Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 23 February 2017
6. Deputy Ruth Coppinger asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his views on the policy of the hand-over or sale of publicly owned land to private developers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9038/17]
View answerI want to ask about the policy of the Government and of local authorities that involves selling off or gifting public lands to private developers, thereby allowing them to control even more of the housing supply at a time of housing emergency. This represents a huge break with the past, when the councils would have built public housing on those lands. I think this is a key problem and is contributing to the ongoing major housing emergency.
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta.
I will try to follow Deputy Coppinger by staying within the specified time. The Deputy and I have debated this issue previously. I think we need to take multiple approaches to the provision of social housing. In addition to developing classic social housing projects on public land and actively pursuing Part V, we should use public land more strategically to drive a new approach involving a mixture of social and private housing in mixed-tenure projects and to get more social housing built more quickly. We have already spent quite some time today talking about all the projects we are trying to push on. Almost 8,500 social housing units are at various stages in the pipeline for delivery and construction. We need to use the capacity of the private sector to deliver social housing, affordable units and private housing, often on the same sites. We can do that effectively by strategically using publicly owned landbanks. Nobody is talking about selling off private landbanks or gifting them to people.
I am talking about public landbanks.
There will always be a dividend and a return for the State. It is up to us to ensure we maximise that dividend, in particular to increase the supply of social housing.
I will explain how this is operating in Dublin City Council, which is the pilot for every other council, including my own local council, about which I will speak in a minute. Under the Dublin City Council land initiative, 50% of properties will be privately owned, 20% will be rented out privately and just 30% will be social housing.
That is absolutely scandalous. To be clear on the rented properties, the developer will be allowed to rent those houses to people at what will effectively be market rates or a little under them.
The Minister has stated this is not gifting but in the case of the land initiative in Dublin City Council, we can consider what is happening with O'Devaney Gardens and St. Michael's estate, where all or part of the lands will be sold for development rather than kept in public ownership. That will come at a much lower price than those developers would otherwise pay. For example, it works out that a developer could get his or her hands on land at the O'Devaney site at approximately €24,000 per unit. Developers are getting sites at a knock-down price and meanwhile, people who need public housing are being pushed out.
I do not know how the Deputy knows this, as O'Devaney Gardens has not yet been signed off. I do not know how she knows how much people will pay.
I can tell the Minister.
What we have agreed in principle with other political parties, including Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and others, on O'Devaney Gardens is to use it as an example of a new approach to delivering communities of mixed tenure. These will have 30% social housing and 20% for affordable rental. It will not be just for market rents; that would contradict the term "affordable rental" in that part of Dublin. There will be 50% for private development. It has not been agreed as to what level of financial cost or charge will be asked of a developer with regard to that site or whether we will get a dividend through paying for social housing or financing affordable rental units. That has yet to be worked out by Dublin City Council and it will come back to me with agreed models when it puts them together. There will be a big fund from my Department to finance social housing projects. We already signed off on €17 million a number of months ago to build 56 units at O'Devaney Gardens.
The O'Devaney Gardens site is valued at €14 million and it will contain a certain number of units, with developers allowed to build 584 such units. That is how I worked it out.
I will speak about the Minister's new proposal for affordable rental units in the limited time I have. His document indicates that in rent pressure zones:
Lands held by local authorities will be brought to market on a competitive tendering basis [to target] middle income private rental households.
The cost of providing rental units will be permanently reduced by lowering the initial investment and development costs for providers ... allowing the rental units to be made available at below market prices without the need for ongoing rental subsidies.
Basically, it will change policy to allow new builds to be rented out without other protections.
There is one piece of council land left in greater Blanchardstown, which is a key homeless black spot. The proposal is for that to be mixed tenure, that is, with a section sold for private housing. That will have a detrimental impact on the people I deal with every day who face homelessness or overcrowding. We will appeal to all parties, including Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, and everybody else not to allow that to happen.
The Deputy and I seem to disagree fundamentally on one issue; I believe it is good to have mixed tenure developments but the Deputy does not.
No, I do not. The Minister is demonising council housing.
It looks as if we must agree to disagree on that.
Not when there is a housing crisis.
It was not a good thing the last time we built thousands of social houses, when we showed the country could do that, and we must get that capacity in place again. This time, when we add another 47,000 to 50,000 social houses to the social housing stock, I want them to be intermingled with private housing and affordable rental accommodation. Family sizes are different, demands are different and key workers need to be able to rent - as many of them want to rent - at affordable rental prices in city centres. We must respond to those. The Deputy seems to want to go back to the classic model of just designating large parts of the city for social housing only. I do not agree with the Deputy on that. There are social consequences that I want to avoid.
Such as?
We are trying to ensure the kinds of mistakes made in the past are not repeated. One way in which we can address those mistakes is the promotion of mixed tenure on public land, which is exactly what we are trying to do.
We will never be able to house all the people.
I must stop the Deputy, as the time for the question has expired. We will move to the next question.
We will house more people faster.
The Minister needs to allocate more than 10%.
The councils need more money.
How long has O'Devaney Gardens been sitting there?
I ask the Deputies and the Minister to stop.
We are up to nine minutes per question.
We must allow Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan to introduce her question.
