Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are supporting the Bill. I thank Deputy Cian O'Callagan and his team for their work on this matter.

The provision of social housing stock by way of Part V acquisition should never have been allowed to become another cushy deal for developers but, unfortunately, it has. Local authorities and the Government must ensure social housing is provided in the most sustainable, efficient and effective manner possible. Ultimately, the point of social housing is for people to have homes and be safe and secure. The point of social housing is not to drastically increase the profit margins of developers while failing to ensure that they have the stock capability to provide housing for anybody who needs it in one year or in 20, 30 or 50 years. Disproportionate reliance on leasing for social housing stock means the State is open to stock dwindling again once these leases come to an end in 30 or so years. To whatever extent Part V leasing could have been justified, extensive reliance on it is not sustainable, and neither is it sustainable in the short, medium or long term. Our successors will end up back here dealing with these same matters forever if more local authorities fail to establish and maintain social housing stock.

I understand documents released to Deputy Cian O'Callaghan under freedom of information legislation indicate that Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council signed a multimillion euro lease for 25 years with a developer but failed to engage an independent valuer on rental costs before agreeing to monthly rents per unit of €2,300. This speaks to an issue that goes far beyond the simple availability of leasing as not suitable for Part V acquisition.

The Government or local authorities may seek to justify recent surges in the use of leasing for Part V acquisitions on the basis that it provides housing more quickly. Nevertheless, Mr. Killian Woods, writing in The Business Postlast month, indicated that seven apartments in Dundrum being leased by the local authority have been left vacant for more than 17 months. There are thousands of people on the housing list from all over Dublin, so not only was the council paying €2,000 every month to lease each apartment, it was not even housing people in them. There are no circumstances in which that is acceptable. It is utterly disgraceful.

The Planning and Development Act 2000 provides that local authorities must carry out an examination of several factors before entering into agreements for Part V housing. One factor is whether the agreement will constitute the best use of resources available to a local authority. Surely the examples to which I refer prove that this in no way meets that criterion. Local authorities are already under a statutory obligation to consider each and all of the criteria when entering Part V agreements. Why have they not been doing so? The information provided to Deputy Cian O'Callaghan through his freedom of information request suggests that local authorities are entering what are clearly financially unwise deals, meaning that there is a bigger problem on top of the leasing under Part V arrangements.

Local authorities are obliged to ensure that Part V agreements are efficient and effective in realising the overall objectives of the housing strategy. If they are not doing this, we could be left with a multitude of costly leasing agreements on which the State will have to either spend even more in a few decades to keep the leases or lose the properties to which they relate from the social housing stock altogether. If these agreements are not the best method of providing social housing under Part V in all these circumstances, that speaks to a systemic problem regarding the way in which local authorities are dealing with Part V properties.

We call on the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to address this matter with local authorities and for representatives of those authorities to come before the housing committee to set out exactly how they have been complying with their obligations under the 2000 Act. It seems that they have not been doing so. They should explain how these leasing agreements constitute the best use of resources under the Act to ensure an adequate supply of social housing.

We do not just need an adequate supply of social housing for the lifetime of this Government or the next, we need it for the next 30 or 50 years. We must learn from the mistakes of the past and at every level of politics we must ensure the provision of social housing is not treated as an afterthought or a money-making racket for developers. We will only have adequate social housing stock when there is nobody in Ireland without a roof over his or her head.

Labour supports this Bill. I ask the Government to seriously consider supporting it too. Not opposing the Bill on Second Stage is not the equivalent of supporting it. We can all see through that tactic now. Part V leasing arrangements have been neither an effective nor an efficient use of local authority resources and, worst of all, they are not providing people with any homes at all. We ask the Government to support the Bill.

See this speech in context