Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy. I regard this debate as extremely important. I want to address a few areas in the time I have. I will look at it under the three main headings of social, affordable and private housing. It is about Rebuilding Ireland. The biggest issue across all areas in Ireland is supply. All have different issues. On social housing, I can speak for Limerick city. Quite a number of social houses have been built. It is not enough but construction is under way across a range of areas. The Minister was down there only recently. He opened 83 units on Lord Edward Street and he saw the units on Hyde Road where there are new apartments. They are good. Houses are already being built in Churchfield, in Southill and across the city.

I have a comment coming from local authorities. If one is building social housing, it must be sustainable. What is required here goes back to the land banks that local authorities may have. I would sometimes question the due diligence that is done on the sites local authorities submit to the Department for building to make certain that what has been put forward is sustainable. In some cases, one is going into areas that are very old and may not work. It is a feature of some of the sites that have been put forward and approved by the Department. On the face of it, they look like good sites because, in some cases, they will be turnkey developments. If due diligence is done in depth by local authorities before it goes to the Department, which is a bottleneck, it would speed up the building of social housing.

Affordable housing is a huge issue which needs to be addressed. I know that work is being done on it and that the Minister is speaking about it. I expect the Minister will say further policies will announced regarding it. The biggest concern for parents and younger people is being able to afford their homes. It is private housing but we had an affordable housing scheme that was in place a number of years ago. That scheme was defunct because affordable houses cost more than it cost to buy the house on the open market because of the form of the structure being used. That is a key element. We have a culture where people like to own their own homes and I feel strongly about it.

On private housing, the Minister mentioned many planning permissions being issued and, in Limerick, there is much construction underway in the private sector. There are issues with some of the smaller builders' access to credit. They find it difficult to get access. We need to look at that area again. Speaking of the number of people employed in this sector, it is a problem that we lost a decade of people with skills, including tradesmen. Many emigrated and many are older now. No one was training in that area in the last decade from 2008. We are now playing catch-up. We need to look at ways to fast-track this to have tradesmen in place. I welcome that there is another round of local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, funding. I welcome that the Minister is looking to do an integrated model. The key issue here is supply.

On social housing, the Minister should make certain the sites that councils are putting forward are suitable. For any of us dealing with the issue daily, local authorities are key because they are in control of the building of houses, whether through approved housing bodies or otherwise. They put the applications up to the Department and they determine where social housing is going in. It is probably necessary to bring the local authorities in to say where their land banks are and where there will not be difficulties in building. In many cases there are major difficulties with location across a myriad of areas. In some cases, where one is looking for a balance, if there is an overconcentration of social houses in an area, that is not fair to existing tenants. That is why we went for 10% social and 10% affordable in estates. The key is that the due diligence being done by local authorities before they submit to the Department needs to be looked at in great depth. We need to have fast-tracking to train apprentices, which we are doing. I look forward to the future. The affordable element is key.

I refer to the issue raised made by my colleague, Senator Mulherin, which is increasingly happening under the tenant purchase scheme. One of the criteria is that there must be someone in employment in the house. We are finding that older couples who have retired are now at the stage where they would like to own their own homes. They go in and could afford to pay the mortgage but they are not working. We try to get around that by getting a member of the family to come to live in the house and become a tenant. It is very cumbersome and the issue is coming up increasingly lately. Perhaps we should see if something can be done where there are retired couples and whether they can afford to purchase the house if they have been lifelong tenants. Senator Mulherin referred to it being something that is coming up increasingly. It is now a regular feature. It was not perhaps a year ago. The tenant purchase scheme has come back in a slightly revised form. It is perhaps something that the Minister will take under advisement.