Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many speakers in previous days and today have spoken about the Land Development Agency and the fact that it is not fit for purpose. We know its job is to manage State lands. We talk about what has happened to date, with 60% of properties produced through the agency being unaffordable. This means we are not delivering for the people for whom we need to deliver. I do not see any solutions in the Bill. I see constraints in respect of freedom of information requests, which shows there is an element of hiding what is going on, and that is frightening people. We had a debate yesterday on the shared equity scheme and I do not need to repeat what was said about that. We have commentators from the ESRI, groups of Fine Gael councillors and people within Departments who do not see that the scheme will do anything but supply a greater level of finance to developers. It will not deliver for our people. The history of schemes such as this is that they just up prices and leave people financially constrained and in serious difficulty later and that is just unacceptable.

My colleague, Deputy Andrews, has spoken about this as another scenario in which we are talking about the long-term erosion we have seen of the powers of local authorities in being able to deliver for the people who live within those local authority areas. This Bill is just a further compounding of that. The compulsory purchase facility in the Bill relates more to ransom strips. There has been comment here on compulsory purchase orders of particular properties. Louth County Council has been excellent at times in doing this, particularly finding properties that had fallen to rack and ruin and putting them back in play at knock-down prices, which is beneficial both to the people who get the houses and to the finances of Louth County Council and of the State. We need to see more of that happening. It is as simple as that. I have said it and Sinn Féin has explicitly said it: we do not see this whole suite of solutions being offered to us as delivering for the people. What people need - everybody says it, from the Opposition to the Government - is cost-rental houses, council houses and affordable mortgages. We want delivery of all that. No matter what the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, says, we have no difficulty giving normal people, regular people, the ability to buy and own their own houses and the opportunity not to be completely screwed over with the extortionate rents they have to pay in places such as Dundalk. The Government is just putting pressures on families that are already in incredible difficulty and was doing so long before this pandemic.

I will digress and request a little liberty in respect of the questions I wish to put to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. I ask for somebody from his office to return to me on these very important issues. Usually I would attempt to come back in for the ministerial sum-up but I have to be at another event. That is unavoidable, so I will give my apologies for that now. Louth County Council has a huge number of land banks that were bought at very expensive prices. I know that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has dealt with the council in this regard. The council bought these land banks under instruction from the Government back at the height of the boom.

I know that Louth County Council has met with the Minister and applications will be going in for housing developments that could deal with some of this. However, the entire problem must be dealt with. I do not want to hear anything about the local property tax and an increase there because that would barely wash-----

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