Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House again. He must be sick of looking at us. Between the Minister and all the Ministers of State with responsibility for the housing sector, he has been in the House a great deal as we approach the end of term.

I am supportive, in principle, of the Land Development Agency Bill before the Seanad. The Bill was initiated in the Dáil but, in practice, the Government did not accept amendments to the Bill from the Opposition on Committee Stage and was not prepared to work with us on them. Unfortunately, our party will be voting against the Bill on Second Stage in the same way as we voted against it, in its eventuality, in the Dáil.

We all accept the Land Development Agency is to use public land, effectively, to get houses built. We are fully supportive of the concept of a development plan to develop public housing on public land. It has been our party’s policy for a very long time. If the Land Development Agency works as it should, and works as a true State-run public developer, it should supply public housing on public land and create a long-term secure mechanism for proactive management of the State’s land to solve the housing crisis, both today and into the future, and deliver social and affordable housing.

I am encouraged by some of the amendments accepted by the Government in terms of the delivery of public housing on public land but it is very limited in terms of the population centres to which it will apply. For example, it will not apply to Limerick which has a severe social housing crisis. An aspect that concerns me is the amount of the Bill that will be included in regulation and that it will be left up to the Minister. For something of this significance, the principles under which it operates must be copper-fastened in legislation. While I might be encouraged in some respects by some of the movement that has happened, we do not know who will be in ministerial office in the next Government or in ten or 15 years' time. There is a danger in the long term that public land could be sold off and used for private developers.

I want to touch on the issue of affordability. A fundamental flaw in the Bill, and it is perhaps even more of a fundamental flaw than with respect to the Affordable Housing Bill, is linking of what is affordable and affordability. Specifically in this Bill, what will be provided will be linked to market rates. I am specifically referring to the land that will be available at or below market rates.An affordable home should be affordable to buy or to rent and what a person pays should amount to about one third of his or her income. The concept and definition of affordability and how that will work in the context of public land should be enshrined in the Bill and this should have been done in tandem with the Affordable Housing Bill 2021. I worry that the LDA could end up as a mechanism for the privatisation of large tranches of public land, with windfall profits for agents, while delivering the bare minimum of 50% and a welcome 20% of social housing. I again acknowledge that the Government has moved in that regard. The arguments I am making, however, are not just for how the LDA is going to be in the short term, but how such a body will be structured in the long term.

This Bill addresses the idea of market value in that section 53 provides that where there is a dispute, the Minister should prescribe the manner in which the market value of the relevant public land should be determined. Under section 76, housing pursuant to section 73 must be below the prevailing market price or rent, but, equally, it fails to make any provision for how far below the market price or rent the cost of the housing should be. We must provide for these aspects now and not allow the door to be opened for manipulation in respect of true affordability and value. Again, that is an element which worries me.

I welcome an approach such as that taken by the Minister in the Affordable Housing Bill 2021, where he specified the parameters of affordability. It is being delivered on in places like Lusk, for example. It is a concern, however, that this might not always be the case. We also then see certain developers arguing that the 10% affordable stipulation be provided in respect of €600,000. Equally, at the Irish Glass Bottle site, affordability is going to be in the region of €450,000. That is why it is so important that we define "affordability" in the Bill in the context of land and for the housing that will eventually be available, tie such aspects to changes in people's incomes and find a mechanism for doing that.

Under the Bill before us, the Minister will have an astounding amount of power regarding the determination of the prices of land and affordable housing. We must have some control over the power the Minister has to potentially transfer land of significant value from public to private ownership. I am also concerned about the LDA's lack of accountability. This Bill explicitly removes the role of local authorities in examining and scrutinising deals involving land acquisition from local councils, as set out in section 183 of the Local Government Act 2001. However, I welcome the clarification that this change does not involve land which has been zoned for housing.

Those of us who have been members of local authorities understand the significance that the power of section 183 has for local authority members. An example relates to where I was able to use this power in respect of land disposal in my area of Dublin 8 to deliver one of the first parks ever created there and where the management of the local authority wanted to sell the land concerned to developers. It was going to happen, but I was supported by my colleagues across the council chamber who recognised the need for green spaces to balance the high density of construction in that area. The members of the local authorities had the power to intervene in such cases. The park I referred to has been packed during the pandemic because such a green space was badly needed by many people.

The consistent removal of the powers of local councillors is very unfair. As Senator Fitzpatrick said, we must be able to trust the members of our local authorities because they are as ambitious and as focused on housing as we are and as are the officials in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

It is, with regret that I will not be supporting this Bill. I believe in the concept of a State development agency, but we must enshrine affordability and accountability in the Bill and ensure that the Minister does not have too many powers in the context of such a body. This issue centres on public housing on public land and on delivering affordable housing, not just in the short term but in the long term of the next 50 to 100 years.