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

As I said earlier, our party has always said that we would look favourably on a proposal which was intended to and would have the effect of accelerating and increasing the delivery of social and affordable housing. However, I have to say that when media briefings about this particular amendment emerged, there was an awful lot of confusion . There was talk of changes to zoning, ministerial zoning powers and other such things.

Thankfully, we got the amendments last Friday and the Minister's officials gave us a detailed briefing on Monday. I spoke to many people in the local Government sector and they were very surprised. This is not something they were expecting or something they asked for. In fact, if the Minister asked them to give him a shopping list of how to shorten the timeframe for the delivery of social housing, as he and his officials well know, they would have a very long list of elements of the four-stage process they would like to see reduced.

I am also not convinced we will save three to four months. Part 8 is 20 weeks. Many Part 8s go within 14 weeks. Much of the work that will still have to be done in preparing the plan for departmental approval is done in parallel with the Part 8 and much of that is still going to go. I have no doubt we are talking about a saving of some time but certainly, when we asked officials if they had any kind of firm basis to indicate how much time would be saved, the answer was "No".

I have a few questions specifically with regard to the Minister's amendments but I want to give some context. The Minister might only deal with and suspend Part 8, and not deal with stages 3 and 4 because for the majority of developments we still have a stage 3 and stage 4. The Minister's review that was published earlier this year indicated that there were certain circumstances for consolidating stages 3 and 4. That is not happening in practice in many cases, however. If we still leave stage 3 in place with a very complicated back and forth between the local authority and the Department in terms of design approval and cost appraisal, and we then have to go out to tender in a climate that is different from normal, we still could be looking at very long periods. That is a really important point for us to consider when teasing out what is in front of us.

It would be very helpful if the Minister were to give us an estimation of the number of units he hopes to add to the pipeline. We know there is an existing pipeline. We know from the quarterly reports - although we have not got the quarter three report yet - what that pipeline is. Therefore, the Minister is saying this procedure is not for any new social homes within the existing housing action plans that are coming into the pipeline, but specifically for these homes on specific sites using new building technologies. It would be good if we had some notion of how many over that period.

It is also important to say that many managers out there would be very reluctant to use any proposal that bypasses their elected members and the public, particularly if the gain is minimum. We know that is one of the key reasons they have not used existing emergency powers in this area. It will cause much consternation among elected members who will feel, even on a temporary basis, that their powers are being taken away, and for the public, who in my view have an absolute right be consulted about things that impact the community in which they live and who often have very good suggestions to improve social and affordable housing. There will be a grievance. If we are to convince those people that this is worth it on a temporary and emergency basis, we have to give them as much information possible.

I will put on record one concern I have that the Minister needs examine. If public concern were to result in litigation, for example, that could significantly undermine and slow down much needed projects. In fact, others will propose amendments, and I am more than happy to speak to amendments Nos. 1 and 2 and the Minister's amendment No. 43. These actually provide additional safeguards against such litigation, particularly in respect of projects that may have a significant environmental impact.

As I said to the Minister earlier, because we have been calling for emergency action, we will not oppose this section even though, in Government, we would not implement many of its measures because we believe there are better ways. However, we will work with the Minister on this and, therefore, we want him to work with us.

Specifically, can the Minister give us even a ballpark estimate of how many units he hopes would be added to the public housing pipeline over the two years if this works in the way it is designed? If the commencement deadline for accessing this procedure is December 2024, and given that post-planning and pre-commencement can take 12 to 18 months, is it the Minister's expectation that this would only be used for securing planning permissions in the first 12 months? What happens if a manager comes to the Minister, for example, in the first quarter of 2024 with a proposal but he or she will not get to stage 3 and stage 4 in time for 2024? Will the Minister do more than just share the information he said he would share with us initially? Will the social housing quarterly pipeline report, for example, have a separate section clearly showing progress on these? Those of us on the committee would like to see that quarter-on-quarter progress. Will the Minister give us more information about those external supports? My understanding, particularly with the new building technologies and especially with the high-grade timber low-carbon building technologies, which many of us would like to see used, the real problem is that the framework agreements and procurement rules to get into standard social and affordable housing building exclude many of the providers of new building technologies. Will the Minister give us more information about what that external support looks like? How does he propose procuring those new building technologies in a timeframe he would, under no set of circumstances, be able do with traditional build? Finally, can he give us a commitment that he will also sit down and radically reform the four-stage process? It is not fit for purpose. It is slowing down projects. We now know that not only does that delay the delivery of much needed social and affordable homes, but every six to 12 months of a delay increases the price. A public spending code and four-stage approval process introduced after the crash to try to introduce strong management of public finances is now actually costing the public money as well as delaying homes. If the Minister were to come back at a later stage with policy proposals to change that process, he would have willing partners on this side of the House.

See this speech in context