Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is regrettable that the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, made his contribution and then left straight away. We now have a situation that neither Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael are present in the Chamber but it is Fine Gael that is the architect of co-living and Fianna Fáil that holds the senior Ministry. It is a pity they have left the Green Party here to defend a policy of which I am not sure it is too supportive, although its members will speak for themselves in time. It is regrettable that we do not have the Minister with responsibility for housing or the Minister of State with responsibility for planning and local government in the Chamber. Instead we have the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform. This is a pattern and I have seen it happen before. It needs to be called out.

The Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, made particular comments. Most of his contribution was about defending section 28 and the ministerial guidelines. I have major problems with section 28 and the ministerial guidelines. These measures were introduced by the then Minister, Deputy Kelly, and they are highly regressive and backward. Effectively what they are about is overruling democracy. They allow a Minister without any recourse to the Dáil, or any proper accountability, debate or vote, to issue planning guidelines that overrule planning standards and decisions that could be made at local authority level. It undermines local democracy and the role of the Dáil. We should not stand over it. They need to go and the Bill is correct in this regard.

In the context of the argument that apartment standards were harmonised under the guidelines introduced by the then Minister, Deputy Kelly, the industry lobbied very heavily for the introduction of those reductions in apartment standards and made the case that if they were introduced apartments would then be affordable and viable.

This year before the budget, the industry argued for a shared equity scheme, saying that if its building costs were subsidised through such a scheme, apartment building would be viable, affordable and so forth. Every year the industry states that if X, Y and Z are done for it, apartment building will be viable and affordable, and every year the Government makes changes, and we are back at square one. It has not been an effective route to address those issues.

It is ironic that the Minister is not present because he was incredibly vocal about co-living in opposition. He told his predecessor, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, that if they liked the idea of co-living so much, they should try living in it. I wonder whether the Minister wants to apply that advice to himself. He also stated that his big concern was that this type of facility would become the norm and he was correct in that analysis, and that co-living units would push up the price of normal apartments in addition to co-living box apartments and he was correct about that too. He said they were not trendy boutique hotels but boxes, and that we needed to consider amendments to the Planning and Development Act 2000 to prevent more being built, and he was correct in that.

More recently, during the summer the Minister reiterated that he was not a fan of co-living. He stated he was reviewing the issue but that it was not an immediate threat because no such projects had been built. He was wrong in that, however, because they are very much a threat and there has been an escalation in the number of planning applications submitted. He stated he thought the market would sort out the issue and that people would decide for themselves if they did not consider co-living a solution for housing, but he is completely wrong on that. The market is dictating that it is the most cost-effective way for a developer to get the maximum return from land, which is why the market is going in this direction. The Minister told us in the Chamber in July that it was his intention to return to the House in the autumn and to work in consultation with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage whenever it was established. The committee has been established and a good number of its members are present. We would like to work with the Minister on this. It is now the autumn, although it will be finished in 11 days. The Government has not requested any time in the House to discuss co-living, despite the Minister's assurances in July and August that he would do so. The only discussion of it is taking place as a result of the Bill, which has been brought forward by Deputy Ó Broin, and unfortunately neither the Minister nor the Minister of State directly involved is present for the discussion on it at this point.

When co-living was introduced by the then Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, he stated:

What we are trying to do is cater to a very small part of the market. The demand is small but there is still demand. If over the next 12 months, 1% of new builds in this country provide for co-living, it will take between 200 and 250 people.

His rationale for this, therefore, was that co-living would comprise a very small part of the market, and that is also what he said in his media performances on the issue. Now, however, more than 5,000 co-living units are in the planning process. It is creating a race to the bottom in standards and an incentive for developers to push for co-living or build-to-rent to maximise their returns. This, in turn, is increasing land costs, making the provision of standard apartments much more costly and less viable.

As other Deputies have noted, the size of co-living units, including an en suite bathroom, is just 12 sq. m, the size of a parking space. This is three times smaller than the smallest studio-type apartments, which must be a minimum of 37 sq. m for just one person. When studio apartments were brought in, we were told they would be a small portion of the market to cater for a small group of people, and now there is co-living on top of that. To put the 12 sq. m in context, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has stated prison cells need to be at least 7 sq. m. A co-living unit is not even double the minimum acceptable standard for a prison cell. That is what we are talking about here.

We have to learn from Covid and one of the lessons has to be that it is essential for everyone to have access to a minimum decent standard of living space. We know that infections spread fast in crowded conditions where people rely on communal facilities such as co-living. This is just one of the reasons this type of accommodation should be abolished now and why it was abolished in the past in this country, as Deputy O'Reilly correctly noted. She referred to the great work done by her father, Mick O'Reilly, and others involved on the Dublin housing action committee to get these types of accommodation abolished for health and other reasons in the past.

More and more people, in future years when the pandemic has finished, although there could be other pandemics, will live and work from home, and co-living is utterly unsuitable in that regard. The rents that will be charged for co-living will be unaffordable, and the reports submitted as part of the planning application process by Bartra Capital Property Group have predicted that rents will be charged at approximately €1,300 per month for effectively one room. If one thinks about how that compares with a shared room in a house, one will see how outrageously high such rents are. They will have an overall effect of increasing rents across the board in the private rented sector.

We are now seeing, particularly in Dublin, the effects of the policies of the previous Government, as more and more hotels, student accommodation, co-living and build-to-rent are being built. Co-living will not be a choice; it will become a tenure where people will be stuck for years, unable to afford other options, especially as it will undermine the supply of other types of rental accommodation. Instead of building liveable cities with high-quality amenities, public transport, public spaces, a city that is safe and high-quality accommodation in which to live, we see the commodification and the financialisaton of housing, where the aim seems to be to provide financial instruments and investments for people rather than high-quality accommodation.

We need to ban the advertising of short-term lets, which are operating without planning permission in our cities, and provide more rental accommodation; ban co-living and build-to-rent; bring in compulsory purchase orders of land to build up public land banks to reduce the cost of development land and of construction; and ensure a good supply of apartments and homes that are affordable to rent and buy.

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