Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing five minutes of my time with Deputy Broughan.

I also am opposed to PPPs. From what I have seen of them, they are a capital grab on State ownership and resources and are used to create huge profits for their CEOs. Many of them do not deliver to the standard to which they should deliver and they are normally for short-term gain. Many examples have been given already, such as Carillion and other companies that have used PPPs. This increasingly became policy in the 1980s, after Thatcher. Then there was the Thatcherite-Reaganite type of light-touch regulation, public private partnerships and the sell-off of utilities and services in State ownership to private companies. What we have seen in most instances in which the State has had to move in if these projects fail - most of them do - is that the taxpayer has had to pay more, tax breaks are given, etc.

I wish to make a particular point about housing. I know other points have been made about this and the fact that 30% of social housing under the Government's Rebuilding Ireland plan to 2021 is to be funded by public private partnerships. This is a real sell-out for the people of this country. We are in the biggest housing crisis we have seen in decades, with 3,500 children homeless, 100,000 people on the housing waiting list and people who cannot access mortgages because of low wages, yet the Government is still looking to public private partnerships to deliver.

I wish to put on the record of the Dáil a real alternative that makes so much sense it is unbelievable. The Government cannot see the wood for the trees. This morning I attended a briefing by representatives of the St. Michael's Estate family resource centre and other community activists, who put forward a programme for their estate which I will outline here because the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, will be the person who will make a decision whether this capital expenditure for next year of €55 million to build these public houses on public lands will be provided. The main point they made was that people are looking to the Government to use our public resources wisely and for public good, not private gain. This was also acknowledged by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government following the publication in April 2018 of the report entitled, "Review of Delivery Costs and Viability for Affordable Residential Developments". It is estimated that local authorities have 1,200 ha of land with the potential for 38,000 homes. This land is already serviced and zoned as residential land yet is not being allocated to public housing. The State is the single biggest land hoarder in Ireland, according to many property analysts. In addition, it appears that land sold by the State agency NAMA to various vulture funds could have accommodated 50,000 homes, yet fewer than 4,000 are completed or under construction on lands formerly owned by NAMA. A large proportion of the sites lie vacant - for example, 98% in Cork, 87% in Dublin and 87% in Meath.

There is a better way to use publicly owned land. It is to build public housing on public land. These activists are putting forward a plan for a cost-rental model, which they call the fair rents home model, whereby 300 units would be built in St. Michael's Estate for €55 million. The idea is that the rent would pay for the cost in the long term. They say annual rent collected for 150 social differential rental units would be €457,000 a year, and annual rent collected for 150 fair rent homes - cost-rental units - would be €1.62 million. Annual rent collected for the whole scheme would be €2 million per year. The return to the State per annum would be 3.71%. This makes sense because we are talking about people who are over the cap for social housing. These would be professionals, possibly teachers. There was a young girl at the briefing this morning who said she works in a particular multinational, cannot afford to get a mortgage but earns too much to be eligible for social housing. This would be a game changer if it were rolled out right across the country on all public lands, which it should be. It should be seriously looked at in the context of what landlords are now charging for rent and the cost of housing in the longer term. This is an ideological line that the Government finds difficult to cross.

As for Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party procuring these public private partnerships, I remind Members it was Martin Cullen in 2003, after the St. Michael's task force on regeneration was set up, who rejected the plan put forward and instructed the council to pursue a public private partnership deal for the site. We are still waiting for those houses to be built.

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