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Housing Regeneration

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 May 2018

Tuesday, 8 May 2018

Ceisteanna (28, 37)

Joan Collins

Ceist:

28. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government his plans to support a regeneration team (details supplied) to utilise public lands at a location for 300 social and public housing units; and if this model will be used as a pilot scheme with a view to extending it to all public lands. [19794/18]

Amharc ar fhreagra

Eamon Ryan

Ceist:

37. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government the assessment he has made of an estate (details supplied) as a suitable site for the provision of the cost-rental model of public housing; if he has met or will meet the regeneration team for the estate; and if he has studied its proposal for the provision of housing in the area. [19871/18]

Amharc ar fhreagra

Freagraí ó Béal (7 píosaí cainte)

On 26 April St. Michael's regeneration team in Inchicore launched "Our Community: A Better Way". I ask the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government his plans to support a regeneration team to utilise public lands at a location for 300 social and public housing units - not affordable units. Will this model be used as a pilot scheme with a view to extending it to all public lands?

I propose to take Questions Nos. 28 and 37 together.

I thank the Deputy for the question. St. Michael’s Estate is one of three significant sites being brought forward by Dublin City Council under its housing land initiative, HLI, the aim of which is to ensure the delivery of mixed-tenure homes in the Dublin City Council functional area. All three sites under the HLI are identified as strategic development and regeneration areas within the Dublin City Development Plan 2016-2022.

Mixed-tenure developments are an important policy objective in the Government's Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness and uphold the principle of sustainable mixed communities where housing needs are not subject to rigid segregation based on income levels. They also provide an opportunity to see major sites developed more quickly, and integrated into existing communities and areas.

While I have not seen the details of the proposal referred to by the Deputy, I expect to meet those involved next week. However, I am very familiar with the approach which the city council is taking to the St. Michael’s project. This envisages the potential to yield a minimum of 420 mixed-tenure homes and the elected members of the city council have determined that the homes will be provided on the basis of a 30% social, 20% affordable, and 50% private tenure mix. The council also agreed the methodology for community consultation, as set out in the feasibility study presented to it via a community consultative forum.

In line with good governance procedures, a project board, which includes representation from my Department and the National Development Finance Agency, has been established and is working to progress the development of this site.

As regards the delivery of affordable homes from this site, while it is ultimately a matter for the elected members of the city council to decide whether these are affordable homes to purchase or are delivered as cost-rental homes, I firmly believe that there is a need to ensure that the rental sector, particularly in our cities and major urban areas, is accessible and affordable.

In order to do this, we need to invest in a different type of rental offering, a so-called cost-rental sector which operates between the social and private market sectors. We are learning from pilot projects and the examination of similar models operating elsewhere. My Department and I remain committed to working with Dublin City Council and other councils to ensure we make this a reality. We are working with the European Investment Bank and other key stakeholders with a view to announcing the first major cost rental project in Dublin city shortly, with a broader programme of cost rental projects across Dublin and other cities to follow.

St. Michael's Estate can be a practical scheme in the context of the cost-rental model and building public housing on public lands. It will be up to the city council and it has already discussed that there should be a pilot scheme on this site. It is an amazing proposal that the regeneration team is putting forward and I believe the Minister should take it on board. Although I know the Minister has said he will meet the team next week, he should then come back to the Dáil to say whether he will let it lead this model.

I have been invited to meet the regeneration team with the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, next week and I look forward to that. Dublin City Council has been supporting the establishment of the Kilmainham-Inchicore network as the primary vehicle for the interface with the local community on this. If a group has a new proposal that might work, I will, of course, be happy to engage with it.

While cost rental has to be something we bring into our rental sector on a massive scale, we need to prove it first. We need to find a few sites, or perhaps one larger site, and prove cost rental. We need to put serious financial backing and firepower behind it and then roll it out on a broader basis across the country over a number of years. There is huge potential for cost rental on some key sites in Dublin. It will hit a number of the targets under Rebuilding Ireland, not just to build more homes but to build communities as well, and also to regenerate parts of the city that have, unfortunately, needed regeneration for far too long.

What the regeneration team is putting forward is a proposal for 300 units, with a mixture of one, two and three-bedroom units, which would cost in the region of €56 million, and it is looking for this to come out of capital expenditure for next year. I believe this project would be a very good way of seeing how the cost-rental model works. The daft.ie figures show that rents have gone up by 80% in Dublin in recent years and that they are totally beyond the means of ordinary people - such as retail and transport workers, nurses, doctors and teachers - right across the board. This sort of plan could be a game changer for this country in regard to rent, as well as the high cost of mortgages, and I urge the Minister to look at it seriously. Some €56 million is not a huge amount and it could regenerate that community in St. Michael's Estate. The St. Michael's Estate regeneration team had been burnt badly by the McNamara public private partnership of the 1990s. We need something that people in the community can buy into, rather than people from outside buying into the community.

For the information of the Minister, the political situation in Dublin City Council has moved on from that original land initiative decision. A majority of councillors have supported a motion of the housing strategic policy committee to request that this project is taken out of the land initiative for the purposes of the funding model and that the Department fully funds it through Exchequer or loan finance. It is not the business of the Dáil to decide whether it should be 420 or 300 units as that is for Dublin City Council, the councillors and the local community to decide. What Deputy Joan Collins is arguing - I fully support her - is that this project should be fully State-funded. There are reasons why it is different to the other sites. What we are asking the Minister to consider is direct State funding of whatever the final configuration of the project is, rather than the land initiative, because that would be better for the community as a whole.

I thank the Deputies. The public private partnership model is not always the best model to use on a particular site. Deputy Ó Broin's colleague is chair of the housing committee on Dublin City Council. I have met with him and I can meet with him again to discuss some potential ideas for this site if it is not proceeding under the public private partnership model.

I have had extensive meetings with the European Investment Bank, and those meetings continue, in regard to different sources of funding for cost rental on a major scale, as the Deputy is aware, given I have said this previously in the Dáil. Deputy Ó Broin is right that the decision regarding the mix or the number of units will not necessarily come to the Oireachtas but, nonetheless, 300 units is very low for that site. Under previous planning guidelines for apartments, it could have been as many as 420 and, under the new guidelines, one could achieve even more than that. It is very important, when we look at Project Ireland 2040, that, in the context of these key sites in the city, we are achieving compact growth and real density, particularly in light of public infrastructure for transport, schools and everything else.

Deputy Joan Collins is right about rents being too high. The most recent information from the RTB indicates that rates of increase came down in 2017 in comparison with 2016 but that they are still very high, at just over 5%. However, as we begin to do more in the rental sector and to make more interventions regarding cost rental and land, which is something we are going to do, this will have an important impact on the different factors that are causing this affordability challenge for people up and down the country, particularly in the major cities such as Dublin.

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