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

I am going to do something slightly different, which is to reason with the Minister of State on the basis of his better nature and knowledge of the planning system. Without any disrespect to him, the speech he has just read out does not deal with either the substance or intent of the proposed Bill. That is not his fault. He was not able to be here because he was at another engagement and so did not hear the proposer's speech. However, the speech he has been given by his officials completely fails to understand the core objective of the Bill. I genuinely appeal to the Minister of State to explain why there is merit in the proposition and, because this is his direct responsibility as Minister of State with responsibility for planning, I ask him to go back to his officials and have a conversation to see whether what we are trying to achieve here can be accommodated in some other way.

As the Minister of State knows, Part V of the Planning and Development Act was passed in 2000. Back in 2000, there was a reason for there being two exemptions to Part V, these being based on the number of units and the size of the piece of land. Back then, a piece of land of that size could only yield a certain number of units because there were strict requirements in county development plans with regard to the number of units per hectare. The kind of circumstance that has motivated my colleague, Deputy Andrews, to bring forward this Bill was not only not possible back then, but it was not even conceivable. People did not think about building very tall buildings on very small and narrow plots of land, so such developments are now exempt from Part V for no good reason.

As we know, some good things and some bad things have happened since them. A good thing is the element of the national planning framework that seeks compact growth. This is one of the issues in the area of planning on which we agree with the Minister of State. We need to see higher density mixed-use developments in our urban centres, particularly in the kind of constituency Deputy Andrews represents, which includes the area of Ringsend. Our buildings are therefore going to go up. My preference is for mid-rise, high-density, mixed-use developments. Others would like high-rise developments and so on. However, there is no doubt that smaller plots of land are going to yield larger numbers of units. If that is done in the right way, it will be a really good thing and we should all be positive about it in our engagements.

The specific problem that has arisen in Deputy Andrews's constituency that he is seeking address is that, for the first time, a very small plot of land is going to be used to develop a mid-rise or possibly even a high-rise scheme with a very large number of units. It is viable and will be exceptionally profitable for the developer. That is the way the world is. That developer should have Part V units in that development. In this changed context, post Eoghan Murphy's mandatory ministerial guidelines on height and when it is now possible to build mid-rise and high-rise buildings on very small plots, including a plot of 0.1 ha in the case Deputy Andrews mentioned, the Government has to rethink whether some of those developments should involve a Part V requirement.

This is not about small plots of land in small towns and villages that are going to yield small numbers of units. There may be a much better way of crafting Deputy Andrews's amendment that the eminently more qualified people in the Minister of State's Department could easily draft and present as a Government amendment but it is not acceptable to develop 20, 30, 40 or 50 units on a piece of land of 0.1 ha without a single Part V unit among them. That is the core of this Bill. Anybody who knows the history of Part V - and the Ceann Comhairle is probably the only person in the room who was in the Oireachtas back in 2000 when that Bill was introduced by his Fianna Fáil party colleague, the then Minister - will understand that the purpose of Part V is to ensure there is at least some level of social mix in all developments barring the very small.

Why is this important? First of all, it is important because we have a social housing crisis. There are currently 60,000 households on our local authority housing waiting lists. There are 60,000 households in receipt of housing assistance payment on short and insecure two-year private rental tenancies subsidised by the State. There are just under 20,000 households receiving subsidies through the rental accommodation scheme, which involves four-year tenancies. Therefore, there are currently 140,000 households that need social housing. That is not including the 7,000, 10,000 or 14,000 households that come onto the social housing lists each year on average. From this year to the end of this Government's term of office, if it lasts the full term, it is going to add 40,000 real social homes to the stock of housing owned by local authorities and approved housing bodies. The Government is only scratching the surface with its current housing plan. Earlier, we had a debate on the need to increase the provision of Housing First to tackle the issue of homelessness among single people. Every single unit of social housing, particularly in the urban areas of Dublin, could help to take somebody out of emergency accommodation or, in the context of the debate we just had about the high rate of mortality among single homeless people, could potentially save somebody's life. Whether it is ten, 20, 50 or 100 units in the city, it would be life-changing for the individuals who would access them.

The Minister of State is right that the Government has increased Part V provision to 20% although he forgot to mention one absolutely crucial detail, which is that it only applies on land purchased after the enactment of the legislation, that is, after 2021. All of the land purchased before, which will be the subject of the planning permission applications to be made this year, next year and probably the year after that, will only have to have 10% Part V provision. We will have that argument another day. However, there is a need for the Government to revisit this provision.

One could ask why the review of the operation of Part V conducted by the Housing Agency did not spot this issue. I believe it is because such development did not happen during the period of time when the review was done. To the best of our knowledge, there had not been any planning applications like the one Deputy Andrews has identified. While there have only been a very small number of such applications so far, Deputy Andrews also pointed out something very important in his opening speech, which is that there is nothing in the law to prevent somebody acquiring a piece of land bigger than 0.1 ha and then separating it out, creating separate designated activity companies and submitting separate sequential planning applications that, if granted, would leave each development exempt. That is completely legal under the current arrangements.

I am not asking the Minister of State to support the Bill. Clearly, he will not do so and we will not waste time on a fool's errand. I know he will do his best to defend the position of the Department in his response to my remarks. That is fine. That is his job and I respect him for doing it. However, I will ask him to think very carefully about the proposition. Is it appropriate for a developer to be able to build a development of seven to 15 storeys with two, three or four units per storey on a small site in an inner urban area like Ringsend while not having to provide any units under Part V?

I acknowledge the Minister of State for making contact with me before this debate because he was unable to attend the earlier debate. That was a very welcome intervention but I want to bring that debate into connection with this one in the following way. Far too many single homeless people are dying while accessing homeless services. There is a set of complex reasons for this. It relates to how homelessness, addiction, mental ill health and, in many cases, poverty overlay one another. There is a need to tackle all of these issues. In the report we were discussing earlier, which was produced by Dr. Austin O'Carroll for the Dublin Region Homelessness Executive two years ago, one of the things Dr. O'Carroll said was that the single most important intervention is increasing the provision of Housing First. The Government is increasing this provision from 200 tenancies a year to 250 but we need thousands of them.

It may not be worded in the way it is in this Bill, but if some reform were made with whatever wording, it could mean that in Dublin city alone, particularly given that we are looking for many one-bedroom units for Housing First, over four or five years we could end up with several hundred additional units on top of the Part V units we are already getting. That would be life-transforming for the individuals in question.

The Minister of State is a decent person. We engage regularly at the committee. We have our disagreements but we also have our agreements. I think we have established a relationship at this point. On areas where we can find common ground we try. After this debate is finished and he has said the things he needs to say, he should sit down with the officials and ask if there is a set of circumstances, a certain height of building or a certain number of units on a site of 0.1 ha where it would become appropriate for the Part V provisions to kick in. He can come back to us when it is appropriate with an amendment that does not have the unintended consequences he or his officials feel this one has but also does not have intended consequences of an updated exemption that means that today people can build very tall buildings on very narrow sites without any Part V requirements. I believe that is a very reasonable proposition. I know the Minister of State is a reasonable person and, therefore, my appeal might have some impact on him talking to the relevant officials and coming back at a later stage. The problem raised by my colleague, Deputy Andrews, is genuine.

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