked out on the basis of a 25 year cost recovery on the commercial construction cost, are in no manner ‘affordable’; and

calls on the Government to:

— immediately introduce regulations to ensure that, independent of commitments in Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, a minimum of 20 per cent affordable housing is delivered in all private developments;

— directly construct 100,000 council and affordable homes over the next five years;

— immediately establish what price or rent level is defined as affordable and to ensure that this is genuinely affordable for those on average incomes above the eligibility threshold for council housing;

— achieve mixed income public housing estates through a combination of affordable housing but also by raising the eligibility criteria for renting local authority homes, at minimum, to include all with a housing need that cannot purchase privately at current market rates;

— not deplete the public housing stock, as happened in the past, by making it mandatory that the local authority have first refusal in buying back affordable homes that occupants seek to sell;

— immediately introduce an affordable housing scheme for public land that will ensure no land is sold off, in part or in whole, to private developers or landlords and further ensure that public private partnerships will not be considered in the context of council and/or affordable housing on public land;

— ensure that in any delivery of affordable homes on public land, all of these homes remain affordable into the future i.e. where purchasers do sell at a future date, they will be required to sell back to the local authority and that home will be either resold as affordable or revert to council housing;

— fund the delivery of the affordable housing schemes through a combination of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund/Home Building Finance Ireland (HBFI), Housing Finance Agency and exchequer funding as appropriate, and provide local authorities with multi-annual funding commitments to facilitate forward planning;

— design the HBFI fund to prioritise loan finance to small and medium-sized builders participating in council-led affordable housing schemes;

— ensure that all residential housing on National Asset Management Agency sites, or on sites supported by the Strategic Investment Fund, will be a mix of council and affordable housing only, with no housing on these sites being sold at market prices;

— ensure that all LIHAF and HBFI funded developments deliver, independent of any commitment in Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, 40 per cent affordable homes as per the Government’s original proposal for LIHAF, putting in place appropriate claw-back mechanisms to ensure the State benefits proportionately on any capital gain arising from future sale of these homes;

— immediately scrap the failed ‘Land Initiative’ and commit appropriate public funding to all council developments for projects currently underway in O’Devaney Gardens, Oscar Traynor Park and St Michael's Estate in Dublin City, The Grange/Kilcarberry in South Dublin and Shangannagh Castle in Dún Laoghaire, but ensure that all of these lands remain in full public ownership and that any affordable housing remains affordable into the future and that any tenure mix on these sites will ensure a majority percentage being developed as traditional council housing;

— identify public sites around the country for similar council-led developments and introduce legislation to allow for the purchase of land needed to meet the public and affordable housing needs, at use value prices, and immediately bring forward plans similar to the Damastown proposal in Fingal and Whitechurch in Cork brought forward by Solidarity-People Before Profit public representatives;

— commit the required funding to ensure the maximum council and affordable housing in the Poolbeg and Clonburris Strategic Development Zone's (SDZ) and to dramatically increase the proportion of council and affordable homes in the Cherywood SDZ;

— amend Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, to provide for a minimum of 20 per cent council housing requirement;

— introduce real rent controls that allow local authorities to set rents at affordable levels and ensure that future rent increases are linked to an index such as the Consumer Price Index; and

— defend and maintain the differential rent levels in local authority rented housing.”

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