I must now deal with a postponed division on the motion on subsidies for developers. On the question, "That the amendment to the motion be agreed to", a division was claimed and in accordance with Standing Order 80(2), that division must be taken now.
Subsidies for Developers: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]
The following motion was moved by Deputy Cian O'Callaghan on Wednesday, 18 May 2022:
That Dáil Éireann:
notes that:
— the cost of housing is having a significant impact on people's standard of living;
— according to the Central Statistics Office, house prices have increased by 15 per cent in the last year and will soon surpass the Celtic Tiger peak;
— rents have doubled in a decade;
— rates of home ownership are falling fast;
— Ireland has some of the highest rents and house prices in the European Union; and
— the Government's decisions, policies and actions have increased these housing costs;
further notes that:
— last week, the Government announced its intention to gift €450 million to developers to subsidise the construction of apartments that will be sold at full market price;
— these public funds are to be spent without any cost-benefit analysis, independent cost evaluation or regulatory assessment;
— subsidies of up to €144,000 per apartment are proposed;
— according to the Housing Agency, these apartments will cost individuals up to €450,000 each; and
— this is exceptionally poor use of public funds; and
calls on the Government to:
— abandon their plans to gift €450 million to developers;
— use these funds instead for the construction of affordable purchase homes; and
— end all policy interventions that inflate costs and make housing more unaffordable.
Debate resumed on amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:
"notes that
— as recognised in the Government's housing strategy 'Housing for All - a New Housing Plan for Ireland', there is a housing crisis in Ireland affecting ordinary working people who aspire to the security of home ownership, which demands a response from the Government on an unprecedented scale;
— Ireland is experiencing an acute gap between housing supply and demand, exacerbated by the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and global supply-chain disruption, which requires, in line with Housing for All's four pathways, short-, medium- and longer-term State interventions;
— increased supply of social, affordable and market-supplied housing is the key solution to Ireland's housing concerns;
— meeting strong demand for urban living, with people wanting to live close to work and urban amenities, requires action to ensure developments at scale in our cities, particularly close to public transport connections and existing infrastructure and services; and
— there is a dearth of supply of apartments to buy in our urban cores, but there are high numbers of planning permissions already granted that could meet that demand if they are activated;
welcomes:
— the development and implementation of the Housing for All strategy, and its commitment to massively expand the role of the State and invest unprecedented sums to achieve the Government's aim that everybody should have access to sustainable, good quality housing to purchase or rent at an affordable price;
— the ambitious targets in the Housing for All strategy of over 300,000 new homes by 2030, with over 90,000 social homes and 54,000 affordable homes, recognising that delivery will ramp up over time as industry capacity increases and in response to Government interventions;
— the record levels of State investment in housing, with over €4 billion per annum in Housing for All funding;
— the most ambitious social housing building programme and affordable housing building programme in the history of the State;
— the confirmation that the measures introduced by the Housing for All strategy are helping to increase housing supply, with 5,669 new homes in Q1 of this year, the most in any first quarter since this official Central Statistics Office statistic began back in 2011, and 22,219 new homes completed in the last four quarters;
— the clear increase in construction activity demonstrated in the 34,846 new homes commenced in the 12 months to March 2022, the highest rolling 12-month total since comparable data was first published;
— the range of measures already introduced under the historic Affordable Housing Act 2021, including the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme, the Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme, and the expansion of Part V of the Planning and Development Acts 2000 to 2020 to include affordable units;
— the fact that over 32,700 first-time buyer households have been supported into home ownership by the Help to Buy scheme since 2017; and
— the separate measures in the Housing for All strategy to bring forward more supply, including the recent launch of the Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme, as one of a number of Housing for All measures to bring forward over 5,000 new apartments for owner-occupiers, planning consented and ready-to-start housing construction and, in particular, address the challenge of apartment delivery in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford; and
fully supports:
— the Government's commitment to supporting home ownership through a range of targeted measures;
— the Government's continuing work under the Housing for All strategy to secure the delivery of housing in partnership with local authorities, the Land Development Agency (LDA), Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs), and private industry;
— achieving more compact growth and vibrant liveable cities with a greater range of options for both owner-occupiers and renters in cities, at all income levels, which as a first step requires that stalled apartment developments with planning permissions in place are built and occupied;
— the Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme, as a short- to medium-term, time-bound measure, to activate the delivery of 5,000 apartments in high demand areas of the existing built up footprint of our cities for sale to owner-occupiers;
— the benefit of the proposed support ultimately going to the purchaser and not the developer, who is enabled to buy an apartment in a core urban location which would not otherwise have been built, at a price well below the development cost;
— the fact that the scheme will support the construction of apartment schemes where there is a viability gap between the cost of constructing an apartment and the apartment's open-market value (if the market value is lower than the cost of constructing it), as without this support these apartments would not be built, and the homeowner will get the benefit of this by being able to purchase apartments to live in at a regular market price;
— increasing the supply of owner-occupier apartments to free up housing in the rental sector;
— the open Croí Cónaithe call for expressions of interest for apartment developments in our cities which is underway now and for the next six weeks, and applications will be assessed on an open book basis and approved with strict conditions on delivery, appropriate development and benefit to the owner-occupier purchaser;
— in addition to and along with the Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme, new affordable purchase schemes by local authorities and the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme, which will support households with affordability challenges to achieve home ownership, meaning potential buyers can access both Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme supports and the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme;
— the further expansion of the Cost Rental sector in Ireland, which has already seen the first homes tenanted at rates of 40 per cent below market through the work of local authorities, the LDA and AHBs; and
— the LDA's plans to deliver affordable homes, with construction to begin this year on over 800 new homes, planning applications recently lodged for over 2,300 further homes on State lands, and proposals under the Home Building Partnership (Project Tosaigh) to deliver 5,000 new affordable and social homes by 2026 through engagement with private developers to unlock land with full planning permission that is not being developed due to financing and other constraints."
-(Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage)
Amendment put:
The Dáil divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 62; Staon, 0.
Tá
- Bruton, Richard.
- Burke, Colm.
- Burke, Peter.
- Butler, Mary.
- Byrne, Thomas.
- Cahill, Jackie.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Carroll MacNeill, Jennifer.
- Chambers, Jack.
- Collins, Niall.
- Costello, Patrick.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Creed, Michael.
- Crowe, Cathal.
- Devlin, Cormac.
- Dillon, Alan.
- Donnelly, Stephen.
- Duffy, Francis Noel.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frankie.
- Fitzpatrick, Peter.
- Flaherty, Joe.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Foley, Norma.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Harris, Simon.
- Haughey, Seán.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Higgins, Emer.
- Hourigan, Neasa.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Kehoe, Paul.
- Lahart, John.
- Lawless, James.
- Leddin, Brian.
- Lowry, Michael.
- Madigan, Josepha.
- Matthews, Steven.
- McAuliffe, Paul.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McHugh, Joe.
- Moynihan, Aindrias.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Murnane O'Connor, Jennifer.
- Noonan, Malcolm.
- O'Brien, Darragh.
- O'Brien, Joe.
- O'Callaghan, Jim.
- O'Connor, James.
- O'Dea, Willie.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Donovan, Patrick.
- O'Dowd, Fergus.
- O'Gorman, Roderic.
- O'Sullivan, Christopher.
- O'Sullivan, Pádraig.
- Ó Cathasaigh, Marc.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Rabbitte, Anne.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Eamon.
- Shanahan, Matt.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Smyth, Niamh.
- Smyth, Ossian.
- Stanton, David.
- Varadkar, Leo.
Níl
- Andrews, Chris.
- Bacik, Ivana.
- Barry, Mick.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Browne, Martin.
- Buckley, Pat.
- Cairns, Holly.
- Canney, Seán.
- Carthy, Matt.
- Clarke, Sorca.
- Collins, Joan.
- Collins, Michael.
- Conway-Walsh, Rose.
- Cronin, Réada.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Cullinane, David.
- Daly, Pa.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Donnelly, Paul.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Farrell, Mairéad.
- Fitzmaurice, Michael.
- Funchion, Kathleen.
- Gannon, Gary.
- Gould, Thomas.
- Guirke, Johnny.
- Harkin, Marian.
- Healy-Rae, Danny.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Kenny, Gino.
- Kenny, Martin.
- Kerrane, Claire.
- Mac Lochlainn, Pádraig.
- McDonald, Mary Lou.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- Mitchell, Denise.
- Munster, Imelda.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Murphy, Paul.
- Murphy, Verona.
- Nash, Ged.
- Nolan, Carol.
- O'Callaghan, Cian.
- O'Donoghue, Richard.
- O'Reilly, Louise.
- O'Rourke, Darren.
- Ó Broin, Eoin.
- Ó Laoghaire, Donnchadh.
- Ó Murchú, Ruairí.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Quinlivan, Maurice.
- Ryan, Patricia.
- Sherlock, Sean.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Bríd.
- Smith, Duncan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Ward, Mark.
- Whitmore, Jennifer.
Staon
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Jack Chambers and Brendan Griffin; Níl, Deputies Catherine Murphy and Cian O'Callaghan.
Amendment declared carried.
Motion, as amended, put and declared carried.
Cuireadh an Dáil ar athló ar 9.02 p.m. go dtí 9 a.m., Dé Céadaoin, an 18 Bealtaine 2022.
The Dáil adjourned at 9.02 p.m. until 9 a.m. on Wednesday, 18 May 2022.