Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome the upbeat tone of his remarks.Considerable progress has been made, as Senator Fitzpatrick has said. It would be foolish of us to deny this, but it would be equally foolish of us to underestimate what we now face.

I want to make several points, first on the Constitution. There is a suggestion that we need to amend the Constitution somehow to tackle the housing crisis. I defy anybody in this Chamber to point to any provision of the Constitution that prevents the Irish Government from doing what is required, including in respect of the compulsory purchase of land, the valuation of land, property prices, land banks and all the rest of it. I am convinced, on the basis of going back to the Kenny report, that there is no constitutional reason the Government cannot do its job. In that context, I remind us all that the Housing Act 1966 conferred and imposed on every housing authority the obligation to come up with social and affordable housing strategies and implement them by their own actions and through the plans they draw up for the development of their functional areas. Unfortunately, that duty was repealed because it was thought there was a danger that housing authorities might actually be brought to book and forced to account for their own failures.

I agree completely with what Senator Fitzpatrick said about Dublin City Council. There is mass dereliction in this city. Much of the property in question is owned by Dublin City Council. The worst areas of dereliction and rundown areas have been in the hands of the council. Walk down Bolton Street and take a look at the flats beside the fire brigade building. They are in a terrible state of dereliction. Walk up Dominick Street and ask yourself whether this is the new Dublin we are working towards. Who owns all that property? It is Dublin City Council.

The rental sector is important. I am aware that the Minister has been fiddling around with tax allowances this way and that way to try to sustain the departure from the sector, but there is one very simple reason for what is happening. I know about it myself because I was a landlord for a while. It is that the law has changed in a way that actually takes away from the landlord the value of his or her investment. It is now the case that if you let a house to a number of young people in their 30s, they can continue to substitute tenants among themselves. With the changes already in place and with what Sinn Féin is now proposing, you never get your property back. That has driven an awful lot of landlords out of the sector. If they want to realise the value of their investment, they realise that it has effectively been expropriated.

The Minister has referred to the new planning Bill. I want to see that Bill in its final form. I see it has been agreed upon by the Government. I want to understand why some of the more controversial provisions of that Bill are necessary. We are grossly overregulated regarding building. I do not believe we need an office of planning regulation; we need an office of planning and construction encouragement. I am one of those people who believe that one-off housing is not a bad idea in rural Ireland and that if a farming couple wants to give a quarter of an acre to a one of their kids who wants to live in the area, it is a good idea. I do not agree with the green philosophy that those concerned should be herded into villages on the basis that it is more sustainable. If you look at any map of Ireland from the 1900s or 1800s, you will see there were far more houses in rural Ireland than there are now. The little black square dots speak for themselves.

I want to say a few words about an issue the Minister raised, namely that of people gouging others in the context of planning applications. He mentioned a reference in the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act to demands with menaces. Demanding with menaces in the context of the Act is effectively an offence of mugging. It is where someone says, "Give me your wallet or I will stab you." I do not believe it is applicable to those who say that unless they are given X amount of money or that if X or Y is done to their land, they will object to a planning application.The Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act is not the legislation in question. I looked at the two sections to which the Attorney General drew the Minister's attention, namely, those relating to causing loss and making gains by deception. There is no deception if somebody comes to you and says that they will object to your planning application unless you count them in on the proceeds or make this or that arrangement. That is not illegal; it is just an advancement of personal ambitions and greed. We need a different approach, which is that people should not be allowed to object to planning applications unless they are bona fide and that if they are making demands of the would-be developer, they should be obliged to declare that in any appeal they make in order that their intent is very clear.

With regard to people in city centres living above shops, in apartment blocks, etc., I am of the view that our fire regulations are too strict and are not workable. We should relax them. People were not burning to death when everybody lived above the shop, but we have come to the point where nobody can actually use above-the-shop accommodation without the while property being effectively rebuilt. We must be realistic. If we have an emergency, let us make use of it.