Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I support the motion on housing tabled by my colleagues in the Independent Technical Group. This is probably the 20th or 25th discussion on housing that we have had since the start of the year. I worry that as we are almost 10% through the lifetime of this Dáil, we will end up not getting anything done. We need to focus very quickly on putting in some measures that will actually deliver housing.

I mentioned last week the call by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, chairman, Sean O'Driscoll, to get real about the infrastructure we need, such as the water services and the electricity grid, to provide for housing. That is one angle we have to look at. We also have to be very creative about where we find the housing. Obviously, a massive number of new-builds are needed. I want to re-emphasise my disagreement with the mantra that we have to get overseas investment building the houses. They tend to be high-rent units that consign people to fiscal slavery. They will never be able to afford to get out of that. There are going to be many transients in a lot of areas and a lack of community building. We need to build housing, build communities and put the infrastructure in place alongside that.

I have mentioned these examples previously but I will go through a few ideas again. In Dublin's suburbs where there are older demographics, there are four-bedroom houses with one person living in the house. There is nowhere for that person to go to access the services and community network. However, there is an opportunity to release some equity by turning the upper floor into a starter home and letting the person already living in the property have the lower floor. That could be a win-win situation for everyone because they would not be moving from the community. There was some talk about this in terms of the garden starter homes which could be the stereotypical granny flats down the line. We need to get a bit looser on that. So many people are forced into building small modular homes on their properties and a huge nut is being cracked in terms of planning regulations. Maybe we need to look at the planning laws at this stage, as Deputy Collins has said, and instead of refusing outright, put in meaningful conditions to make it viable for people to live in the area.

I am all for rural communities being able to build on family land. We had the bungalow blight of the 1970s with poorly designed houses. While I agree with Deputies Collins and Fitzmaurice about having a standard type of house, it has to be a high-quality standard that is energy efficient and can produce its own solar electricity to power electric vehicles, EVs. Let people live and work in rural communities. That would be a win-win for everyone.

I praise the croí cónaithe scheme. It has done quite well so far but we need to expand on that. We need to focus microscopically on vacant units in rural towns and villages and allow a conversion scheme where shops have space overhead that has gone derelict. This should be done through a carrot-and-stick approach whereby unused vacant units would be penalised but incentives would be provided to redevelop them. There are people on the housing list who have nowhere to go. I said this last week but it is important. There are people on Dublin housing lists who may move down the country but they do not want to take the risk in case they do not like it. They will probably like the better school accommodation and the sense of community and they will regenerate areas, keeping the post offices and the banks open. However, if they feel they are going to lose their place on the Dublin house list, they are not even going to try it. That is why there should be a five-year clawback in that respect. Again, it is a win-win situation.

In regard to what is happening in strategic development zones, SDZs, in my area, Clonburris SDZ, there are about 8,000 houses. As I mentioned to the Taoiseach last week, if someone has approval for €480,000 on the affordable housing scheme, the price then goes up to €485,000 and they have to reapply and start again.

It is putting a lot of people out of the market. Aside from affordable housing, there should be a special category set aside within a 5 km radius for anyone who has grown up in an area or spent at least ten years there so that people who grew up in an area can continue to live there. It fosters community cohesion when people can live and work near where they grew up with their parents and families and all the supports.

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