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

I move amendment No. 2:

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

— the Government reaffirms its commitment, in the Programme for a Partnership Government, to develop an affordable cost rental option for low-income families, to help keep rental costs manageable for tenants and allow them to avoid future rental market increase shocks;

— the Government’s ambition is to make cost/affordable rental a major part of the Irish housing system, with rents set at levels to cover construction costs and the management and administration of developments, but with only a minimal retained

profit margin, this will be informed by pilot projects being progressed in Dublin at Enniskerry Road and Lusk;

— following the second Housing Summit on 22nd January, 2018, local authorities are now finalising an outline of their respective affordable housing programmes, from the State residential land bank of around 2,000 hectares, including cost rental proposals;

— detailed discussions are continuing with the European Investment Bank regarding the application of its international experiences in developing and supporting affordable housing to large-scale cost rental projects in Ireland;

— the finalisation of new ‘Build to Rent’ and ‘co-living’ planning guidelines to encourage development and investment in more rental accommodation at more affordable rents;

— as part of Project Ireland 2040, the Government’s commitment to establish a new National Regeneration and Development Agency, including consideration of how best to make State lands available, including suitable lands in the control and ownership of Government departments and State agencies, to the new body for, inter alia, affordable residential development;

— a package of affordability measures was announced on 22nd January, 2018, with the potential to deliver more than 3,000 new homes initially and a target for at least 10,000 new affordable homes to buy and rent;

— the new measures are targeted at low- to moderate-income households, with annual gross income of up to €75,000 for dual income and €50,000 for single income households;

— a new Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan was made available from 1st February, 2018, providing long-term, fixed-rate mortgages for first-time buyers;

— a new Affordable Purchase Scheme will see affordable homes built initially on State land, in co-operation with local authorities, such as at the centrally located O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin city centre;

— the new €25 million Serviced Sites Fund will provide funding for local authorities to offer low-cost serviced sites to Approved Housing Bodies or housing co-operatives for the delivery of affordable homes to buy or rent;

— a second Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), an infrastructural investment fund, will be launched in the first half of 2018 to facilitate the early development of housing lands and delivery of more affordable new homes;

— the Government, through its Rebuilding Ireland – Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness and arising from the focused Rebuilding Ireland review in recent months, has prioritised measures to stimulate housing supply at more affordable prices and rents;

— the Government’s initial primary focus has been on delivering homes for households in the lowest income brackets, through the commitment of over €6 billion to deliver 50,000 new social housing homes by 2021, with qualifying households also able to

avail of the Housing Assistance Payment, the Rental Accommodation Scheme and other targeted programmes;

— over 25,000 households had their social housing needs met in 2017, an increase of 90 per cent on levels achieved in 2015;

— the Government has also implemented a suite of measures to facilitate increased residential construction activity and ensure the sector’s capacity to produce more affordable homes, through, inter alia:

— fast-track planning reforms and more flexible planning guidelines;

— €200 million investment in enabling infrastructure to service/open up housing lands with proportionate affordability dividends for house purchasers;

— the development of large-scale mixed-tenure housing projects, with social, affordable and private housing, on publicly-owned lands; and

— the help-to-buy scheme to assist first-time buyers to meet their deposit requirements;

— the Government has also introduced targeted and time-bound measures to limit excessive rent increases (e.g. through Rent Pressure Zones), and to provide further protections and effective support services to both tenants and landlords;

— in Budget 2018, the Government removed significant obstacles to building more homes more quickly, by:

— investing more in direct house-building by the State;

— removing the Capital Gains Tax incentive to hold on to residential land;

— escalating penalties for land hoarding; and

— providing a new, more affordable finance vehicle for builders through House Building Finance Ireland; and

— these measures are having a positive impact with all relevant indicators clearly showing that the supply-based measures under Rebuilding Ireland are working, e.g. over 17,500 new homes commenced construction during 2017, three times as many as in 2016.".

I thank the Green Party for moving this motion and giving us a chance to have a debate on the very important topic of cost rental and affordable rental, an area in which the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is very interested. The Minister sends his apologies. He spoke on this earlier today. He would like to have been here, but as Deputies know, he was very much at the centre of the National Emergency Co-Ordination Group, doing great work on behalf of the State along with all our agencies and Departments, trying to co-ordinate the recovery throughout the country. I think Deputies might recognise that. It is unfair to claim that he should be here. He cannot be in two places at the same time, and he did address this issue earlier today. As Deputy Ryan knows, when the Minister took office in July, he made it very clear that affordability was a key part of the work he wanted to do, along with developing social housing. I think Deputy Ryan knows he is committed to this.

We are willing to work with the Green Party on this area and were willing, as Deputy Ryan said, to form a Government. We would have loved for the Green Party to be a part of that. Deputy Ryan made a decision not to be part of that. That is his choice and Deputy Catherine Martin's choice, but we were open to having everybody involved in this Government and we were very clear on that. We all share a commitment to tackling the shortage of housing, both social and affordable.

I acknowledge the assistance of everybody in this House in facilitating the work of the National Emergency Co-Ordination Group this week and for rearranging the various meetings, including at committee, which the Minister had been scheduled to attend. We appreciate that and everyone's effort to ease the work we are doing in the Department. Storm Emma was a national weather event the like of which we have not experienced for more than 35 years. My Department continues to manage the recovery from it, which is still under way. Some counties are still very badly affected. That said, the Irish people have shown incredible resilience this week. Thanks to the efforts of our emergency response services, as well as community and volunteer groups throughout the country, most areas have returned to some sort of normality. There are some counties, including Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, Kildare, parts of Tipperary, Galway, parts of Westmeath and Meath which are still under pressure, but we are getting there.

See this speech in context