The city of Dublin and the whole country is rightly outraged by the failure of the Department of Defence to transfer the 13.65 acre site at Clancy Barracks to Dublin Corporation for social and affordable housing for our citizens. As I told the Taoiseach yesterday, every night recently up to 200 homeless citizens have had to sleep rough and a record 7,500 families are on the Dublin Corporation housing lists. I know a number of these unfortunate citizens myself. The explosion of homelessness and our housing lists has been a regrettable feature of the growing inequality in Irish life under the past four years of this Government. For that reason I asked the Taoiseach today urgently to reconsider his decision on Clancy Barracks and to allow time in the House for a discussion of housing strategies around the country.
The Dublin city and region housing strategy makes sad and alarming reading. We need a minimum of 75,000 housing units until 2005, of which Dublin Corporation's share will be at least 26,000 or an average of 4,300 houses a year. About 2,500 of these units should be social and affordable housing. The current housing list stands at 7,420 families and the four Dublin local authorities together have a current list of 14,831 families, or perhaps 50,000 people, who are living in very overcrowded conditions or who are homeless.
Under this Government house prices have exploded by nearly 150% in the past five years in the Dublin area, where developed housing land is so scarce, and by over 120% in the rest of the country. Rents have also more than doubled and the Government has bluntly refused to regulate rents in any way or to contain the worst excesses of the landlord class, which is made up of perhaps its staunch supporters. The most serious problem of all is the lack of land for affordable housing in the Dublin city area. Only three significant tranches of land remain – the docklands area, my own northern fringe area, and Pelletstown.
The bottom line of the Dublin city housing strategy which was amended last Monday night to become the law of the land is that at the end of 2005, even with the Part V provision introduced by the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, there will be at least 6,500 families on the Dublin housing list, almost the same number as at present.
Against this background, the release of 13.65 acres of land by the Department of Defence on the edge of the inner city and in a most attractive location close to the Liffey, the railway and surrounded by three major parklands, seemed to offer a very important landbank for perhaps 300 to 500 social or affordable houses, community and local commercial development. The site offered perhaps up to one and half years supply of corporation building land.
Dublin Corporation officials and the Departments of Defence and Environment and Local Government are giving very different versions of their negotiations on this matter since 1998. Last Monday at Dublin City Council, where I lead the Labour Party, we were told that the Clancy Barracks site was not offered to Dublin Corporation. That is what I was led to believe. Today the Taoiseach and the Minister for Defence asserted that it was offered to the city but at an amazing market cost of £40 million. In effect the homeless of Dublin were going to have to finance the re-equipment and modernisation of our Army, the total cost of which is £50 million. Who is telling the truth? Are the Taoiseach and his Ministers hiding behind erratic and desultory negotiations to shift the blame for this debacle on to the Dublin City Manager, Mr. John Fitzgerald, and Assistant City Manager, Mr. Sean Carey?
I am aware that there are listed buildings on the site and that there were concerns about how much social housing could be accommodated there, yet every Dublin citizen would think that negotiations on such a vital matter for the city should have been brought to an early and successful conclusion with the transfer of the land to the city at a reasonable sum of £5 million to £10 million to provide necessary accommodation. As the leader of the Labour Party's councillors on Dublin City Council, I call on the Lord Mayor, Alderman Maurice Ahern, to call a special meeting of the council to get to the bottom of this matter and find out what input we have had through our city manager and his officials since 1998.
I realise the matter is being dealt with by auctioneers, but a precedent was set in the case of Devoy Barracks in Naas, which was returned to be used for housing having been on the market. It was withdrawn following an outraged chorus from those in south Kildare. I call on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Defence, Deputy Michael Smith, to bring this crazy situation to an end and to allow Clancy Barracks to be used for social and affordable housing.
