Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is encouraging to see 52,500 new starts up to the month of April and 30,000 mortgage approvals in the past 12 months to first-time buyers. In my own constituency we have a strong pipeline on State land of 2,500 social homes and 3,500 affordable homes. However, I want to underline a problem generally in Dublin. The Minister needs to examine carefully the situation emerging because, last year, 72% of the 12,500 homes built in Dublin were apartments. Of those under construction in Dublin, 82% are apartments. However, the number of those sold to first-time buyers or to any buyers was just 6%, or 500 homes. Equally, the pipeline of options with approvals is 51,000 apartments with approval in Dublin. The underlying difficulty is that to fund these multi-unit developments requires a level of funding and equity that makes it virtually impossible to sell to owner-occupiers. A figure of just 6% of the throughput going to owner-occupancy is ringing alarm bells for me. It is true that, increasingly, with the departure of the private investment funds, it is now the LDA and the approved housing bodies that are providing that equity to allow those homes to start.

I ask the Minister to examine carefully the details of both Project Tosaigh and the cities fund. There is supposed to be 10,000 homes coming from those, but from what the Minister said in the House and from what I see on the ground, virtually none are coming for affordable purchase in Dublin. Even the LDA, which is funding projects, sees only the capacity to fund cost rental. We need an initiative that allows bridging of the sale of apartments to owner-occupiers.

The reality is that those apartments will be sold in fives and tens over a long period, running to months before they are sold, and that is not a model the banks are willing to fund. That is the reality. We need to find a solution if we want to have compact development. We need compact development in the interest of climate sustainability and general sustainability of living. We cannot have people commuting from Mullingar as a solution. We have to find a way of creating the opportunity for owner-occupancy in compact development. That is not there and I do not think it is coming on a sufficient scale. While those two schemes are the right direction, I do not see the product of them actually producing for purchase. It is encouraging to see that the LDA and the approved housing bodies are involved in mobilising private investment. I see it in my own constituency. A number of the new private developments are actually in partnership with the LDA or the approved housing bodies. We will see cost-rental housing coming from those. There is going to be a gap, however.

There are two other points I want to make. The revision of the national planning framework cannot come soon enough. Of all the schemes for housing and apartments that started last year, 47% were in Dublin. Our ambition with the national development plan was to see double the rate of development of Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick as of Dublin. In fact, the reverse is the case. The rate of development in Dublin is double that in the other cities. Our strategy for relocating is not sufficiently effective. We need to look at the infrastructural investment that will make that possible. The impression I get is that it is hard to get financially successful development in those cities, whereas it is easier to do it in Dublin. We need to reverse that trend if we want to have sustainable development.

Finally, I ask the Minister to go back to the housing document for older people, to accommodate a population that is growing older, which was published back in 2019. We have simply failed to encourage rightsizing on any scale. Some 90% of people in my age category, and indeed younger people, are living in accommodation that is too large for their needs. However, there are no realistic options to change that. It is very difficult, for example, to convert a home from one unit to two household units. Rightsizing options are offered by Dublin City Council, but these contribution schemes where people can downsize and sell to the council are virtually non-existent. I believe we need a housing trust dedicated to nothing but developing this. It is a win-win situation if we free up accommodation that is underutilised, allow larger families to go into it and give people the opportunity to live securely in their own community. That is what people want. There is a need to look at those sorts of models. Those models were published back in 2019, but they need to be kickstarted by a dedicated agency that is committed to making that happen.

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