Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 September 2019

10:30 am

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

I did not think I would be speaking first. I apologise for that. We can get copies and if there is a specific problem, I can go back over the relevant issue.

Under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan, low to moderate income families drew down over 1,000 fixed interest loans through local authorities by the end of June 2019. There are a number of applications in the system and funding has been allocated to deal with any application that is approved in the months ahead. In addition, the help-to-buy scheme, which is administered by the Revenue Commissioners and assists first-time buyers to secure the deposit necessary to purchase a new-build home, has seen some 14,000 applications approved to date. That is a very successful scheme. I have heard criticism and misinterpretation of it. At the start of the Rebuilding Ireland action plan, and in the year after that, many first-time buyers could not put a deposit together to help them draw down a mortgage so the market was not providing first-time buyer homes or building them at scale because there were not enough people in a position to buy them. The help-to-buy scheme was designed to enable people to have tax paid over the years refunded to help them put together a deposit to get a mortgage. That has worked out well. The market has responded by building many more first-time homes and over 14,000 people have successfully availed of the scheme.

The strategic management of key potential regeneration sites, many of which are owned by public bodies, is a key way Government will drive the implementation of Project Ireland 2040. The Land Development Agency, LDA, was established on an interim basis under secondary legislation, but primary legislation to underpin the basis of the agency is being drafted with pre-legislative scrutiny scheduled for the coming weeks. That legislation will work its way through both Houses of the Oireachtas too and we can discuss it further then. The agency is a commercial State body and national centre of expertise which works with and supports local authorities, public bodies and other interests to harness public lands as catalysts to stimulate regeneration and wider investment and to achieve compact, sustainable growth, with a particular emphasis on complex regeneration projects and the provision of affordable housing. It will provide a new implementation mechanism for Project Ireland 2040 and the transformation of our cities and towns. It will also strategically manage public lands and achieve public policy objectives, including the delivery of more housing in the locations that need it most and focusing on affordability.

The LDA has an immediate focus on managing the State's lands to develop new homes and regenerate underutilised sites and has access to an initial tranche of eight sites across the country that have near-term delivery potential for 3,000 new homes. Of these, at least 40% are intended for delivery as additional social and affordable homes and the balance as additional new supply to meet the high levels of demand in the wider housing sector. That is on large sites. The Government does not believe it is right to put only social housing on large sites and possibly have 3,000 houses of one type of tenure. We believe in the mixed tenure approach, with social, affordable and private housing, and we believe that works quite well. I am very conscious that others have a different view but we hold a strong view on that and any developments we do now will have that blend or mix of housing. That is a better approach than that taken in the past when all the social housing was in one area and private housing in another part of town. That is not acceptable and it is not the right way to develop good communities. Significant preparatory work is under way for these sites and it is envisaged that construction activity will commence on the first homes in mid-2020 for delivery by the end of that year, pending grant of planning permissions.

The LDA is also developing a strong pipeline of additional publicly-owned sites. Departments were requested, in respect of lands they own directly and owned by agencies under their aegis, to identify additional lands over and above the initial eight sites. The development of LDA managed lands will make a substantial contribution to the achievement of wider Government targets for housing delivery in general and social housing specifically. We are aware of sites owned by other Departments such as the Departments of Health and Education and Skills. It is right to facilitate their moving that land to the LDA to be developed in a proper way in line with our plans.

To enable more delivery of social and affordable homes on public lands, the Government, in parallel with the establishment of the LDA, approved a new public land affordability requirement. Under this requirement, a minimum of 30% of any housing developed must be reserved for affordable purpose in addition to the 10% statutory social housing requirement under Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, whether such development is being progressed by the LDA or any other market operator. Furthermore, public bodies, such as local authorities and the Housing Agency, engaging with the LDA in respect of their lands will also be in a position to condition the release of lands for development reflecting their own policy requirements. Therefore, complying with the Government's new public lands affordability requirement, the LDA will be capable of progressing a significant level of both affordable purchase scheme-based projects and cost rental-based projects on lands forming part of its portfolio of sites. They will make a rather large contribution in the years to come. It is a pity a land development agency was not set up many years ago to work in conjunction with local authorities to develop publicly owned lands.

The topics I have spoken about reflect some of the innovative, proactive and intensive work that has been advancing under Rebuilding Ireland. The Government is keenly aware that much progress remains to be made on all fronts to restore stability and sustainability in the housing sector. Securing homes for all persons experiencing homeless and ensuring that any stay in emergency accommodation is as brief as possible and delivered in a setting that is appropriate to the needs of the householder or individual remain urgent priorities. In parallel, we will continue to advance on social housing deliver, affordability, cost rental and to harness the expertise and capacity of the LDA and the local authorities to maximise positive outcomes for State inputs in terms of finance and land. The State was not sufficiently involved in managing land and housing supply in the past. That is why we did not have a sustainable housing construction sector. I will not go into all the problems that has caused but I believe we are coming out the other side. We have to ensure that cannot happen again. If we manage and develop our land properly and if we plan using the planning framework and other plans that will supersede it and stick to those plans to deliver approximately 30,000 or 35,000 houses every year for the next 20 or 25 years, that will be one way to future-proof the country from the points of view of housing and land use needs and to ensure we are in a position to deal with the 1 million increase in our population over the next 20 years, and no doubt more thereafter.

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