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State Properties

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 4 June 2014

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Questions (6, 15)

Clare Daly

Question:

6. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the initiatives the Office of Public Works has undertaken to make empty State property and facilities available to local authorities to assist in dealing with the housing crisis. [23650/14]

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Mick Wallace

Question:

15. Deputy Mick Wallace asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the progress made by his Department in identifying State-owned properties which could be used as emergency housing; the criteria by which a property is judged suitable for housing families; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23685/14]

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Oral answers (9 contributions)

It is an incredible contradiction that the State, which expends hundreds of millions of euro on subsidising private and emergency accommodation, continues to be one of the largest landlords. The Office of Public Works has properties in every town and village and has one of the largest property portfolios in the State. What initiatives has the OPW taken to make State properties available to local authorities to address the current housing crisis?

I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 and 15 together.

The Office of Public Works, OPW, on behalf of the State, manages a large and diverse property portfolio which ranges from office accommodation to heritage properties, visitor centres and Garda stations, among others. There are a number of vacant properties within this portfolio. The majority of vacant properties are recently closed Garda stations, with the remainder consisting of properties such as customs posts, former Coast Guard stations and sundry other properties located nationwide.

The Office of Public Works has a clearly defined policy relating to vacant properties that are identified as surplus to its requirements. In the first instance, it engages with other public service bodies, including relevant local authorities, to establish the potential for alternative use in advance of deciding on disposal. Such alternative use includes the potential for these properties to be made available to meet social housing needs.

The Office of Public Works has been actively involved with the relevant authorities to identify potential properties within the portfolio which could be considered suitable to address the current housing issues. For example, it agreed to make a number of properties available to the Housing Agency and the office is engaged with the agency on the issue of leasing arrangements. In addition, the OPW recently made a property available to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. It is intended that this property will be used as a residential centre to support vulnerable women affected by long-term homelessness.

Deputies will be aware that on 20 May last, my colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for housing and planning, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, published the implementation plan on the State's response to homelessness, which outlines the Government's approach to delivering its objective of ending involuntary long-term homelessness by the end of 2016. The plan sets out a range of measures to secure a ring-fenced supply of accommodation to house homeless households within the next three years and mobilise the necessary supports. Progress on implementing the plan will be reported quarterly by the Minister of State with responsibility for housing and planning through the Cabinet committee on social policy.

The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government will chair a working group of key stakeholders which will identify potential suitable and available properties, with a view to putting in place the necessary arrangements to facilitate their use as housing units.

With regard to determining the criteria by which a property is adjudged to be suitable for social housing, this is primarily a matter for the relevant housing authorities. I am advised, however, that the following criteria generally apply: the suitability of the property given that many of them are purpose built Garda stations; the location of the properties and level of demand in the relevant area; and the current condition of the property and cost of refurbishment. As stated, the vacant State portfolio will form part of the option appraisal to deliver residential units being completed by the relevant housing authorities.

Given the scale of the current housing crisis, the Minister's reply failed to provide sufficient detail. I note that one property has been available for homeless accommodation. I put it to the Minister that many more properties must be provided. It is ironic that the State is paying tens of millions of euro to subsidise private hoteliers who are providing short-term accommodation to meet current needs and address homelessness while a number of State properties are lying idle. While I am aware that a number of these properties do not fall fully within the jurisdiction of the Minister, I presume the Cabinet could do more than that which the Minister outlined. Some form of interdepartmental task force is required.

The issue came up particularly regarding Defence Forces property of which there is a considerable amount, including several dwelling houses which could be remediated for a relatively small amount of money. Yet, we have people evicted from those premises to be added to the growing local authority homeless lists. There is a wide portfolio of properties, many of which would not be suitable in their current state. Will the Minister, however, consider the idea of convening a task force to see what alternative uses could be made of State properties? There are many unemployed builders who could be used to remediate these properties and make them suitable for housing purposes which would be a far more sensible approach than subsidising the private sector.

I largely agree with what the Deputy has said. There is not a huge array of available properties or properties suitable for housing in the Office of Public Works, OPW, however. I will send the Deputy a detailed letter on this because I will not be able to give her all the information now.

There are 440 properties in the OPW property portfolio deemed habitable, the majority of which are occupied by members of An Garda Síochána and are, therefore, not available for letting. There are others in the heritage portfolio such as caretaker lodges which are assigned to particular tasks. Again, they are not available.

Several properties were identified by the OPW as being available. One is in Kildonan Park, Finglas, which has been made available as a residential centre to support vulnerable women. It has a two storey residential school including classrooms, indoor swimming pool, gymnasium, canteen and fully equipped kitchen and several outbuildings.

The Minister of State with responsibility for housing is dealing with the overall co-ordination of this. I will give her full support across all Departments to identify any property that might be brought expeditiously into use.

We are all aware that there are serious problems not just with the lack of supply of social housing, but also in the supply of private housing, how the construction industry operates and how developers operate through land banking. For all practical purposes, this sector has gone unregulated. I am not saying it started with this Government but it has been unregulated for years. It makes more sense if the Government started to regulate this area properly. House prices in Dublin have gone up by 16% over the past year, with rents going up by 11%, but wages have not. There is no control of this sector.

The Minister may have noted that large blocks of private sector houses and apartments have gone for sale over the past two years by investors. Up to 500 housing units in Tallaght, built by Liam Carroll, will soon be sold for €50,000 each. If they were sold individually to members of the public, they would be paying a minimum of €160,000 for a unit. I accept the Minister cannot make social housing out of all of them. While it might not come under the Minister’s remit, does he consider it a good idea for the State to buy between 20% and 30% of these units and selling the others to individuals looking for houses rather than allowing investors, usually from foreign lands, to buy the whole block for a fraction of what they are worth?

Again, I strongly agree with the Deputy that we have a real supply issue which is manifested by increasing rents in Dublin which are pushing people, including those dependent on rent subsidy, out of the market in Dublin and surrounding areas. There is a lesser impact in our own county, Wexford, as of yet. It is an issue we have to address.

How do we address the supply issue? I have not made this public yet but I met the National Treasury Management Agency some weeks ago and asked it to engage with the NTMA family, such as the National Asset Management Agency, to see if we can provide a mechanism to fund initiatives exactly of the sort about which the Deputy spoke. I am due to have a report on that in the next several weeks and I hope to be able to report progress to the House when that is done.

That sounds positive and I am glad to hear it. No doubt the principle of Part V was a good idea, but it was not implemented. Unfortunately, the previous Government reneged on it and allowed developers to create ghettos with these units in other areas. Often they stated that it did not suit because of the type of houses that were built.

The Government should take on the issue. If it must encourage the building of houses, it should not abandon the idea of Part V. If builders are building 20 mansions on a site, I accept one does not need mansions for social housing. However, if 20% of the land is to be used for social purposes, one should put sensible units on 20% of it beside the mansions and should not let the builders build them in other areas instead. That way ghettos will be created because we sow significant social problems for the years ahead when that is allowed to happen.

The point here is that the State has to lead in this regard and subsidising the private sector is not the way forward. I would be interested in the detail that the Minister stated he would furnish in terms of the State's portfolio. I repeat that it is fine if it is the remit of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, but somebody has to take stock of all of the properties in State ownership and prioritise those that can be converted and retrofitted for housing purposes because it is a cheaper, more efficient and quicker way of delivering badly needed housing stock rather than wasting funding on the private sector.

There are two discrete and separate issues. One is dealing with homelessness, and we have a strategy to do that over the next three years. Then there is the normal housing situation, which is also now an acute problem that we need to address separately. They overlap but they are two separate issues.

I agree with what has been said about Part V. I have heard first-hand testimony from many of my colleagues where a developer was allowed build up-market houses in one location and social housing in a completely separate location, and separated those who would populate each of those houses. That was not an effective or socially desirably way of dealing with Part V and it is something we have to address, but it is not in my area of responsibility.

I fully accept that we need to have a joined-up Government approach to the housing issue. Where it falls to me, this is a confined question on public sector property and we will look at that. However, that will not be a solution. Retrofitting a Garda station for accommodation is a tokenistic response, although it will be important to the individual families. To really solve the problem, we need to tackle the supply issue that has been identified by Deputy Wallace.

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