Anthony Lawlor (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Being the last speaker, I assume the Acting Chairman will allow me some leeway. I know the Minister of State is very passionate about this and has a great understanding of it. Another County Meath man could well be partially responsible for the problem we have at the moment. He introduced Part V in 2000 and, as a result, local authorities opted out of building houses, leaving it up to the big developers while getting 10%, 15% or 20% themselves. When it collapsed in 2007 or 2008, there was no one left to build houses. By that stage, the local authorities had let go of a lot of staff, who went over to the commercial side, as a result of which we are in the situation we are in now.

Every one of us knew there was a need for 25,000 houses per annum to be built but we were building between 60,000 and 70,000 in 2006 and 2007, many in the wrong places as a result of section 23, such as along the banks of the Shannon, over in Leitrim, in Longford or in Roscommon. It was difficult to get people to move over there and many of those houses are still vacant. Perhaps some form of a scheme might encourage people to go over there, with some employment assistance. Could this be looked at?

Fine Gael came into government in 2011. We had a bust economy and it took us until 2014 or 2015 to get funds to start putting together a plan to house people in this country. My colleague from the Labour Party was part of that Government and knew the story of those days. It was not easy when people came into our offices looking for houses. There was the RAS scheme, which was dysfunctional. In Naas, which is my area, it could not cater for people because rents were going up. The Minister has put in place a plan and people have to stand over the actions contained in it. The Minister of State said he was with the Minister responsible at the time, the current Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, when the inaugural Action Plan for Jobs started. He was also Chairman of the committee at the time and we all saw the changes that came in as a result of that. There is now a plan and actions are being taken by people who are accountable and responsible.

We have a lot of rent pressure zones and I believe the 4% which is allowable for landlords on an annual basis is a bit high. The consumer price index is 0.9% at the moment and this includes rents so it could lead to inflation. Perhaps the Minister could reduce the allowable 4% increase to 2%, which would be slightly above the consumer price index. There were provisions in the budget for landlords to deduct improvements they want to make to their houses against tax. One house in my own village took seven months to get back into use. It was a perfectly good house when the tenant left it but it took seven months. Perhaps we could enact legislation to force local authorities to do these things within one month. In the commercial world, a landlord would bring it back into use within one month so why can local authorities not do it? The legislation, or regulations, might require a solid reason for a house not being put back into use within one month.

I am very excited about the LDA because I think it is the future and it is the strong point of our long-term housing policy. It will ensure houses are built, irrespective of whether we are in recession or a boom. It takes two years between the concept of building a house and when it is actually built. I would like the Minister to do something to reduce the time between a local authority acquiring a parcel of land and when it gets finance for it from the Housing Finance Agency, which funds a lot of local authority building. The delay is putting local authorities under a lot of pressure when bringing forward development.

Can the Minister of State pass on the regulations relating to legislation from 2009? He mentioned them in his statement. One of the blockages is the Minister's Department, in the form of the people involved in the spatial strategy or the regional planning guidelines. I will be parochial for a moment. In Naas, we have spent €283 million to upgrade the N7, put in a sewage treatment plant and build new schools but the Department is proposing to downgrade Naas from a regional growth centre to just a key growth centre, as a result of which we are downgrading the population projection for Naas from 50,000 to just below 30,000. We have 25,000 people in Naas at the moment and we have planning permissions and commencement notices for around 2,500 houses in the area. We will have stopped investing in infrastructure and we are now stopping developing.