Results 15,881-15,900 of 40,897 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government: Water Services Provision (24 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: Since 1 January 2014, Irish Water has statutory responsibility for all aspects of water services planning, delivery and operation at national, regional and local levels. The provision of water tankers is an operational matter for the utility and one in which I have no function. Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public...

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government: Planning Issues (24 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: The City Council approved the Dublin City Development Plan 2016-2022 in October 2016. The development plan includes a schedule of local area plans, which the Dublin City Councillors agreed should be prepared in the lifetime of the development plan. These are local area plans for: Ballymun; Harold's Cross; Moore Street and Environs; Park West/Cherry Orchard; Phibsborough; Poolbeg West; and...

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government: Private Rented Accommodation Data (24 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I propose to take Questions Nos. 272 and 273 together. The 2015 Annual Report of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) reported 319,609 registered tenancies with 170,282 landlords and 693,314 occupants in the private rental sector. The NESC Report, Ireland's Rental Sector: Pathways to Secure Occupancy and Affordable Supply, published in May 2015, estimates that over one-third of all...

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government: National Planning Framework (24 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: Significant progress has been made in recent years in addressing the issue of excessive zoning of lands within the planning process, particularly for housing, through the introduction of Core Strategies now required for all local authority development plans under Section 10(2A) of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended by the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010. In 2011,...

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government: Road Network (24 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: The aim of the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund is to relieve critical infrastructural blockages to enable the accelerated delivery of housing on key development sites and to improve the economic viability of new housing projects in Dublin and in urban areas with high demand for housing. The €200 m Fund will be composed of an Exchequer allocation of €150 million,...

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: Yes.

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: The committee has an opportunity to ask multiple stakeholders questions about anything it likes. It has been doing that to date. The importance of this issue extends beyond the creation of a revenue stream. I believe there is an obligation to ensure some element of the water policy that is to be determined encourages conservation and applies the polluter pays principle so that we can be...

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: With respect, it is not up to me to do the job of the committee. Officials from my Department were before the committee yesterday.

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: Officials from Irish Water have also been in attendance.

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: There is nothing preventing the committee from asking my Department any questions it wants. I will try to ensure the committee gets accurate answers. Similarly, there is nothing preventing the committee from asking Irish Water to respond to questions that the committee needs to get answered so that it can draw conclusions.

Other Questions: Rent Controls (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: Market rent is defined in the Residential Tenancies Acts as the rent a willing tenant would give and a willing landlord would take for the dwelling concerned, having regard to the other terms of the tenancy and the letting values of dwellings of a similar size, type and character and situated in a comparable area. It is important to note that any notice of new rent given by a landlord to a...

Other Questions: Rent Controls (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I do. At the moment social housing makes up between 7% and 8% of total housing stock. I think the average in Europe is between 17% and 18%. We need to significantly increase our social housing stock and that is why we are proposing to increase it by nearly 50,000 over the next five years, increasing social housing stock as a percentage of the total by nearly 30%. I am absolutely committed...

Other Questions: Rent Controls (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I am not sure which element to answer now as there were a lot of questions. We need to bring vacant sites into use, particularly land that has been zoned for residential use. There is a lot of that in Dublin, some of it with full planning permission as well as zoning. We took advice on how soon we could introduce a vacant site levy and we are proceeding with that. If I could do it...

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: The conclusion drawn by the Deputy from the report is not accurate. I do not want to say that the journalist wrote something that was inaccurate as that would not be fair.

Other Questions: Water Charges (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I said that if there were no charging for water this year the State would have to find an extra €114 million, but that I expected there would be some charge for the wasting of water that would bring the figure down below €100 million. It has been deduced from my comments that I am saying this will equal €14 million, but that is not actually the case. The water committee...

Other Questions: Rent Controls (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I agree we need to build thousands of social housing units, and we will do so, but it does not happen overnight. People seem to think we can turn away from a functioning rental market and just build thousands of social housing units overnight at the wave of a hand. This is just not the way it works. We are building capacity in the system to build tens of thousands of social housing units...

Other Questions: Housing Issues (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: The Deputy is a rock of sense, as usual -----

Other Questions: Housing Issues (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: No, not at all. I mean that because that is exactly what we are trying to do. Everybody wants more social housing in the system and nobody wants it more than me but we simply cannot build houses overnight. Even rapid-build housing takes time. If we can get vacant properties that are idle at the moment, making no contribution to anybody, back into the system and put long-term leases in...

Other Questions: Housing Issues (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: I can be accused of many things but under-ambition is not one of them. I regularly set targets and they are normally pretty ambitious although some of them might not be as ambitious as some Members would like. We will be taking the same approach on this. We will set ambitious targets and then go after them as best we can. This will put many people under pressure but I see this as a way of...

Other Questions: Rent Controls (19 Jan 2017)

Simon Coveney: When we debated this issue before Christmas, Deputy Cowen, in particular, and several other Deputies, raised the issue of the need to expand this beyond Cork and Dublin quickly. I intend to do that but I want to do it on the basis of sound data rather than on the basis of making decisions to be popular. We simply did not have the data needed, on a local electoral area basis, to be able to...