Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I do not know whether the individual who rang me up was of any particular political persuasion. The nub of the problem, however, was an abundance of tax incentives. That was a problem in Temple Bar, Drumshanbo and elsewhere. Even the seaside resorts scheme, for which Senator Buttimer's party and his colleagues in Labour would take credit, added significantly to the challenges. Tax incentives look like the quick-fix solution by getting money and buildings in there. Members should visit the seaside resorts and the upper Shannon scheme. There is a legacy of major challenges. If we have learned something from this, it is that tax breaks in themselves do not address the challenges.

There was inaccurate reporting in the aftermath of the publication of the National Housing Development Survey. It was wrong for media commentators to characterise every one of the 2,846 developments inspected by the Department as so-called ghost estates. Such reporting is not just inaccurate, it verges on irresponsible. There are not 2,846 ghost estates. We examined 2,846 estates. The detail of the survey shows many of the developments have been completed, are fully occupied and perhaps have only minor completion issues outstanding, such as the provision of final road surfaces. Only 147 developments in the survey are fully completed but have less than 10% of the completed units occupied. Some 50% of the developments surveyed are quite small, at 30 dwellings or fewer, and 25% had ten dwellings or fewer. Some 1,050 developments are potentially of concern because they are substantially incomplete but have significant occupancy. Considering the 1,000 or so substantially incomplete but significantly occupied developments, further analysis will reveal the smaller proportion of these developments, probably in the region of 200 to 300 developments, that are in particular distress. I do not want a blind Members with statistics but it is worth drilling down into the very good survey analysis to gain a more complex understanding of the challenges. These distressed developments are essentially where neither a developer nor a receiver acting on behalf of a financial institution is present and addressing outstanding completion issues.

Every housing market, regardless of the point of the market cycle it is at and whether rising or falling, will have a certain level of vacancy in its stock. The Irish housing market is no different. These survey results provide an important snapshot of the housing market in Ireland. Now that we have identified the extent and scale of the problem, we can assess how best to manage the problems that have arisen.

The publication of this survey is just the beginning of the process of addressing unfinished housing developments, a process that will require the involvement of not just Government but developers, financial institutions, local authorities, professional experts in relevant disciplines and, above all, local communities and residents. The expert group recently announced by the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, and me draws representatives from all of these stakeholders and is actively developing practical and policy solutions to ensure satisfactory resolution of unfinished housing developments. The group is being chaired by John O'Connor, the chief executive of the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency.

The expert group is already making good progress in advancing a best practice guidance manual for managing and resolving unfinished housing developments. The second meeting of the group took place today, which demonstrates the urgency the group is placing on this matter. The expert group will publish the manual as a consultation draft in the next week or so. The manual will set out the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders in addressing unfinished housing developments, identify the type of developments and issues that need to be prioritised for action in the short term, and summarise the wide range of statutory powers currently at thedisposal of local authorities to resolve urgent matters. It will establish an organisational context for leadership on this issue at local authority and national levels, building on existing best practice approaches developed in Ireland and elsewhere in dealing with the issue. Some local authorities have come to the fore in the actions they have taken. These actions and solutions will be brought together in the manual. We will ask the public for its views and integrate them in the final version of the document in the new year.

The manual will act as a code of practice for the range of stakeholders to address the issues. The focus of the expert group is on that fraction of the overall number of developments surveyed where there is substantial occupancy but also completion issues. Some of these apply to the Fingal examples cited earlier, especially where neither a developer or a receiver appointed by a financial institution is present. The Government will consider any recommendations made by the expert group in regard to legislative changes.

The survey output provides a key strategic input not just to the evolution of planning policy and practice and the operation of the housing market but also to the delivery of social housing over the coming years. From the point of view of social housing, more important than the precise number of unoccupied units is what we propose to do with those vacant and available for use. In this regard, the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, has been pursuing a multi-stranded approach to obtain vacant unsold stock for use as social housing through a long-term leasing initiative that will support the delivery of sustainable communities. This involves matching up oversupply with rising demand. This will be a plank of social housing supply in the coming years. It is not as easy as matching 10,000 empty units and 10,000 people on the housing list. According to those involved in the provision of social, affordable or local authority housing, the issue is more complex. We must ensure we do not have a particular group of people with housing needs concentrated in one area. We want to achieve a housing mix. Some housing bodies have done great work in recent years by ensuring one gets a mix of different tenancies in housing developments. We must learn from the existing examples. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has done good work in stopping the large, monofunctional housing estates we had in previous years. There is work to be done in ensuring we have a range of housing tenures.