Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)

I spent five years on the housing committee during the previous Dáil, and I learned fairly quickly that there is no silver bullet to solve the housing crisis. It is by turning on the supply in multiple different streams that we will be able to reach that. Despite what previous speakers said, we cannot ignore the fact that we are now at the stage where we are building more social or public housing than we have done since what might be called the golden age of social housing in the sixties and seventies. Let us be clear: we are building substantial amounts of social housing.

In the past five years, we have also tried to concentrate on other forms of housing in the form of cost rental and affordable purchase. These are the areas we have to drive home in the term of this Dáil. We need our local authorities to be the ones leading the charge on it. Over those five years, I have identified nearly 2,000 units that have been developed in my constituency. Many of them have gone through Part 8 planning. Some of them have been started through the PPP bundle process. Those 2,000 units will be public housing on public land. They will be delivered by Housing for All and will make a very substantial difference in our constituency. It is important over the coming five years that local authorities know that delivery is the key. Of course, the housing activation office, when it comes on stream, the Minister and the Government have ultimate responsibility for the delivery of housing, but local authorities are the housing authority. That is their role. They often object to being stripped of powers. The power they have is the ability to deliver, and they have the funds and now the new mechanisms to do that.

A number of bundles in my area come under the PPP programme, including bundles 3, 4, 5 and so on. I was very concerned, and I expressed this to the Minister, Deputy Browne, about reports that there appears to be a delay at Shangan, where there are to be 93 accommodation units for older persons, and at Collins Avenue, where there are to be a further 83 social homes, which are included in PPP bundle 3. The delay appears to come down to the fact that the price that came back under the PPP bundle did not prove good value for money for the taxpayer. As a member of the public accounts committee, I think it is right for Ministers to protect public money but what is not right is to not have an alternative plan. If the price that has come back exceeds what we believe to be good value and, as I said, I support that concept, we have to have a very rapid alternative plan in order to deliver. Those homes at Shangan and Collins Avenue are badly needed in our constituency. People who have seen the planning notices are already coming to my constituency office. They have seen the conversations that councillors have had about the units, which were due to go on site this year. We need to make sure they get on site this year.

These locations are backed up by other sites, including the Church of the Annunciation, the Collins Avenue Bring Centre, Wellmount Road, the Ballymun bundle, which has multiple sites, Barry Road, Carton Lands and Silloge Road. All of those are within different PPP bundles. At this early stage, we need to make sure that they do not sit for any length of time in terms of being solved. The Minister has committed to me that is what will happen. We will hold him to account in that regard because delivery by local authorities has to be paramount. They are the ones that will deliver the kind of affordable rental and affordable purchase we can deliver.

If local authorities believe that we will not have their back when they go for a PPP process, and contribute a huge amount of time and effort into that process, only to then find that the funding is either pulled, sanctioned or not granted at the last hurdle, local authorities will default back to not delivering or saying there is no point in them doing that unless they have the support of the Government. I urge the Minister of State, who is a big supporter of delivery and of local authorities delivering, on behalf of people in my constituency who are contacting me, to impress on the Department the need to bring forward a plan as soon as possible for these sites. As I said, I am not in favour of spending hundreds of thousands of euro per unit more than we need to. We should not do that, but we have to have an alternative delivery mechanism if the PPP does not deliver.

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