Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are happy to support this group of amendments. It seems to me from listening to a number of Government backbenchers that they just do not understand the reason we need an active land management agency, despite the fact that for 40 years, report after report, including Government reports, have explained why it is needed. Unless there is an active land management agency whose sole function is in the public interest to acquire strategically important pieces of land, either from other State agencies who are not using it or are not using it for the correct purpose or from private interests, how can we ensure that land can be transferred to the relevant State agency for development? That may be IDA Ireland for industrial development or local authorities for residential development.

It is not the case, as one Government backbencher has said, that the compulsory purchase order powers in this Bill are adequate. They are not. The only compulsory purchase order power in this Bill is for ransom strips, which are small strips of land that the LDA will need to get access to its own sites and for the purposes of servicing. One of the crucial powers of an active land management agency - comprehensive compulsory purchase order powers to ensure every bit of misused strategically important land is put to a proper purpose - is absent from the Bill. It is a simple statement of fact.

Why is the Bill constructed in this way? If an active land management agency was to be created properly with strong compulsory purchase order powers and a strong budget, it would be able to force other public agencies or private interests to release land. For example, Donnybrook bus garage or the Pearse Street bus station could be acquired for proper mixed-use, residential and amenity development.

Privately owned land that is hoarded and underdeveloped could be acquired if necessary. Because the Government has not done that, it means those agencies such as our local authorities that are better placed to plan and to develop will be sidelined once again, as they have been for the past four decades by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

There is a consequence to that. Government Ministers and backbenchers keep talking about delivering affordable homes but the consequences of going down the route of a publicly owned commercial residential developer will be higher development costs. Land would have to be acquired at above existing use value. Yes, there would be some discounting of that existing use if it has a mixture of social and affordable, but it will be more expensive to acquire than an at existing use value. Because the Government is underfunding the Land Development Agency, LDA, it is going to have to go out to secure additional private equity and private finance. There is no other way of it meeting anything close to the targets the previous Government set for it. That would push up development costs. This is why on the first LDA-led project, which is Shanganagh Castle, we do not know what the purchase price of the affordable homes will be. I suspect they will not be affordable. This means the Government would have to put in a serviced sites fund to bring the prices down, or they will be sold as the so-called affordable homes in O'Devaney Gardens at €310,000, plus a €50,000 equity stake that has to be returned to the State. I put it to the Minister that €360,000 is not affordable. This is why the affordable rents in the Shanganagh Castle development will not be affordable for key cohorts of people who need them: those households whose income is just above the thresholds for social housing and who need rents at below €1,000, preferably between €700 and €900 per month. Instead, their rents will be €1,200 or €1,300 per month.

The way this legislation is constructed will not only undermine the active land management function, which we need, it will lead to a development model that is primarily commercialised, albeit publicly owned, pushing up development costs and making these homes unaffordable to many of the people who need them. This is why the Bill is fundamentally flawed. I make no apology for not wanting a centralised State agency to deliver homes commercially or to be involved in planning. It has no purpose doing that. We have local authorities. They have statutory responsibility for housing and planning. They have the skills and the ability, notwithstanding the asset stripping by previous governments. If the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was really serious about delivering the tens of thousands of affordable homes annually that the State needs, he would not be wasting his time with this legislation. The Minister would be doubling direct capital investment by the State and ensuring local authorities have the funding to deliver the 20,000 public homes a year he promised during the general election but which he then very quickly abandoned when he realised the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, was controlling the purse strings and he was never going to get the money. Local authorities should plan and deliver, and the Land Development Agency should assemble land and ensure local authorities have a sufficient supply of land into the future.

I will raise another genuinely concerning point. A lot of our talk has rightly been about affordable housing, and that is not a problem, but I am really worried that delivery of social housing would be far too small on the sites that were not originally local authority sites. The Government keeps talking about this in the context of Part V of the Planning and Development Act. In general, the non-local authority sites are likely to have only 10% social housing. That would be an enormous mistake at a time when the current output of social housing is way below the level that is needed, even if targets set by Government are met.

I will conclude on the issue of amendments. We spent 14 hours in seven committee sessions. I thank the Minister, the committee clerk, the Chairman, and the officials in the Bills Office and the Department for this. The Minister will be aware Sinn Féin has tabled more amendments to this Bill than anyone else, at almost 170 amendments. I took a decision, which was the right decision, not to table amendments on Report Stage, in part because the Minister had given a commitment to look at amendments and come back. Unfortunately, we will not get to discuss some of those today but I acknowledge that. Make no mistake, this Bill is not over. There is another round of the legislative process in the Seanad. We will table other amendments on that small number of core issues we believe the Bill still does not address. I will be very clear: this is flawed legislation. It is a bad idea for this kind of agency. It will not do what the Government is saying it will do.

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