Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome much of what Senator MacSharry said but one sentence struck me. He said "if one is to dream, one should dream big". We have to be careful that this Government does not end up in a nightmare situation. The Minister said housing was his main priority and that we must ensure the utmost is done to ensure the homeless situation is addressed.

The Bill represents a change in national policy guidelines. There is a huge shortage in housing and it must be addressed but I have some reservations about the means whereby we are doing it. Nevertheless, drastic measures are needed to make houses available. Development is not taking place anywhere at the required rate. Why is this? As Professor Ronan Lyons from Trinity College said, the cost of development at the moment is not enticing any developer to build houses. Developers with high finance are purchasing office space but not residential. Excluding the cost of the land, it would take a monthly rent of €1,400 to justify the construction of a two-bedroom apartment. Between 2011 and 2015 the monthly rent for a two-bedroom home in the centre of Dublin increased by 50%. At the other end of the spectrum the cost of a five-bedroom family home in Donegal or Leitrim was almost unchanged while rents in Clare, Tipperary and other rural counties have seen single digit increases. In a couple of years we should look at whether one size fits all in this respect. Local councillors hate to see top-down regulations but the departmental guidelines are a one-size-fits-all approach. In three years, it is hoped, the houses will be available and the figures will show that we can give more power back to the local authorities because that is where the power should be.

Cities drive our economic growth so we have to ensure houses are made available there, and this Bill is one way of doing it. The tight restrictions Dublin City Council imposed, which exceeded departmental guidelines on building apartments, regulated things like car parking spaces, orientation, balcony depth, ceiling height and the numbers of lifts per floors, which all add to the cost. These guidelines were very good as they were to entice family living back into the city following the doughnut-shaped planning we had seen which caused everybody to move out to the suburbs. I complimented Dublin City Council on what it did but the ordinary person cannot afford a house now because it is too expensive to buy and something has to be done to redress that.

There has been a focus on developers over the question of why so few houses are being built, but the banks and international developers are also a factor. The Central Bank has also capped house prices relative to our incomes to secure the country's financial stability, but nothing is being done to cap construction costs relative to our incomes in order that we can secure affordability. This Bill will address some of those problems by changing regulations, including requiring a planning authority to undertake a strategic environmental assessment and making local authority development plans subject to national guidelines.

I am cautious about the restrictions on local authority powers, but at this stage I believe these conditions are necessary. I am pleased to see the streamlining of the strategic development modifications in section 4. South Dublin won a European award for its strategic development zone, but changes to the guidelines are better than going back to the drawing board. Development must begin and there can be no two-year delay while we put in place a new SDZ. This applies to Cherrywood where more than 3,000 houses are to come on stream.

Housing regulations were developed to guarantee that housing in this State supported a good quality of life. It is important to emphasise that the building standards are not being lowered. We are just making houses affordable. The CSO requirements were for a 50% ratio of one-family living whereas Dublin City Council had a smaller ratio. The two have to be streamlined. The principle at the heart of these changes is that it is unacceptable to demand an increase in the living standards of our most secure citizens at the expense of those who are most vulnerable and who cannot afford to buy at the moment. When Dublin city introduced changes in lifts and brought in dual aspects, there was almost a lift for every two or three apartments. If there were six apartments there had to be an outside balcony as in the council estates of old. Naturally, planners and designers would not go with that requirement.

I have some reservations but the main one is the subjugation of local development plans to national policy. I am a supporter of the devolution of powers to local authorities and my fear of usurping local powers comes from the recognition of the value of local needs. Senator MacSharry spoke about Leitrim versus Dublin and I agree that if developers could buy and do up derelict local council houses, such as in Roscommon where I saw some last week, and lease them back to the local authority, it would be a good initiative. Different localities have different needs and local councils know best what is needed in their counties. There are many good reasons for doing what is being done in this Bill but reason enough would be the fact, as Dublin City Council has admitted, that the additional cost for a one-bedroom unit is €22,000, €15,000 for a two-bedroom unit and €23,000 for a three-bedroom unit. While the census shows the percentage of one-person households exceeds 50%, the council has indicated the percentage of one-bedroom units is at 20%. In other words, there is a mismatch between what is needed according to the census and what the council is providing. As a former councillor, I recall that when one saw "have regard to" in legislation, one tended to put that provision to one side and not give it a blind bit of notice. Guidelines, on the other hand, require compliance. We must give consideration to the question of whether one size fits all for all local authorities. That is why a review of these provisions after three years is necessary.