Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to debate this important issue again. We must always consider the context of a debate and examine the reasons for being where we are. We have inherited a terrible legacy from the housing boom and the Celtic tiger economy. People have engaged in the blame game but we are right to seek accountability and to report on why it happened and who the main players were in making it happen.

There has been excessive zoning and we must acknowledge that. That is not the only reason, however. Just because land is zoned does not mean planning permission will be secured. An excessive number of planning permissions were granted and there is now an overhang in the number of housing units lying vacant. The reason for the excessive number of planning applications being granted is that there were Government sanctioned tax reliefs in many areas where housing developments probably should not have been built. There was easy borrowing from the banks. If that borrowing had not been available, the capital would not have been available to build the developments. There was also poor regulation. I do not wish to delve into this area but it is important to identify all the factors that contributed to the property bubble.

With regard to local authorities, they had a very high dependence on planning contributions. That must be acknowledged. This is fundamentally an issue of how local authorities are funded because they were depending on the enormous contributions that arose from granting planning permission and the construction of developments. There was an incentive for local authorities to grant planning permission. That incentive must be removed. If not, we will not have proper and sustainable planning. If that incentive is removed, we must examine new ways of raising finance for local government. These are the issues we must tackle if we are to learn from past mistakes.

We must also acknowledge that the Exchequer was heavily dependent on the income and tax receipts that were raised from the property bubble. There was high expenditure on our public services and in other areas which was dependent on the huge income from the property bubble. We now see the huge shortfall in the public finances, which is currently €19 billion. Tax income has taken a sheer drop, as if from the top of a cliff, but we still have high public expenditure. That is the legacy we are discussing and there were many factors in creating it. I agree that engaging in a blame game for purely political purposes will not generate solutions, and we must be careful about that. There must be accountability, however, and we all must play our part in trying to secure that.

I welcome the national survey as it serves as a baseline from which we can work. However, figures produced by the Department conflict with those produced in the national survey and the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis. We need to confirm the figures and ensure we have them as accurate as possible from the outset.

Despite the number of vacant houses, it is most frustrating that thousands of people are still on housing lists. Other public representatives and I, as well as those on housing lists, find it frustrating to hear daily about vacant units while we still have large numbers on waiting lists for housing. Many of them are in private rented accommodation and in receipt of rent allowance; therefore, the State is already paying out for them. Therefore, it is in its best interests to ensure they are provided with social housing as soon as possible.

Another matter that needs to be addressed before we start leasing private accommodation is the significant number of vacant local authority houses, many of which are boarded up and in need of either reconstruction or maintenance. Local authority officials say this is because they do not have the resources or the manpower to regenerate or maintain these properties. That is a crying shame, particularly in the current climate when we have thousands of unemployed construction workers. Local authorities and the Department could put together a scheme to get apprentices and craftsmen off the dole. They should let them do the maintenance works required in these vacant houses in order that they can be re-let to people on the housing lists. We need to think outside the box to get people off the dole queues to do this work.

There appears to have been a major shift in policy in the Department over the summer, I presume as a result of the number of vacant houses available in the private sector. A circular was issued to local authorities more or less instructing them to cease engaging in construction. I understand why the circular was issued, but I do not agree there should be such a major shift in policy without an analysis of needs in each local authority. A one-size-fits-all policy will not work. In the Dublin commuter belt there is a more serious overhang and a greater number of vacant private properties available than in other areas, but in rural areas with a large hinterland there is still a need for local authorities to construct new houses. They must be allowed this flexibility where a need is identified.

We need clarity on the national expert group, its terms of reference and who is represented on it. We need its report which must prioritise solutions to the problem of vacant properties and ghost estates. There is a question about unfinished estates and the bonds collected by local authorities. This week the media reported that local authorities still held many bonds but had not called them in. I understand from discussions with local authority officials that many of the bonds are inadequate. They were put in place to cover superficial aspects of estates such as the provision of lighting or the final skin on footpaths or roads but do not address the deficits in infrastructure such as the provision of sewerage and water systems. During the big freeze last year we saw that, even in some finished estates, the infrastructure was substandard. The infrastructure has been placed underground and cannot be seen. Unfortunately, in some estates it was not installed at the correct depth or to the proper standard and as a result water pipes froze in cold weather and we have ended up with a catalogue of problems. Pipes crack and water leaks and all such problems impact on local authority and State resources. Many of the estates are private and the work was certified by professional engineers with insurance policies. Why do local authorities or the State not call on these insurance policies? As professional organisations, whether for engineers or architects, certified the work done in these estates, why do we not call on the insurance policies when0 estates are subsequently found to be substandard? When the professionals are found to be at fault, we should call on their insurance policies. This issue must be examined.

We could debate this matter forever. The national survey is a start and will give hope to citizens living in unfinished estates that we will try to address the problems they have inherited through no fault of their own. They have paid good money for which they worked hard, but, unfortunately, the system and local authorities have let them down. We need to learn from this.