David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. Like previous speakers, I acknowledge that he has inherited a real mess which must be sorted out. He should be given the time, space and support from all political parties to make sure that we deal with the real issues with which he has to grapple. It is important to set a context for today's discussion.

I welcome the report on unfinished housing estates and remind Members of some of the figures in it. There were 23,250 complete and vacant dwellings, 9,976 dwellings were near completion, 982 developments were substantially complete, 150 developments were 90% complete, no construction was commenced on 109 developments and substantial works were outstanding on 1,655 estates.

Like the Minister of State, I was a member of a local authority, Waterford City Council, for seven years. I saw at first hand the relationship between decisions we had to make as local elected representatives and what was happening nationally in terms of the construction bubble, the drive towards development and where all of that was going. I remember that when we had to compile our city development plan we had to make decisions on the zoning of land and making millionaires out of landowners and individuals overnight and all of that was fuelled by people who simply wanted to make money. I can give examples of where that occurred across the country but County Waterford is one region where I can certainly cite that there was overzoning of land. Huge amounts of land were overzoned and that has led to its own problems.

We must put this debate in context in terms of what is happening now in the economy. We have this problem because the property bubble was fuelled. Too many houses were built, developers borrowed cheap money from banks and banks here borrowed money from banks in foreign countries and from the bond markets and far too much was built far too quickly. We were building this house of cards that we all knew would collapse and we were told there would be a soft landing but that was not what happened. We now have to borrow billions of euros to sort out the problems in the banks. We had to establish NAMA and it has acquired many of these properties and now the taxpayer is being asked to foot the bill.

Arising from Minister of State's report, I note he has set aside €5 million euros for health and safety works that need to be done. That figure can be compared to what we are paying back in terms of NAMA and the interest alone on the bailout. It is phenomenal. The amount of €5 million is what we are giving back to those communities who we all agree are suffering and yet we are paying tens of billions of euro to speculators and gamblers who are partly responsible for causing this mess in the first place. It is truly shocking but that is where we are at.

I have a number of concerns about the report. It refers to the role the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, should have in respect of some of these unfinished estates. There is a difference between unfinished estates and ghost estates. There are many estates in which many people are living but on which the work was simply not completed. I understand the HSA has responsibility only for active estates and not inactive estates and I wonder how will they will be dealt with.

This brings us back to the relationship between developers, local authorities and politicians and the fact that developers were able to get away with murder in these estates in terms of what they did. I can cite two examples in my county of Waterford. I remember visiting two housing estates in the Ballinroad area of Dungarvan a year ago. The Grianan estate and that of Pairc Na mBlath. I talked to people at their front doors who were in tears. They had paid huge amounts of money for their properties. There is a problem with the water supply there. In terms of the well that was dug, the water pressure is not sufficient, which means there is a problem with drinking water supply and elements in showers, kettles and other appliances are being burned out. There was also an absence of street lighting. There is a fantastic amenity in the area, which is linked from the Ballinroad Roundabout to Clonea. Ballinroad is straddled between Dungarvan town and Clonea. At the roundabout at Ballinroad there is a fantastic walkway and cycleway leading to Clonea but there was no footpath to enable the people from the housing estate to avail of that amenity. This is what was happening in Celtic tiger Ireland. People paid huge amounts of money for their properties, part of which were development levies, but the money accruing from them were not ring-fenced to carry out these works. A disgraceful decision was made by the previous Government to allow developers to opt out and buy out of their Part 5 responsibilities. That money in many cases was not ring-fenced to build more social housing or to invest in local communities. I accept that all these problems are a hangover form the past but many of them still exist.

I welcome the proposed site resolutions plans. It is crucial that the people living in these estates are part of the consultation process and that a framework is established to allow them to have a say. I would like the Minster of State to respond to this point.

The Derelict Sites Act was cited as a measure that could be used. I am sure the Minister of State in his experience as a local councillor had major battles with his county manager over many years about using the powers under the Derelict Sites Act and was told it is a blunt or crude instrument, it is not what should be used and is rarely used, and asked to cite a handful of examples of where it has been used. I welcome the fact that we can try and use this Act but I do not see how we can effectively use it to deal with some of problems in unfinished housing estates.

I spoke earlier about the bailout, that we are in this position because of mistakes made by developers, politicians and regulators who should have known better. NAMA was established but there has been no social dividend to the people from that process. The best way to give people a social dividend is to ensure that all those properties which are now vacant are used for the purposes of providing homes for people who need them. I was disappointed the Minister's recent statement on future housing policy did not indicate anything new. There is no new departure from what was put in place by the previous Government where we now have privatisation of social housing and no funding for it. When I was a member of Waterford City Council I recall being told by the city manager that there was no capital funding for this year, next year and probably the year after, and he could not tell me when the next local authority housing estate would be built. It is all long-term leasing and again we are supporting developers. They can lease their properties to local authorities and make profits on the back of people's housing need. Hundreds of millions of euros are being spent subsidising people in private rented accommodation throughout the State and yet there are housing estates that have not been completed, and there are vacant houses in others into which people could move. We should implement the imaginative proposals, including in the area of housing, put forward by the Minister of State's party and about which its members spoke vociferously prior to the election to bring about the kind of changes the Minister of State promised. Some of the imaginative proposals put forward in the context of the election campaign by the Minister of State's party while in opposition, as well as by Fianna Fáil and other parties, should be implemented to deal with unfinished housing estates and ensure a social dividend for taxpayers and a return on the mess, created by others, which landed us in this situation. The best way to provide a return is to ensure these houses are used for the purposes for which they were built, namely, to house people. The Minister of State has an opportunity to grasp that nettle by providing the funding to allow that to happen. I hope he can respond to the issues I have raised.