Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I refer to excessive zoning in areas where there was no demand until the market was dysfunctional and ultimately went bankrupt. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past. That is why I welcome this action plan. I also welcome the fact that planning decisions, zoning, national and regional development plans are based on a factual analysis of the demographics, demand and type of housing needed for the next 30 years, carried out by the independent Housing Agency. Proper funds will be provided to meet that demand. However, we need more medium and short-term interventions which this action plan offers. The Minister of State has outlined some of the significant progress made on 56 specific actions to increase housing output and deal with homelessness. The social housing needs of in excess of 18,000 people and families were met in 2016, which is ahead of the target of 17,000. There is a long way to go and the Minister of State and Members on this side of the House acknowledge that. Solid progress is being made. The enhanced budgets provided in this action plan indicate the will of the Government. Only by having a strategic action plan supported by local authorities, which are key to this, will we deliver on the ambitious targets.

The Minister of State will agree that homeless families and children who urgently require roofs over their heads must take priority. The many initiatives being announced and acted on will go some way towards dealing with them. I welcome the plan because it contains determined public and transparent actions with timelines. That is the way to do business. The Minister and his officials come before both Houses and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, and publish the action plans and what has and has not been delivered. That is the type of transparency and accountability we need in the public system.

I welcome the performance indicators for turning over local authority voids because I worked on this area. We need to examine the cost per unit to have some consistency around the country and more important, the turnaround time for the delivery of the void so that it is not sitting vacant for months when there are people waiting on a housing list. We need to bring accountability to the local authorities which are being provided with funds to turn the voids around. This system will improve their performance.

Delivery is the key to resolving this housing crisis. As our statutory housing bodies, the local authorities are critical to this delivery. The approved housing bodies will be important to the delivery of many projects around the country and they are working on those already. It is important that they and the local authorities are adequately resourced with engineering, housing and architectural staff to deliver these projects because they were denuded of staff during the crisis. It is also important to have an efficient streamlined system. There was a lot of bureaucracy involved in getting approval from the Department. Local authorities blamed the Department, which blamed the local authorities. We need to stop the blame game, find the barriers and streamline the system to deliver more housing projects.

We also need to consider the role of the elected members. There are very proactive members in every local authority but yesterday it was brought to my attention that when a public private partnership was proposed to deliver 85 housing units in the Ardee area of Louth, Sinn Féin opposed it at council level. The party tried to defer delivery of the project but thankfully it was voted down. We need to leverage all resources, public and private, to deliver housing for people in need. Why would we, for ideological reasons, stop or defer 85 housing units in one local authority area? I often hear Sinn Féin pontificate here about the need for housing at national level but at local level it disrupts delivery. It is not good enough to put ideology before the delivery of housing.

It is critical that we use the Housing Agency analysis to inform local and national decisions to give us the right type of housing to meet people's needs. I am disappointed that Senator Murnane O'Connor, who is from Carlow, did not mention that Waterford and Carlow were used to pilot the repair and lease back scheme. More than €140 million is being provided over five years to assist private property owners, local authorities and approved housing bodies to renovate vacant houses and bring them back to beneficial use. I know the Minister intends to expand this scheme into other local authority areas. This type of initiative will put a dent in the housing need. We do need new buildings but that will take time because they have to get planning permission, go out to tender and be built. We need to prioritise the places where there are houses. That includes voids and the repair and lease back scheme. I welcome those initiatives.

Rebuilding Ireland is a very good tagline but it needs to go beyond the Pale, to provide for communities around the country. When I was Minister of State, I designated the north quays in Waterford a strategic development zone. That was only the second strategic development zone designated outside Dublin. There was good news this morning that serious investors are now engaged with the council to redevelop a 17-acre site in the heart of Waterford city on this strategic development zone to provide mixed use, commercial, retail, public realm and more important, quality housing. The Government has approved the strategic development zone and has committed in its 2016-21 infrastructure and capital investment programme to provide €40 million for enabling works to leverage these schemes. This type of scheme will rebuild Ireland and our regions. I wish the Minister of State and the Department well in developing further initiatives for more housing projects.