Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State also on his recent elevation and wish him the best of luck in his position.

I will speak on affordable housing and housing in general. We have an affordability issue across the board. There is no doubt we have entered into a very different period in the past five to seven years, particularly post-pandemic, as regards the economic and regulatory environment and sustainability and affordability. A large number of the current difficulties, although not all of them, are being driven by Government policy. The first area, which is largely dysfunctional at this stage, particularly in respect of private housing, is planning. The planning guidelines that are being observed and that are soon to be made mandatory include density requirement for many urban areas, and even some less urban areas, of 50 units per hectare. This is not marketable, bankable or buildable, yet we continue to with this. In my area of Waterford city and its environs, which is not a densely populated area, we are looking at 50 units per hectare. Every developer now has to look at putting in apartment blocks. People in Waterford do not want to live in apartments. They were all born in houses and there is room to build houses. They would like to live in small two- and three-bedroom houses, not apartment blocks.

The cost of financing an apartment complex is completely different from the cost of financing a house. All of the certification has to be done and all of the stairwells and every single apartment have to be finished before the complex can be signed off and handed over. That is creating a huge strain, with the result that builders are deciding to leave these high-density developments. We have zoned lands in Waterford and a number of strategic housing developments have been approved but nothing has started. That is part of the problem.

We also have a significant issue with planning appeals and observations. I was with a private developer recently who has three separate sites in the south east, all of which are being held up by planning observations. He told me it is taking, on average, five years from the acquisition of land to selling the houses on site. That is not marketable either.

I was in Limerick recently where I met a large development company. Its biggest problem is finance. It could double its output within 12 months but it cannot get lines of finance to support its business. We basically have two banks which are, mar dhea, lending to builders but only if they come along with 30%, 40%, or 50% of the equity to try to drive a project. We need a functioning finance agency to support private housing because it is delivering most Part 5 housing other than local authority schemes.

I ask the Minister of State to look at Irish Water and the ESB and all the certifications required before a house can be handed over. The bureaucracy involved in building a house is nuts, both for private developers and local authorities. Private developers are frustrated at this stage and many who have been a long time in the business are scaling back and building a small amount of housing because it is too difficult and they are fed up with it.

As regards the Land Development Agency and the Housing Finance Agency, I spoke to a developer recently who took housing finance because he thought it would help him to get on to a tenders' list for local authority housing. By the time conveying and everything else was finished, it had taken him twice as long to finish out on the site because he had to go back each time and get approval for the following stage and drawdown.

This is not working. As has been said many times in the House, the Minister needs to review policy. It is not rocket science. We could build 100,000 houses a year during the Celtic tiger era. While I accept that we built badly in some instances, we built many very worthwhile housing developments. It can be done and the industry can do it but policy is not helping. I ask the Minister to look specifically at planning policy which is a huge blockage to delivering the housing targets we need.

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