Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I was amazed by Senator Ó Domhnaill's comments, as the Bill benefits those who need social housing. That is the Bill's main aim, it drives the Bill and it is enunciated throughout the Bill. Consider where the sop to developers of the past got us. It was built on a weak foundation of quicksand. The foundation was not right.

The Bill tries to ensure that social housing is a priority. It will benefit the poorest in society who cannot afford their own houses. It is great. I would advocate grants for people to build their own houses, but they are not the first priority because they have a few bob. People without any money depend on social housing. That is what this Bill tries to address. The urban regeneration section of the Bill will benefit every citizen in Ireland. I spent approximately 20 years on a local authority. Some of the major blights and sights throughout the counties have been derelicts and a lack of development by developers who sit on land until appreciation is maximised. The Bill will address these issues via the 3% levy.

The purpose of the Bill is to place a focus on housing shortage.It will facilitate increased housing input and construction work. We have seen the effect of reducing VAT to 9% for restaurants. What is the difference between a person who owns a restaurant, or any businessman or businesswoman, and a person who wants to build a house? Ministers, Deputies and Senators are not going to go out physically and build houses. We are dependent on developers to do it. One has to be imaginative in one's ideas and in how one facilitates that process. By facilitating restaurant owners by reducing VAT, we have seen growth in tourism and economics. Hopefully, we will see the same growth in housing development. We know where we were when we came into government. There was no construction. Now we are advocating further building, and have seen 11,000 houses built this year.

A review was carried out, and the Bill provides that in future the focus in Part V will be on the delivery of social housing, with a requirement of up to 10%. That has been reduced from 20% because one has to take cognisance of the fact that there are developers, like others, who are in negative equity. In his address, the Minister of State stated that the focus in the Bill was on securing social housing units on site. That is important. The making of cash payments in lieuof social housing is being discontinued. We all know the problems that brought with it. It was a major criticism of the last Government. I acknowledge that Part V provided some social and affordable housing in the past, but the cash payment in lieufacility was taken advantage of. The Bill puts a legislative procedure in place to carry out a number of actions from the Government's 2020 strategy to kick-start the construction industry. The construction of 11,000 units nationally in 2014 represented an increase of 30% on the 2013 figures, but we were starting from a very bad place. We came here in very bad circumstances, but the improvement is there. To simplify matters, we must ensure we produce the housing. Action is needed.

Section 5 of the Bill is designed to incentivise the development of vacant sites. I referred to the 3% levy. As provided for in the Bill, every owner of a vacant site will be notified before being slapped with a 3% levy, which is very important. It has to be advertised. I urge every local authority that produces a newsletter to put that out there to notify everyone who owns a site that is suitable for residential development or regeneration. The Derelict Sites Act is still in place but section 27 provides that there will not be a double levy on any site as both a derelict and a vacant site. Only one levy will be applied, which is important to state. The Bill defines what constitutes a vacant site. Very often, a difficulty that arose with the Derelict Sites Act concerned what constituted a derelict site. Was it a matter of my opinion or someone else's? It is not down to opinion in the Bill; rather, a statutory definition is included as to what constitutes a vacant site.

The Bill also makes provision for the maintenance of a vacant site register, which will tell us right throughout the country for the first time what pockets of land are there, what it is for and what we can do with it. It empowers local authorities to send out notice of their intention to place various sites on the register and to set out which sites it is appropriate to subject to the 3% levy. Some sites will have a 0% levy and will not be liable at all as vacant sites because they are in negative equity or on contaminated land. This is an ideal opportunity to address the issue of contaminated land and, as such, I have a question for the Minister of State on it. We have seen in the past that lands were contaminated without our knowledge. This will flush that out. However, there will be no levy on land in negative equity or land that is contaminated. I presume, however, that contaminated land will be covered in the forthcoming environment legislation in order to ensure that when it is identified, it is immediately put right.What if one is not responsible for the contamination?