Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am due to speak with a colleague but I think we are running a little ahead of time so I will use as much of the time as I can. The Land Development Agency Bill and its partner Bill, the affordable housing Bill, are two of the most important pieces of legislation that will come before this Dáil.

I say that because they are the instruments which will allow the Government to deliver affordable housing to a society and an economy that has been starved of it for the best part of a decade. Not being able to afford or access a home has devastating consequences for society and crippling consequences for the economy. Getting housing right is crucial, therefore.

Within Fianna Fáil, we know that housing is important. We have a long track record of focusing on housing, delivering solutions and building homes. The Land Development Agency Bill was widely discussed by Fianna Fáil in advance of entering Government. We made criticisms of it and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, who is now in office, outlined much of his concerns. One of the reasons Fianna Fáil sought the housing portfolio in this Government is so we could make the maximum possible impact on delivery of housing.

I will comment on the two Bills because they are very much partner Bills. Based in the LDA, they provide a suite of measures and a policy platform which will allow the State to deliver public housing on public land using an affordable housing and affordable rental scheme. That starts with the LDA, which will take public land owned by agencies such as the Defence Forces and the HSE and place on them a permanent affordability charge. I say "permanent" because, regardless of who owns that land into the future, the responsibility to deliver affordable housing will exist. It is possibly the largest devaluation of the cost of land in the history of the State. It will permanently reduce the cost of land owned by the State and put in place a permanent responsibility to deliver affordable housing. That is radical. In conjunction with the tools provided in the affordable housing Bill, both local authorities and the LDA have a really big challenge ahead. They now need to grab these tools and put proposals before councillors and communities which will deliver solutions to the housing crisis we have talked about for the best part of a decade.

Much of the LDA is framed in the context of state aid rules from European Union. The reason for that is because, in providing affordable housing, we are competing with other bodies or private entities which provide housing in the housing market. It is, therefore, a difficult job to negotiate the state aid rules. I believe the device used in the LDA, however, which effectively takes the commercial value of the land and applies an affordable housing charge on it, is an innovative way of ensuring that affordability is permanently attached to the land going forward. It is radical and important. The tools in the affordable housing Bill will ensure that what is built on the LDA lands will be affordable, State-led schemes.

The affordable rental scheme is particularly important in the affordable housing Bill. I want to see that cost rental model on much of the LDA lands. It is a new model that is unproven in the Irish market. I believe, however, it will provide security of tenure and affordable rental to a whole generation of people who want to secure that. This Bill provides land on which to develop that model of housing. This Bill also provides land on which we can once again build council-led affordable housing. We have seen done in the past and it will allow us to do that again. It will also allow us land to build social housing.

It is, therefore, a radical Bill and there are important measures in it. Within Fianna Fáil, however, and I have said before why it is important to us, there has been huge scrutiny of the Minister and of this Bill, because we want to get this right. We want to make sure there is no lack of ambition and that it is not just radical, but very radical.

We have, therefore, discussed a number of measures with the Minister. I thank him for his engagement with the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party and those backbenchers with whom he has discussed matters. Let me put on the record, therefore, a number of areas where I would like to see the Bill go forward. I believe there is opportunity on Committee Stage where, perhaps, we might be able to do that. I say it not to undermine the Bill but to seek to improve it.

I believe the median market price is language that defines affordability in this Bill. The details of the schemes will actually be set by ministerial regulation. I would, however, like to see that language around median market price reflect affordability more as a relationship with income rather than market value. I do not see how regulations will do that. It will be difficult over time to do it. It will be far better to base it on income limits and so on rather than to be constantly pegging to market value. I appreciate it may be influenced by the restrictions around state aid. My preference, however, is that we should be defining affordability around income rather than market value.

The language in the Bill around the commercial value of the land again goes back to the restrictions on state aid. In reality, the commercial value, which is applied on the initial valuation, followed by the permanent affordability charge, will effectively render much of the land value as nominal. Therefore, instead of talking about commercial value in the text of the legislation, we should talk about the affordable land value. That is the real value that will be paid and built into the cost model and the real value that will impact the final price that is paid on these lands. As I said, that is an innovative way of complying with state aid rules. We should, however, reflect the language in the Bill and talk about affordable land value.

The third area in which I believe the Bill could go further is the percentage of that affordability charge that is applied by the Minister. The Minister said in this House that the affordability charge in Dublin is likely to be 90%, with a 10% social housing obligation, which would bring it up to 100% affordability on the sites in the region. It effectively renders the land in Dublin that will fall under this Bill at a nominal land value. That is very welcome because it will ensure affordability in Dublin.

The percentage in the Bill needs to be defined further, however. I want that target to be as close to that 90% as possible. Any exceptions should actually be down from that 90% rather than up to 90%. There will be places in the country where the value or the affordability may be changed. I accept we may look at different ways of delivering housing in different communities with different markets. They should be the exception, however, rather than those sites in large cities where we need maximum affordability. I would like to see the percentage target in the Bill defined higher and for it to be the standard, with exceptions coming down rather than the other way around.

The final area I will come to is section 183. The Minister of State has heard me talk about the merits of this Bill and the affordable housing Bill. It is significant in terms of housing and a real lean into public housing and the State providing housing rather than a market-driven approach. Therefore, at the end of the Bill, we come along with what is effectively a stick from the Custom House which says that if councillors do not develop land, it will be taken from them. At least, that is what the narrative says. And yet, when one talks to the LDA, it says it has more than enough lands under the other Government agencies, which it will be responsible for developing without having to go near any local authority lands. Even in briefings with their law agents over recent weeks, local authority members in different councils do not believe there will be significant land grabs.

Why is that power in the Bill? I believe, in part, it results from a perception among officials in the Custom House that those responsible for delaying the delivery of housing are local authority councillors.

As one of those councillors who voted against schemes when they came before me, I want to explain why I did so. I did so because there were no affordable housing schemes and no cost rental schemes. I did so because the only option was to build large scale social housing without fixed-income or mixed-tenure units. I represented Ballymun for more than 15 years and Finglas for nearly the same time. I knew those strategies did not work. I was not going to propose voting for a repeat of them.

Local authority councillors are now being given the power under the affordable housing Bill to have cost rental, affordable council housing and social housing. The budgets will be there in the years to come. Once this legislation is bedded down, the Government has committed that the budgets will be there. I am not convinced that the section 183 amendment is necessary. My concern is that at official level, there is not the ambition to deliver housing. It is not at the councillor's level.

Sometimes there can be NIMBYism in Irish politics. Sometimes councillors can hide behind arguments in order to vote against housing because there are other people in their community who do not want that housing. We have to make sure that this cannot happen because we have to be ambitious. Removing the power from councillors goes too far. I would like to see tests put in place that where councillors want and have the ambition to develop lands, they can instruct the manager to use the tools in the affordable housing Bill and the lands will be developed by that local authority. The LDA has stated that it does not want the land and that it has enough to do. Councillors may want to build on this land and officials tell us that they too want to build on this land. That is where the focus should be. That is where we should put our efforts. An academic argument about possibly removing land from councillors distracts from the good work in this Bill.

The powers defined in the Local Government Act, sections 139 and 140, allow councillors to instruct the local authority manager. If councillors instruct the manager to develop land in their ownership for housing along the lines of the affordable housing Bill, then lands should never end up in the hands of the LDA without the approval of councillors. I would like to see amendments in that area.

I appreciate there needs to be an incentive to stop NIMBYism and councillors hiding behind it. My experience of local government is that local authority members are far more responsible than that. In many cases, they have the same ambition the Minister has to deliver housing. The officials, with whom they need to partner, can often be the restriction. I say that not as a criticism of them because the tools and the budgets just were not there previously. They are in place now, as well as the legislation. We have the affordable housing Bill with all the tools contained in it. We will have the LDA which will unlock plans and apply a permanent affordability charge. All of the mechanisms are on the table.

Now we come to delivery. Now we want to see the targets. Now we want to make sure that the agencies empowered by this legislation deliver for people. That will take time and may not happen in the next year or two. Will it happen in advance of the end of the lifetime of the Government? We will be judged by this. I do not believe we need to put short-term politics ahead of the right decisions, however. These are the right decisions. These are investments in public housing. The policies to provide public housing are too important. We must put them in place in this legislation, fund them in the budgets to come and make sure local authorities and the LDA deliver what we want. We must make sure a whole new generation of Irish people have access to housing in a way that they have not had over the past ten years.

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