Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Cuffe. I have not had the opportunity to face him across the floor before in the Chamber. We go back a long way and I am very pleased he is in his current role and I wish him all the best in it. I welcome the publication of the National Housing Development Survey and I am pleased we are spending some time on it. The report is very important and has considerable implications for the planning system and for economic and social policy.

Vacant, incomplete and unfinished housing is one of the most visible legacies of the boom and bust economic development we have witnessed. Some 13 years of mismanagement has left the State, local authorities and the next Government with the difficult problem of how to address and manage 2,800 estates and developments which are incomplete or in some cases substandard. The report has found there are some 43,000 houses and apartments which are completed but vacant and not signed off because some work remains to be done either on the apartments or houses or in the estates generally.

The recent "Prime Time" programme on RTE showed how this problem has implications for those living in the estates and others beyond. The consequences may include anti-social behaviour within the estates and in neighbouring areas. In some estates the conditions are unsafe for the families living nearby. Last weekend, I visited one unfinished estate in which the previous week a child had fallen. Luckily, the accident was not serious but it happened because developers left behind a development which was incomplete or dangerous.

The report shows that in County Meath, my county, of the 85 housing estates examined, almost one half do not have the final top coat on the roads. The report also shows that one half of these estates have incomplete play areas in which children would typically kick ball. However, they are unable to do so in some cases because the landscaping has not been put in place or rubble has been left in the common areas. This is a serious issue with implications for the lives of those in the estates.

Developers have been allowed to move on from unfinished estates to the next place for which they received planning permission. In many cases bonds put in place for the first estate were then rolled over such that the same money and bond was used in the next estate, often with the tacit agreement of the local authority. In 2005 I brought our then spokesperson on the environment, Deputy Gilmore, to visit unfinished estates in Duleek, County Meath. As a consequence, he tabled a Bill in the Lower House to address the issue. I read the proceedings of that debate earlier and noted that Deputy Cuffe, as he was then, had contributed to the debate and called for action to be taken to tackle the problem. The Minister of State at the time was Deputy Batt O'Keeffe who stated on 9 March 2005 that we did not need to introduce legislation dealing with unfinished estates because "there are significant measures in the 2000 Act to specifically address the issue of completion of housing estates." Rather than deal with the issue, he threw out the Bill. The public was told by Mr. Charlie McCreevy and Deputies Cowen and Bertie Ahern that the economy was different from any other, that we did not have a bubble, that the position was sustainable, that this was an economic outlier and that there would not be a bust in the housing market. We now see that they were completely wrong. The constituency in which I live has suffered enormously because they told the people the market was safe. We have seen rezoning on a level that is completely unacceptable and construction quality and standards are not up to the mark.

It was reported during the summer in our local newspaper that, for planning purposes, in County Meath 61 times the amount of land needed for residential housing had been rezoned. With that amount of land we could increase the population of the county by over 200,000 people. When we consider the national picture, the situation is even more stark. The Minister of State is well aware of these figures. We have enough land zoned to provide approximately 1.1 million housing units and between now and 2016 we will need one third or one quarter of that number. Too much land has been rezoned in the past 15 years.

I welcome the publication of the report and the survey could be useful in finding the mechanism we need in considering the potential use to which many of these properties could be put. The report shows that in the constituency in which I live, County Meath, 800 houses are complete but empty. With the turn of a key, they could become homes for many of those on the housing lists of the local authorities. I support the call made by Focus Ireland that both estates and empty properties be used to tackle the housing waiting lists and the problem of homelessness in counties such as Meath. Adopting such an approach would salvage an important social benefit from the situation in which we find ourselves. Some 100,000 applicants are on local authority housing waiting lists, some of whom should be catered for by using the excess supply. I welcome recent comments by various Ministers suggesting they are open to considering such an approach. If it is done in the correct manner, it will be supported by my party.

The report marks the first step in addressing the issue of ghost estates. The next step is an assessment of bonds and how much they come to. We should also have an estimation of the work needed to put these housing estates right in order that we are aware of the size of the gap to determine the cost will need to be funded from central or local government. The end result of the report will be the delivery of quality homes and neighbourhoods into which people thought they were buying.