Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill and welcome its introduction. It is important at the outset to say we all have our own ideas about what affordability is. For people who are listening it is about the fact that we can build houses. It is about giving affordability to people who are brave enough to want to buy their own houses and to take out a mortgage. It also gives affordability to people who cannot do that and need help from the State.

I listened with interest to what Deputy Boyd Barrett was saying and the retort from Deputy Bruton. They talked about Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. I assure the Minister there is a housing crisis in every town and village in this country. That is why we must take action. I do not believe this Bill alone will be the panacea that solves all our problems. When one looks at the construction industry and how we had a boom-bust, we still have that type of scenario going on. At the moment we are in a position where we do not have a proper supply of houses. We do not have people building houses in sufficient quantities to make them affordable. That is why the Minister has had to bring in this legislation and why we must have State intervention and assist people. The construction of houses is fraught with different nuances that affect the delivery of housing.

I will talk first about planning in this country and how we have allowed our planning situation to become totally based on judicial reviews and going to the courts to prevent developments. That in a way is creating a shortage. It is also taking the appetite away from people who would be brave enough to apply for planning permission to build housing developments because they feel objections are such an easily accessible way of preventing such developments. It must be looked at. In my own county, the county development plan is being reviewed and new plans are being worked on. One of the issues I find with doing those plans is that when we talk about zoning, we are very constrained in what we zone. We zone areas on a desktop basis, and lands within towns, villages and cities may or may not become available for construction as a result. We do not zone enough land as residential low density, R1, land. That creates a tiered approach to planning and drives up the price of development land because not enough of it is being zoned to give people a choice of where to build. We are in a way strangling our towns and villages by being too conservative in the amount of land we make available as zoned for residential.

The other area we must look at, and I have repeated this a number of times, is that it is okay to talk about affordability and all of that but if we do not put in the infrastructure and we do not provide to Irish Water the resources to put in the required waste water systems in our towns and villages, we will not be able to build houses. I know I am repeating myself in view of other times I have spoken about housing in the House but in County Galway at least, we have frozen out planning because we do not have the proper waste water facilities in place. We will not allow private waste water treatment plants and at the same time there is a big question mark over one-off rural housing. We are asking people to live in their own communities but they cannot build there because the infrastructure is not there as Irish Water does not see it as a priority. It says it is not a priority because it does not have the funding, so we must address that. When the Land Development Agency is talked about, I am concerned about it on the basis we will end up with the same type of scenario we have with Irish Water. I am worried that the LDA will not have enough resources to tackle all the problems and that it will focus its efforts on cities like Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and neglect the other regional areas which also have housing crises and rent pressure zones.

Within my own constituency I deal with people who are trying to build houses or get onto a council housing list. Then I see we cannot build houses in places like Athenry right now, all because Irish Water does not have the necessary infrastructure in place. Half a job has been done and the plant has been upgraded but it still cannot be used, or no benefit can be had from it as the network is not in place to allow development. We have the same thing in Craughwell, Corofin and Abbeyknockmoy. I keep going on about this. The county council is trying its best to move this on but its planners are hamstrung and cannot actually give permission. An Bord Pleanála will not give permission because the infrastructure is not there. This must be tackled and the way to tackle it is to provide the funding. People have said to me that we have a town and village renewal scheme which is there for that. The Minister knows well there is no budget to put in waste water treatment facilities under that scheme or under the urban or rural regeneration schemes. We must ensure we do this in such a way that we are honest with the people.

I think it was Deputy Boyd Barrett who was talking earlier about us categorising people. There is no one category of people here. Many young professionals and people who are working in construction cannot get a mortgage because the mortgage they will get will not be big enough to allow them to purchase a house.

Another area of concern is the strategic housing developments, SHDs, which have been granted planning permission. How many of these projects have actually started construction on site? This is something which must be addressed so that when we achieve planning permission, we see it going to construction within a reasonable time period after that. It is important we are not just granting these permissions and then they are left for speculation further along. This is a very important aspect to the whole issue of housing. We must look at it from the point of view of what can we do now, right now, while we are doing all this legislation. I am repeating myself when I tell the Minister it is a crying shame how many vacant properties we have in this country that we have done nothing with. We must ensure that in the interim, while we are waiting to get the Land Development Agency and all these things going, we utilise what we have. We have so many vacant properties in our towns, villages and cities and we have people who would be willing to go in and make living accommodation for themselves and make homes within these places and build up their communities. However, they must be incentivised to do it and right now we are disincentivising them by refusing them access to the help-to-buy scheme because these are second-hand properties, which is ludicrous.

The other issue mitigating against them is that under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme we can only give them the mortgage for the capital rather than renovation costs that might be applied to these buildings.

We could also do something simple with the warmer homes scheme. A 100% grant for first-time buyers of second-hand houses should be provided to allow them to upgrade them and make them energy-efficient. This would take people off the housing lists and invigorate our towns and villages

These are simple actions but they can be done now and we do not have to wait. People might look at costs and say we cannot afford it because so many millions of euro are being put into different schemes. Right now, however, the amount being paid by the Minister's Department through the HAP scheme is incredibly high. It is up to €400 million per year with nothing to show after it. That is being paid for people's rent when we should have them in their own houses or council housing stock.

Another matter that must be addressed is procurement and all the hurdles put in place when a public contract is to be used. I am talking about the number of gateways a county council must go through in order to get approval for a project. In some cases, Departments may have up to 12 gateways, thus hampering our local authorities in providing development. This is prolonging the agony for people who do not have houses.

We must tackle procurement and give autonomy to local authorities. We must devolve the schemes to them and let them get on with it, instead of them having to report five or six times to get approvals, creating a logjam in Departments. No matter what we do, we must streamline this process.

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