Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. The origins of the State agency are to be found in the national planning framework, NPF, published in February 2018. Buried in this 182-page document was a commitment to create a national development and regeneration agency. Its focus was to ensure the best use of public lands, including working with local authorities to drive the renewal of strategic areas. It was a noble cause, but what we have instead, is a vehicle for delivering public land into private hands.

In September 2018, to great fanfare, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, launched the Land Development Agency, LDA. It promised to deliver 150,000 homes over 20 years. One single sentence in the seven-page brochure, distributed at the launch event, jumped out at me, that is, that just 10% of the homes built on public land were to be social housing, while only afford a 30% would be affordable. In the middle of the greatest social and affordable housing crisis in modern times, Fine Gael is proposing to sell 60% of LDA homes to open market prices. That is incredible.

This Bill proposes to establish the LDA as a designated activity company - a commercial operation owned by the Ministers for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and Public Expenditure and Reform. This allows the LDA to be classed as being off the Government balance sheet. Its borrowings will not add to Government debt, and its spending will not be included in the Government's annual accounts. While initial capital of €1.25 million from the Strategic Investment Fund is promised, the overwhelming majority of the €45 billion that will be required to deliver 150,000 homes over 20 years will be privately financed. This Bill will result in the average delivery of a paltry 750 social houses a year, and a hardly groundbreaking 2,250 affordable homes annually. However, the financial model to be used in delivery of these homes will price them well out of reach of working class people. We are in a housing crisis. It is shocking.

I am also worried that the Bill is completely silent on the issue of climate change, which, given the scale of the carbon emissions involved in delivering 150,000 homes, is bizarre, to say the least. While in opposition, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage was highly critical of the Government's proposal to create the LDA during Oireachtas housing committee hearings. He described it as a "Del Boy" model. It is yet another U-turn by Fianna Fáil. I appeal to the Green Party Deputies in particular to stop selling their souls for power and to the end this discharging of Government, which proposes privatisation as the solution to all our problems. We have seen how the commodification of housing, through the housing assistance payment, HAP, system has failed to put a dent in housing waiting lists. Every reply I receive on the issue of housing from Kildare County Council states that it is currently dealing with applications dating back to 2008 and 2009, and that it is up to everyone else to join the HAP lottery, where there are no properties within the county limits. It should be noted that Kildare County Council is one of the better local authorities. A 12-year wait for a house is not acceptable. In fact, it is an absolute disgrace.

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