Dáil debates

Thursday, 8 July 2021

Affordable Housing Bill 2021 [Seanad]: Committee and Remaining Stages

 

4:15 pm

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's point, there will be exceptions and exemptions for people. We discussed the affordable housing scheme. It will allow someone who may have gone through a marriage break-up or divorce and has not previously owned or have a financial interest in a property to apply. Someone who has gone through the personal insolvency process during the last crash and does not own a property needs flexibility. We will be flexible. That is my intention.

I understand the problem of people who have dropped off the social housing list. If we get it right, the next form of cost-rental tenure and affordable purchase will be for that cohort who are above those limits. That is where things will happen. We need to start in some way. While a lottery was held in Taylor Hill in Balbriggan because it was the fairest way of doing it, I want us to get to the stage where we are delivering thousands of affordable homes. We all want that.

Deputies have asked specific questions. As they know, I cannot legislate for certain parts of the country. I want to be honest with people. We need flexibility under the affordable fund or, as it is currently called, the serviced sites fund. A local authority will still have to apply to us in respect of new houses for people who meet the eligibility criteria. I see this being used in areas where there is not a great deal of development outside of cities.

I want to be honest. I do not see it as being exclusively that. The option would be there. The serviced sites fund will fund about 4,200 homes. Each of those projects needs to apply to the Department with details of the scheme. I want to have an open call so that the fund is open and all of the local authorities can put a call through to it. Tipperary was mentioned. The rules for schemes that are a mix of social and affordable housing, given the affordable housing provisions that we will pass, be they affordable purchase or cost rental, will apply across the country. We would still have oversight with that level of flexibility.

Will any of the eight or nine local authorities approve individuals to use the serviced sites fund to buy a new home? I do not think that will happen, but we need to allow that flexibility to exist, in particular in areas where development may be constrained or may never happen at a grand scale. We have a real issue in parts of the country with viability, such as in the Border and midlands regions where no private housing is being built and the only building that is happening is public housing.

Public housing is social housing. We now have an opportunity to allow a mix within that of the homeownership-type cost rental we want which, frankly, is more sustainable for public housing. I hope I have explained that to Deputies as best I can. The provisions will apply across the State, but where I see it being used most is in areas where there would be constraints regarding affordable housing delivery or development in the near term. We will always keep these under review.

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