Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will use my time to discuss the most urgent issue, that of activating consented land, but, listening in my office to the speakers from Sinn Féin discussing how rubbish the Government's Housing for All plan is, I was minded to again pick up that party's submission to the Housing for All document from June of this year. It is a few short pages long. There are seven pages of text with just one dollar or euro figure in it. Meanwhile, the Housing for All plan is comprehensive, fully costed and extremely detailed, as other Deputies have set out. There are links to two other Sinn Féin documents at the back but they are even shorter so one should not go looking for too much detail.

I will talk about the issue of consented land in particular. This specific and detailed issue is contained in Housing for All, as is a response to it. Consented land is land that has been zoned and for which planning permission for residential development has been sought and given but on which no homes have been delivered. Officials from An Bord Pleanála, local authorities around the country and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are breaking their backs trying to get land activated. This is particularly so in the eastern and midlands region. On page 102 of the Office of the Planning Regulator's annual report for 2020, it is shown that the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly, EMRA, area continues to dominate in 2020, having significantly increased its share of residential units permitted, which rose to 74%. This represents close to 33,000 units, an increase from 25,000 in 2019. Further analysis shows that 89% of all apartment units permitted in 2020 were in the same region. Of that, 64% were in the four Dublin local authority areas.

The point the office is making is that this suggests that the basis for achieving more compact and sustainable patterns of urban development is there, particularly if the many permissions for higher density development within cities and towns and public transport corridors are activated. These are the principles of climate-friendly development and the permissions have been granted. What is going on? Why are they not either built or in the process of being built? Let me be clear; I do not buy the financial viability argument for a moment. We have heard it for some time. Who would not, at this time, operate a business which pre-sells build-to-sell homes and funds its work on the basis of those sales? The only reason that we give zoning is to give permission to build homes and any entity that is not in the active business of home delivery, but rather makes efforts to acquire land value, needs to get a grip now or get taxed out of the market.

This is a case of tax first, ask later. There need not be delay. Chief executives need to get really aggressive about this locally, with no exemptions. Let us accept that developers are on notice, that liability immediately arises where zoning and consents have been given by State entities, and that there is an immediate implicit notification that the clock is running.

Let us shorten those assessment notice periods and refund excess taxes if and when we are proved wrong and home delivery is actively occurring. Our population now exceeds 5 million, up 1 million in 20 years. They need places to live and different ways to live in different stages of their lives and the consented land needs to be activated. Thankfully, the LDA has, in this detailed Housing for All plan, been established and put on a statutory footing, notwithstanding Sinn Féin objecting to it and voting against it. It has the capacity to get in and activate and underwrite some of those sites at value to the State and a discount to the State and get that stock into affordable homes as quickly as possible.

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