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

I will be very brief in the time I have left. Perhaps I will receive some flexibility from the Ceann Comhairle. The common denominator in all of the contributions made here - I met with the Minister, his officials and the Minister of State, Deputy English, on numerous occasions with regard to bringing forward proposals to try to deal with the current housing crisis and the homeless issue - is lack of supply. We have heard that on numerous occasions. The problem is that the system that is there currently is too slow. Funding may be an issue, but so is the process. I know of Part 8 developments that were approved by local authorities seven months ago and which have not moved on to the next stage of construction. One would imagine that seven months after a Part 8 development has been approved one would see machinery on site and construction starting. It is not happening. Regarding private sector developments going through the system of An Bord Pleanála, I have checked with a number of individuals and it takes a minimum of 12 months, and more than likely 14, to get from the start of that process to completion.

How can we say that we are serious about delivering houses quickly knowing that these processes are really slow? We need to look at the processes and see how developments can be accelerated in a meaningful way under a proper sustainable planning mechanism in order to ensure delivery of houses. When local authorities buy a house from the private sector, or turn over a house which a council tenant has left, it takes ten or 12 months until they can put a tenant back into it. There are a lot of mechanisms there and a lot of problems in the process which are causing issues in respect of approval. Different forms of red tape are causing delays to the process thereby adding to the issue of homelessness. This is the major problem.

We spoke at length in the Dáil last week about very low-hanging fruit, such as the housing assistance payment, HAP, process, which could be immediately actioned in order to make processes better and more accessible so that people can move from homelessness and into properties. There are solutions. We have brought forward proposals and we need them to be actioned in a positive, practical and pragmatic way in order to deal with this issue. We are talking about it is as if we are reinventing the wheel. We are not really. We need to look at the process and look at what is causing the delays and put solutions in place to deal with them.

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