Dáil debates

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Other Questions

NAMA Social Housing Provision

10:00 am

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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6. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide a progress report on the project to convert the National Asset Management Agency houses to social housing including the number of houses transferred to local authorities; the cost to the Exchequer broken down by local authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11916/14]

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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For two and a half years I, and others, have been appealing to the Government to acknowledge the fact that we have a housing emergency in this country and that it needs to take emergency measures to deal with it. One aspect of that is the promised delivery of social housing units from NAMA. Could the Minister tell us how many social housing units we are getting from NAMA? The delivery seems to be pathetic. I want to hear some good news from the Government that we will get serious delivery from NAMA of desperately needed social housing.

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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We will be starting a debate on social housing after these questions. My Department, the Housing Agency and NAMA continue to work together with housing authorities and approved housing bodies in identifying suitable NAMA housing units and bringing them into social housing use. By the end of December 2013, of the 4,374 units identified by NAMA as being potentially suitable, 2,055 units have been confirmed by local authorities as being suitable for social housing. Completed housing unit transfers from the NAMA loan portfolio stood at 492, with a further 104 units contracted and where completion work was ongoing. This brought the overall total delivery of social housing from NAMA sourced units to 596 units, completed or contracted, since the process began. Some 367 of these units were delivered in 2013 alone.

Progress is ongoing and I expect these numbers to increase significantly in 2014. Further information on the delivery of NAMA sourced units, including a full breakdown by county, is available on the Housing Agency's website. Units acquired from NAMA are brought into social housing use by way of a number of existing delivery mechanisms including the social housing investment programme, the capital acquisition scheme and the social housing leasing initiative. These are existing funding mechanisms and my Department does not distinguish the financing of NAMA-sourced units from other sources of social housing supply. To the end of February 2014, the social housing leasing initiative, including NAMA-sourced units, has delivered 4,736 units for social housing use and expended some €66.4 million in leasing costs since its introduction in 2009. The current average per-unit cost of social housing leasing initiative units, including over 400 NAMA-sourced units, is just under €505 per month.

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the Minister of State for her answer but when one wades through those figures-----

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Deputy asked for the figures.

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Indeed, and I appreciate the Minister of State's giving them to me, but when one wades through them, we have got 596 units out of a promised 4,300.

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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We have got 2,000.

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Only 496 have been delivered. Others may be in the pipeline or approved as suitable but, given the fact that NAMA has this enormous property portfolio, this is pathetic, particularly against the backdrop of 96,000 families languishing on housing lists for, in many cases, over a decade. Is the Government on top of what NAMA is doing? At the weekend we discovered that much of this portfolio is being sold out to property speculators such as Lone Star. Has NAMA delivered such a pathetic amount of social housing because we have made a decision to sell off all this property, which we need, to property speculators such as Lone Star?

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The NAMA properties are by no means all housing. There is a big portfolio of NAMA properties. The Government committed to delivering 2,000 units from NAMA for social housing. NAMA identified over 4,000 properties as potentially suitable but the local authorities deemed only just over 2,000 of those to be suitable.

There is no point taking a house from NAMA that is situated in a place where nobody on a social housing list will live. We have to be realistic. The local authorities are best placed to identify which are suitable. I acknowledge that it was very slow at the start but the Minister and I have had several meetings with NAMA, which has established a special purpose vehicle into which it gathers the suitable properties and makes them available to local authorities or the voluntary housing sector. The figures I gave the Deputy show that it has escalated considerably in the past year and will again this year. I am confident we will deliver the 2,000 units in the lifetime of this Government.

10:10 am

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Much seems to centre on what NAMA puts forward as suitable. I take the point about properties in the middle of nowhere being of little use to anybody on the housing lists but is NAMA holding back the good properties because it wants to flog them off to speculators such as Lone Star, Apollo or Kennedy Wilson, which we have recently discovered are in the process of bidding for or buying up these massive property portfolios? They get the good, quality buildings and NAMA offers the rubbish it cannot flog to these speculators to local authorities. It would be a supreme irony if, on the back of a massive crisis caused by property speculators, we handed over this property to another gang of speculators while tens of thousands of families, who could use those homes, languish on housing lists.

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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We have no evidence that NAMA is not identifying the suitable properties. I have figures for this part of the world. In Deputy Boyd Barrett's constituency 114 properties were available for consideration and 58 of those have been completed or contracted. In Dublin city there were 247 and 115 have been completed or contracted; in South Dublin 42 were available and 40 have been completed or contracted; in Fingal 56 were available and 44 have been completed or contracted. House prices are going up in these areas so there is no evidence to suggest it is offering only properties where prices are low or cannot be sold to somebody else. They are offering a considerable number in the greater Dublin area, which suggests it is not doing as the Deputy suggests. Some of the banks have properties that might be suitable for social housing and we want to pursue those to identify other units.