Land for housing delivery
Deputy Cassells argued that land availability is central to Rebuilding Ireland and said Meath had very little publicly owned land. The Minister said housing delivery was improving, local authority sites were available, and a new land development and regeneration agency would help bring State and semi-State land forward.
The Rebuilding Ireland programme has some very ambitious targets for providing homes by county councils this year and in future years. A very basic commodity must exist in order to achieve real traction in tackling the crisis and building homes for people, namely, land. I rarely hear speakers mention the word "land" in debates only people roaring and shouting that they want houses. They must think they are built on thin air because I do not hear people talk about that very basic commodity of land. In County Meath, bar one landlocked piece of land, we have no publicly owned land and consequently we cannot build council housing estates. I asked the Secretary General of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Mr. John McCarthy, about that at the Committee of Public Accounts two weeks ago and he said the Department would not get into the business of funding the buying of land. If we do not have publicly owned land, where the housing crisis is at its worst, and we do not intend to buy it so that we can build on it, is it not the case that the problem will only get worse?
What are the Minister's thoughts on how we can help those people in commuter counties such as Meath where there is no publicly owned land?
Comment on this
I thank the Deputy for the question. In the context of Rebuilding Ireland, it is important to know that our plans are working. Recent Central Statistics Office, CSO, data point out that planning permission was granted for 20,776 dwelling units last year. That was up 26% on 2016, so good progress is being made.
We need land on which to build houses. On the Rebuilding Ireland website, the Deputy will see hundreds of sites where there is local authority owned land, the level to which it is serviced and how we will build houses on those sites. From the second housing summit we had in January, councils are now coming back to me with the targets for the land they own.
If the Deputy reads Project Ireland 2040-----
Comment on this
Good. He will have seen that there are plans for a new land development and regeneration agency that will be set up later this year to make sure that State and semi-State land is brought into local authorities to be developed for housing. Further details on that will issue once the new agency is established.