Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Part of what this legislation does is to amend the Planning and Development Act 2000. It is worth asking why the planning laws were the way they were before the former Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, changed them. Why were decisions taken on a local basis? They were taken on a local basis because local planners, councillors and authorities knew the communities which they were planning for the best. They were best placed to make those decisions. That has been significantly hollowed out since then. To be honest, An Bord Pleanála is not far off submitting applications on behalf of applicants themselves at this stage. That is one issue.

The other issue is minimum sizes. Why were there minimum sizes for accommodation? There were minimum sizes because it was an agreed policy and objective that there was a certain minimum standard of living that people were expected to have. Space was a crucial component of that. These standards were there and anything below that was substandard. What is being proposed, therefore, in lots of these co-living applications would have been considered substandard accommodation that was not suitable for any citizen or person for much of the last 20 years. That is what we are looking at here. That point has been made more than 1,300 times.

They can be marketed with pictures of flat screen TVs and whatever but the reality is that these spaces that people are living in are little more than the size of a car parking space. We have to think about how much personal space matters. We are in the middle of a pandemic. We must think about somebody self-isolating in such accommodation. It is not much more than a cell.

That person is stuck in a small room. Does he or she risk going to the kitchen? We will not always be living in a pandemic, but this is a good example that conveys how severely limiting and constricting such a space is. We can talk about young professionals and so on, but if we concede on the principle that it is acceptable to confine people's living space to matchbox-sized rooms, that has a ripple effect right through the entire housing system, and before we know it, that is what is held as acceptable for anyone, or any family for that matter. That is the road the Government is going down. This is not the solution to unaffordable accommodation. We need to see an awful lot more action on affordable accommodation. There is nothing on cost rental and nothing on cost purchase. We are still waiting for the Minister's scheme.

I will make a final point on affordable housing. It is certainly an issue in Cork, and I am sure it is an issue for many local authorities. An awful lot of schemes are not viable because the Department is doing nothing about the debt attached to lands owned by local authorities. That needs action. If the Government were to deal with that, it would deliver much more real affordable housing than anything co-living will deliver.

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