Public land for mixed housing
Deputy Barry proposed building public and affordable housing on several public sites, arguing the current rebuilding plan is failing. The Taoiseach rejected it as play-acting and said the named council lands already have mixed-tenure plans that should proceed.
The programme for Government talks of rebuilding Ireland. The plan is evidently not working. The Minister last night in the debate said he would like to hear alternatives. Our alternative is based on the idea of public housing to be built on public land. I have four examples here of how that might be done.
The first is Damastown village in Dublin West for 1,200 social and affordable houses. Another is the site on the Old Whitechurch Road in Cork for 800 social and affordable houses. There are also Kilcarbery Grange in the South Dublin County Council area and Belcamp Lane in the Dublin City Council area for 892 and 532 social and affordable houses, respectively. These are plans for mixed communities, 100% social and public affordable housing without the need for any privatisation whatsoever. The Dublin West proposal has been on the desk of the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government for the guts of a year. At the end of this session, I will give the Taoiseach details on all four but I ask him to comment now on the idea of public housing on public land, which is a good and viable alternative to the Government's plan for mass privatisation of land through the Land Development Agency.
Comment on this
This is awful play-acting on an important and serious issue. The Deputy is well aware that those councils have developed plans for those lands: Fingal County Council with Damastown, and South Dublin County Council with Kilcarbery. What they have proposed is a mix of housing, that is, some private housing for young people who want to buy and own their first house, some affordable housing for people who qualify for it, and social housing for those on the housing list. That is the right way to go about this. We should have integrated mixed communities and use those lands to build social housing for those who need it, affordable housing for those who qualify for it, and private housing for those who want to buy their own homes, in order that everyone can live together and we can build communities as well as houses. What the socialists want is something different. They want segregation, to divide people and to have people living in council estates in one area and private estates in the other. They want a wall built between the two. They want to divide our society into people who live in different areas, with some people paying for everything but qualifying for nothing. It is the wrong way of doing it.