Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is not just a rebuilding strategy and action plan for cities such as Dublin and Cork. It is fair to say the media may concentrate on the emergency situation that is at its worst in Dublin, Cork and perhaps Galway. This is a national plan, however, which affects every county and all cities. We are engaging with everybody of all abilities and disabilities on this issue. It is not a Dublin or Cork plan. Every local authority has been asked to put in place pipeline projects for the next three or four years. The Taoiseach referred to 8,000 houses in different parts of development, not under construction. It was reported as construction and that is not the Taoiseach's fault. That is not near enough and that is what is in the pipeline. There are 504 various social housing projects of all around the country. We want a lot more than that and we have asked every local authority to find sites, projects and to become involved in joint ventures to bring forward new ideas. This includes Carlow. That message has been clear. If it needs to be repeated in Carlow, I will do that. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, is clear we want activity and we need it. It is as simple as that.

The housing assistance payment, HAP, is a success. It will be hit by a lack of supply of housing in some areas, certainly in the greater Dublin region, however. HAP was successful in the early years because there were vacant and available properties. Much of these properties are now drying up, making it hard to deliver on HAP. We have set high targets and we will keep pushing them.

HAP is an attractive offer for all involved. It is a solution and does not mean one is off the housing list. Taking up a HAP residency means one is on the transfer list, which means one is on the housing list. I do not know why the contrary has been put out. Most people will agree HAP is a solution. Most availing of the scheme do not want to come off it and many others request to be on it. I accept a lack of supply is an issue, however.

On the issue of tenancies being terminated early, I am not familiar with any such cases. If there are cases, will the Senator let me know? The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, is there to aid with that. People enter into rental agreements and it is not that simple any more to break them or put someone out. There are many protections available which have been enhanced.

On extending the rent pressure zones, there is a legal process in place which will stand up legally. We have to stick to this. It involves a local authority and the Housing Agency at the start flagging an electoral area in any county which they believe will qualify as a rent pressure zone. The Minister will instruct the RTB to carry out the research and gather the evidence that the area should qualify as a rent pressure zone. Already in January, rent pressure zones were extended to several towns. More will be looked at the next quarter. If there are places in Carlow which will qualify, they will come into that. However, we have to follow the logic set out. If we did not, it would not stand up to scrutiny or have a legal basis. The criteria are there for a reason.

It affects my area. Navan did not qualify even though one would imagine it would. Places like Maynooth and Drogheda did not qualify either but, in time, they will qualify when they tick the boxes. It is important the right process is applied. If not, it will not stand up legally and would not be worth having rent pressure zones in the first place. A process is in place and it is important the local authority engages with it because it has a leading role at the start.

We are currently mapping 700 different sites across the country. They are not all in Dublin. The Department, along with its housing delivery team, is assessing sites throughout the country. The work will start in the cities because that is where the major pressure is on. However, we will engage all local authorities to bring forward sites because we want more activity, despite what Senator Gavan thinks.We agree on building a certain amount of social housing and as we are not near that number yet, we want to make that happen as best as we possibly can.

The rental accommodation scheme, RAS, was mentioned in terms of making people homeless. I am not sure what was meant by that. It certainly does not make people homeless. That is not what it was designed for. It is a homelessness solution.

Senator Boyhan raised a number of issues. I hope I do not miss the main points but we committed to making announcements on the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, and all going well, they will be announced before the end of March. The Senator is correct in that over 70 projects came in on that. Quite a few of them were over €5 million and needed more detail and more work, and any delay that has happened is due to the need for more detail. It is important that this is announced properly and that the correct funding is allocated to the projects which will deliver housing. This infrastructure has to activate and open up sites that can deliver housing. There is no point in us contributing towards a bridge or road if the site is left undeveloped for years afterwards. We have to apply a great deal of scrutiny here to make sure we make the right decisions on that. The proposals came forward from local authorities, including a combination of private land and their own land. In some cases it is a combination of both but certainly on the private lands the local authorities might help to open up, there will be a delivery of social housing expected from that. If the taxpayers are going to help activate these sites through this fund there has to be a payback to them through a reduced price on the end product - the house - as well as social housing. I can assure the Senator that the local authorities are driving that. They make the suggestions to us. We did not go out and pick the sites. We are following the suggestions and proposals of the local authorities, and we are working with the local authorities. To repeat the point I made to Senator Murnane O'Connor, we are asking local authorities to bring forward their proposals for their own sites and their own lands and we will work out a pipeline over the years ahead to develop that. There are some key sites that we know are in need of infrastructure. This is about trying to activate private and public sites and a combination of both. We also want to activate other sites in public ownership outside of the local authorities' ownership. We have asked all agencies that own land, including NAMA, to look at all their sites, site by site, to see how they can be developed for housing, as well as a combination of that mixed tenure to get the balance right on social and private housing.

There were a couple of specific questions on the actions that we missed. I thank the Senator for his compliments on the actions we achieved. I accept there were approximately nine incomplete actions for the relevant quarter. The Senator raised four or five of them specifically and the rapid building programme was also raised by others. This is an area where we would like to see increased activity. The commitment was that there would be 200 rapid housing units delivered by the end of 2016. That has not happened to our satisfaction. A total of 22 have been completed and have tenants in them while another 350 are at different stages of construction. Some are further along than others. Some are at the tendering stage but are actually in play now in that sites have been identified, planning has been secured and they are moving forward. The big delay was actually securing the sites, which is unbelievable. There was a bit of tit-for-tat here between two Senators about who was objecting to what but we have to get the message out to everybody that social housing has to be accepted in the communities and sites must be brought forward. I have been at council meetings where councillors have told me that this is a crisis that has to be solved only to discover that they are objecting to housing plans. I am not blaming any particular party. I simply state that individual councillors who claim that they want to solve an emergency on the one hand and block projects on the other need to look in the mirror. It makes it very hard for us to achieve anything. There are 350 rapid housing units in play. The issue is that the commitment for 2017 is that there will be 650 units in addition to that, so there should be 1,000 rapid-build houses constructed or certainly near to completion before the end of this year. Our target will be that we will have them completed. We will engage with local authorities and ask them to use this scheme and activate it. We have put in place measures which make it easier to use and the procurement measures are dealt with there as well. There is no reason for delays in this. Rapid construction allows for different types of construction. It is supposed to deliver housing much quicker and it has not done so in some cases, but we now have enough sites to make it happen and it should be on track before the end of the year. Again, it needs commitment from everybody.

I reiterate that on the €200 million in LIHAF funding, we expect to be able to announce that by the end of March, all going well, and then we will get that money spent and get it activated. That is only one mechanism. Other access to finance for infrastructure is available. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, is involved in trying to make funds available, as are other agencies. This is a contribution intended to help activate sites and to get sites moving. The bottom line is we must deliver housing.

Another issue raised was in respect of online planning. The enabling legislation was held back because of the debate here before Christmas on the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016. That took precedence for a while but with those regulations, we are still progressing with the online planning and it is on target to be here before the summer. It will be accompanied by the regulations that support the online planning in place for this year as well. We know it is important and it was discussed on Committee Stage. While everyone thought it was important to bring forward the legislation we dealt with in this House in December as a priority, the commitment to online planning is there, albeit behind schedule.

NAMA lands were mentioned. We are fully engaged with NAMA on a regular basis and are trying to activate their sites. Indeed, we launched a report on unfinished housing developments today that reviewed 2016 and fewer than 15 unfinished sites remain on NAMA's books. There has been plenty of movement there. There are strong commitments from NAMA in terms of the delivery of housing over the years ahead. We in the Department have developed quite a good relationship with the agency over the last six or seven months in our attempts to progress sites. It is something on which we are very much in tune with it. The same applies to our housing agencies and the local authorities. There is delivery there. I hope I have answered most of Senator Boyhan's questions.

Senator Coffey welcomed the priority given to try to address this issue. It builds on the good work Senator Coffey and Deputy Kelly had done before that. We have managed to secure additional funding, which matches the number one priority given to this issue by the Government. Many of the actions have been enhanced and increased. The Senator specifically mentioned the action plan process and I agree with him. It is a process that Senator Coffey had started in the Department regarding social housing. I know that Mr. Barry Quinlan was involved in putting that together as well. I have said before in this House - I was involved in the Action Plan for Jobs process in another Department for four or five years - that it is a process that will deliver. This is the second progress report. We are six months into this. I cannot show or prove the solutions here. I can only say that the process has delivered in many other areas - jobs being one of them. I refer to the process of rolling out the actions, putting the names beside them and committing the money and the personnel that are now available. This process does deliver and this will happen. I have no doubt but that if we follow this plan action by action, we will end this crisis. I have no doubt about that because I was involved in a somewhat similar process before. It is a good way of doing business. It is a process which is now being used in other Departments as well and this way of doing business is often discussed at European level too. It is quite a simple approach, which is common in business but was not used in all Government circles for years. It will deliver and I have no doubt about that. The important thing about having an action plan for anything is one's business case to secure the funding required. If there is no business case or plan the money will not be available. That is why, with this plan being published in July, we were able to get the commitment, through the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Finance, of the €5.35 billion we need to spend on this area over the next couple of years. That is what we are trying to do and I have no doubt that we will do that.

Senator Coffey raised the issue of voids. There has been great progress in this matter. We discuss the issue of vacant properties regularly. People do not realise that more than 7,000 voids - long-term social housing that had not been used for many years - have been brought back into play over the last two or three years. Again, that was started by the previous Government and has been continued by this Government over the past year. Last year alone saw 2,600 voids being brought back into use, and rightly so. We should recognise that progress is being made here and by the middle of this year, voids should not be a conversation that is required any more. There is no excuse for long-term voids any more. There are a couple to be fitted out this year. There are some short-term voids, in some cases six weeks, in other cases three months. We are trying to narrow that timeline. However, long-term voids will be a thing of the past before the end of this year. There are some cases where boarded-up houses will be seen. They are part of a different scheme concerning remedial works, which are not counted as voids. They are a different situation. On my route into work I pass one every day and it can cause people to scratch their heads. Those are not being dealt with under the voids programme. I want to be very clear on that.

Senator Coffey also properly raised the issue that delivery is key. I cannot stress enough that the reason we are visiting local authorities and have stakeholder events on a regular basis is to ensure buy-in from all the stakeholders, including the local authorities, NAMA, the housing agencies and approved housing bodies. It might be thought that it is for media purposes, but it is not.All the different players, including all the parties, have a role in this. We might disagree on the overall targets in terms of the number of houses we are going to build, but I think we all agree that we must up our game when it comes to social housing. However, it can only happen if we all play our part at local and national level. This is what we are trying to do. If we do not deliver on this plan and drive it on, it cannot solve the problem. I accept that some want to do more. I have no problem with that but let us get this done for a start. With the best will in the world, building 47,000 extra houses over the next three or four years is an ambitious target. It is not enough for Senator Gavan's ideology and I am fine with that but there is no quicker way of doing it because we cannot build the houses quickly enough now. Even if our aspirations were twice this, it would not increase activity in the next week or two. We are trying to rebuild a system to be able to deliver the housing we require.

The Senator mentioned the repair and lease initiative. Again, it has worked in Carlow and Waterford with some success. I think more than 40 or 50 properties were dealt with in Waterford. There is endless potential with this scheme. If the money announced and secured for it gets spent, and I hope it does, we will find more because it is a good scheme that can work well and it does provide the quickest solution to bringing vacant properties back into use. The rebuilding is not just for Dublin or Cork. The Senator can see the benefits of it in Waterford, Limerick and many other areas. I hope that answers most of the Senator's questions on that.

In response to Senator Gavan, we cannot keep having this debate about ideology. We are not against social housing. I am certainly not against social housing and the more of it we can do, the better, but we are realistic about what we can achieve over the months and years ahead. It would be just as easy to say we would build 100,000 houses but it would not be believable or have helped us win the money we required from the various Departments because nobody would have believed us. What we have put in place is an ambitious but realistic plan that we want to and can achieve.

Even before the recession, this country had decided to stop building social housing for whatever reason. I will not even go there. The system of rebuilding social housing was wound down, which is why we have a problem today. I accept that. We are committed to rebuilding it and putting local authorities and approved housing bodies back in a position to deliver, construct, rent or buy social housing - whatever it takes. We are committed to that. The money has been put behind that. Most of the €5.5 billion is for social housing, so Senator Gavan should stop telling me it is not on our radar because it is not true. It is committed there.

The Senator's party has lovely ideas but I have never seen all the money to make them happen. We are spending what we can and what we could secure to deliver this. It will put us in a position where the system can deliver 10,000 social houses per year by the end of the strategy. Thereafter whoever is in Government, be it Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein, the Green Party or the Labour Party, can make the next decision. If its wants to build 20,000 houses per year, that is grand. It is a lovely aspiration but we have to do what we can do today. Trust me, if we could build them all tomorrow, we would do it. It cannot be done. We must rebuild the system and get sites activated, and that is what we are committed to doing and what we will achieve.

Senator Gavan again referred to the 8,000 properties. They are in the pipeline. We want to treble that. We accept that the number is not near enough but we are asking local authorities to bring forward more plans and to make it happen. It is not that we want to rely on or reward the private sector. We are conscious of this. We must find solutions today while we are building more social housing. That means leasing houses on a long and short term basis, the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme and buying properties. I am fine with all of this if it provides solutions for people who need a house today. We can choose not to spend any money on the private sector. That will not get people a home. We will use houses every which way we can - private or public sector - to make it happen. That is our job but the key is that we get value for the taxpayer in all we do. I believe we are getting it in some of the schemes we are implementing that work with the private sector to deliver or buy housing or use vacant properties. That is what it is about. It is not about ideology. It is practical. We have no choice but to work with the private sector today to deliver housing. If not, people will remain homeless, which is not something I, the Minister or our Department want to happen. I want to be clear about that.

The reality is not what Senator Gavan says it is. If he was right, we would not be spending or committing €5.5 billion over the years ahead so he should just deal with the facts. I have no problem with him saying it is not enough for him. I can live with that but he should not tell me it is because of ideology or that we do not believe in building social housing, because that is not true. The proof is in what we are doing, the money is available to make that happen and that is what we are going to keep working on.