Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This legislation allows for public land to be used for unaffordable private market housing. This is coupled with a failure to prioritise the delivery of public and genuinely affordable homes. The Bill is deeply undemocratic and once again takes decision-making away from councillors and the local community. I recently saw a photo from 1974 of a housing protest on City Quay. The community was protesting that not enough homes and too many office blocks were being built. Decades later the same protests are being held and the same issues are still there. Inner-city communities are still being forgotten about. Big vulture funds and high-tech companies are still being facilitated at the expense of long-time residents. We need genuinely affordable homes for the residents living in inner-city communities such as Ringsend, Pearse Street, Ross Road and Kevin Street. This Bill links affordability to the market rate. That would be great if the market rate was relatively normal, but in some areas, such as the ones I have just mentioned, the market rate means homes are only accessible to the highly paid and the very wealthy. There is a two-bedroom house in Ringsend advertised in The Irish Timesproperty pages for €475,000. There is no way ordinary working families can afford that. What use will the Government's definition of "affordability" be to someone living in Rutland Grove or Harold's Cross? Any linking with the market means that anyone living in Dublin 2, Dublin 4, Dublin 6 or Dublin 8 will not be able to afford a home in the community in which they grew up. This Bill will not give residents in these communities access to affordable homes or public housing. Ordinary workers will continue to compete with Google and Facebook and so many other high-tech companies and big vulture funds. These tech companies have significant property portfolios, and this pushes up the cost of homes. What chance have ordinary workers in competing with these big multinationals? People now refer to Ringsend, the Docklands and Pearse Street as "Googletown". I can tell the House as a representative of these communities that it is not "Googletown"; it is our town. It is Ringsend and the maritime traditions. It is Pearse Street and the docker tradition. Google and all these big high-tech companies have cast a shadow on the local neighbouring communities and need to start throwing some light on them by investing in education, employment and housing. That will not happen overnight, but these companies' engagement needs to be broader and deeper than it has been so far.

The sector happiest with the Bill will be the developers, who will get a hold of private land and will not need to work with representatives in an area they want to develop. The Bill does not mention public housing at a time when housing is increasingly unaffordable, when housing such as Glover's Court, which is not too far from here, is effectively uninhabitable and when homes across the city are swamped with rats and suffer from bad housing maintenance. We cannot afford to give away our land to private developers for private developments. Capital Dock, which is a stone's throw from Pearse Street, has 190 apartments, of which 90 are empty. This is happening in so many developments across the city, the reason being that the vulture funds that own them are keeping them empty so the rents are artificially high. It should also be noted that the Capital Dock development in the south inner city and many like it, particularly in Ringsend and the Pearse Street area, are not getting the 10% social housing requirements delivered in their communities. It is being allocated in other communities further out. Therefore, not only is housing unaffordable; the community is being pulled apart and moved out of the city because of the failure by Government to ensure that the 10% public housing requirement is delivered locally within the community.

This Bill will not serve the communities that elected me.

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