Legislation to facilitate the Government’s housing and homelessness action plan is a developers’ charter and will intensify the crisis, an Independent TD has said..

Catherine Connolly TD accused the Government of refusing to face the truth that the cause of the housing crisis was failure by Government to provide funding for social or affordable housing.

The Galway TD accused the Government of significantly reducing the powers of local authorities on planning matters, leaving them only with a consultative role, “in response to submissions lobbying in from powerful sectors in the country”.

She was speaking during the ongoing debate on the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Bill which facilities the Rebuilding Ireland programme and seeks to fast-track planning on large-scale applications and avoid appeals to An Bord Pleanála.

Ms Connolly said the role of the public in the planning process had been reduced “notwithstanding that repeated judges have pointed out that the public’s role in the process is crucial and that they are the eyes and the ears for the local authority in relation to local transgressions”.

But Minister of State Damien English defended the legislation and described the housing plan as an ambitious strategy to rebuild housing capacity, and he said the Bill was "fair and appropriate".

Mr English, who has responsibility for housing and urban renewal, said measures in the Bill were temporary to try and activate sites in the very near future rather than put it off.

He said there was a planned site levy which would only come into effect in 2019 because of the constitutional provisions around landholding and the legal advice that they had to give landowners notice and wait until then.

Social housing

The Minister also stressed that the provisions in the Bill applied only to zoned land. Councillors currently did not have a direct role in large-scale planning applications. He said there would be nine weeks of public consultation, then four weeks for local authority management to respond during which time councillors would have a say.

The Bill was putting a cap on timelines to deliver on social housing, the Minister said.

Ms Connolly said the legislation was based on the philosophy that the free market would provide and that was a policy that not only has “utterly failed to provide homes for our people but it is a policy that has caused the crisis in the first place”.

She said the narrative being shaped scape-goated local authorities, bad planners, An Bord Pleanála, objectors or An Taisce as the causes of the housing crisis.

“The cause of our crisis is simply that we did not build enough houses that the local authority was never provided with enough money that there would be a balance in the market because we need both private and public sector,” she said.

“But rather than face reality we construct a narrative to justify a bill that is a developers’ charter and will intensify the crisis.”

Successive governments had failed for the past 10 years to fund local authorities and the last time Galway City council directly built social housing was in 2009, she said.

Ms Connolly rejected consistent Government claims that they did not have the money to build houses because she said the State had bypassed local authorities and gone straight to the private market to incentivise private landlords, through measures such as the rent supplement.

The Independent TD said private landlords had an important role to play but there needed to be a balance between private and social housing.

She also criticised third level institutions for failing to proactively plan for and build student accommodation and said there was an unmet demand for an estimated 25,000 bed places.

She said there was a systematic reduction in planning engineering and housing staff at local authority and an utter reliance on the private market to provide homes.

Mr English said the House was allocating €5.5 billion to deliver social housing and infrastructure. “We’ve just added 50 per cent in budget but if we can’t fix the processes we can’t spend it,” he said.

He said some people took the view that the State should do it all and provide all the housing, but said: “We don’t have the money.”

This strategy should see about 45,000-50,000 units built over the next four or five years and 10,000 a year thereafter, said Mr English.

“It’s a commitment of this House and of all parties that that money is there and to make your plans for social housing.”

A vote was called on whether the Bill should progress and will be take in the Dáil on Thursday.