Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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12. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if his plans for mixed-tenure social and affordable developments on publicly-owned land, outlined in Rebuilding Ireland, will effectively mean the privatisation of publicly-owned land; his understanding of what constitutes affordable rental and the way in which this differs from the current local authority housing model, or the HAP and RAS schemes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28730/16]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am seeking to ascertain why the Minister, who says he is committed to delivering social housing to deal with the housing emergency, is proposing to give away two thirds of public land - I refer to land on which 100% council housing would previously have been developed - for private housing that is called affordable rental or affordable. If I understand this correctly, two thirds of any publicly-owned site will be developed by the private sector and will not be used for council housing. I will refer to some individual sites when I ask my supplementary questions. If we need to get large quantities of council housing quickly, why are we proposing to privatise two thirds of publicly owned sites?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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We are not prescribing that. We are saying we will look at sites on a case-by-case basis. We are asking councils to be ambitious and to use publicly-owned landbanks much more strategically than they have perhaps been used in the past. We want to promote a different way of developing social housing and the communities served by such housing. We want to integrate private housing with social housing in a much more progressive way. For all of those reasons, we are asking local authorities to submit proposals for the strategic use of publicly-owned landbanks. We want them to create partnerships with the private sector to build some private housing, some social housing and some affordable housing, depending on what kind of mix is appropriate for the local area. People are using ratios that have been politically agreed by a number of parties. In the case of O'Devaney Gardens, for example, there is a mix of 50% private housing, 20% affordable rental and 30% social housing. That is not necessarily the percentage that will apply to every publicly-owned landbank. Sometimes it will make sense to have 100% social housing and sometimes it will make sense to do a deal with a developer to have a 50-50 spilt. Different percentages will be appropriate, depending on what is needed and the area it is in. The core issue here is that we need to get better value out of our publicly-owned land. This is not some giveaway to the private sector. It is about using the leverage we have in terms in public landbanks, either to get cash back from the private sector or to get the private sector to pay for social housing programmes that we might not otherwise be able to afford to develop as quickly, while at the same time availing of the private sector's know-how in terms of design. If we can develop communities that are of a higher quality, are more integrated and have more diversity within them, we will ultimately build healthier communities that involve an awful lot of social housing. For me, all of that is positive. I do not approach this from some sort of ideological position, where all State land must accommodate State housing only. I think that would be a flawed approach. It is not the approach we are taking.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I beg to differ. I think it is precisely ideological. I will give the Minister an example. The site of the former prison at Shanganagh Castle in Shankill is owned by the council. Some 550 units can be built there. In the past, 550 council houses would have been built there. As a result of the Minister's proposals, some 180 council houses will be built and the other houses will be designated as affordable housing and affordable rental, whatever they are. It is clear that it is a public-private partnership. I understand that the same thing has happened at Oscar Traynor Road in Coolock. It is happening all over the place. At the same time that a site where 550 council units would once have been built is being developed in a way that will give us just 180 council units, the NAMA development at the former Dún Laoghaire Golf Club site, which would have given us 320 social units if the 20% rule had been in play, is giving us just 160 social units as a result of the Minister's decision to reduce the 20% requirement to 10%. The private developers are gaining everywhere. They are gaining on the private developments and they are now gaining on public land. People on the list are asking why 550 units were not provided, instead of 180, which is what they are going to get under the Minister's plan.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Many people are looking for housing. The Deputy mentioned people on the list, but there are many people who are looking to try to buy their own homes. We have to try to cater for everybody and not just for one segment, which seems to be the only segment the Deputy represents. My job is to get more houses built for everybody, including people on social housing lists, people who are homeless, young couples who want to buy their own homes and people who want to get into secure rental accommodation. That is a broad mix. This is not about solving one problem. If we solve one problem without solving the others, we create more and more pressure, which drives more people onto housing lists. I will explain what we are trying to do here. First of all, these are decisions for local authorities to make. The proposals come from the local authorities first and foremost. We have given a commitment to increase the number of social houses nationally by 47,000 in five years. We do not want all of them to be concentrated into social housing-only estates. The Deputy wants large estates of 500 or 600 social houses with nothing else, but I do not think that is the way to develop diverse communities in which issues like social disadvantage and opportunity can be addressed for people. We will have multiple sites with lots of social housing delivery. They will be integrated sites with private sector and affordable housing delivery. I think that is the right way to do it. I commend the council for that.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Two major sites are being developed in my local area at the moment. In the case of a development of 1,800 houses, there will be just 180 social houses as a result of the Minister's 10% rule. There is private housing. I want people who want private housing to get private housing.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I am glad to hear it.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We are getting just 10% for social housing. The balance could be redressed at the next big site, which is publicly-owned, so that we get more social housing, but that is not going to happen. We could have got 550 council houses at that site, but instead we are going to get 180. If there are 180 council houses at one site and 180 council houses at the other site, that means there will be 360-----

Maria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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They were never full social houses-----

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I ask the Deputy not to intervene. Some 2,000 private houses are being developed at these sites. The proportion of social housing is falling all the time.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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It is not.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Minister is going to accelerate that by allowing two thirds of public land to be handed over. When he says this is a matter for the local authorities, is he telling me that my local authority can choose for all of those units to be social housing? Under the public private partnerships, will the actual title to the land be handed over to the private developers in the case of the so-called affordable rental or affordable housing? I want to know whether it is going to be privatised.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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It is important to correct the record. The Deputy suggested that Part V required 20% social housing, rather than 10% social housing. It was not 20% social housing; it was 10% social housing and 10% affordable housing. The Deputy does not seem to care about affordable housing one way or the other because he does not consider it to be social housing. The first thing he should do is get his facts right. The various local authorities have to make proposals to us to get funding for social housing. In our housing strategy, we have a policy position around mixed tenure developments because we believe that is the right way forward. I think most people in this House see it as the right way forward, given the lessons of the past.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It means people on the list will be waiting longer.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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That is not how Deputy Boyd Barrett sees it, however. We will have many developments progressing at the same time. It seems that the Deputy would prefer small numbers of large-scale social housing developments on big sites creating large mono-tenure developments. I do not think that is how we should be developing the communities of the future. We will continue to take proactive steps to increase social housing numbers dramatically. We want to do it in a much more integrated way than it was done in the past.