Delays in realising Noel Dempsey's major legacy, the 20 per cent social housing requirement, are slowing the supply of new homes, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Builders blame cumbersome procedures, a lack of consistency and even understanding among local authority officials about how to implement Part V of the 2000 Planning Act for slowing down the supply of new homes.
Mr Ciaran Ryan, director of the Irish Home Builders' Association, said the legislative provision, requiring up to 20 per cent of housing schemes to be set aside for social and affordable housing, was "causing all sorts of problems".
According to the association's poll of 500 of its members - a third - the vast majority experienced delays in dealing with local authorities over Part V. Some even reported conflicts of interpretation between housing and planning departments. "The process has become more bureaucratic and cumbersome," Mr Ryan said.
"Before the housing strategies required by Part V were adopted, there were applications for a total of 16,500 units. Since the strategies came in, this has fallen to 6,500."
The association is also very concerned about the impact of the two-year "withering rule" for planning permissions under the Act because it threatened the loss of 44,000 housing units by the end of this year and a further 35,000 in 2003.
Dr Brian Meehan, a leading planning consultant, said that although the purpose of Part V was to increase the supply of social/affordable housing "in practice, it has already had the effect of discouraging housing development". He told the Irish Planning Institute's recent annual conference that delays were caused by uncertainty over the interpretation of housing strategies, disputes over the valuation of land and planning appeals against the imposition of social housing conditions.
Because Part V applied only to zoned land, one of the dangers was that developers might build instead on unzoned land, thus contributing to urban sprawl, he said.
"Appropriate amendments to Part V are urgently required. In essence, sections 96 and 97 of Part V relating to the 20 per cent reservation requirement in the context of planning applications for four houses or more on zoned lands should be revoked."
Alternative approaches for social/affordable housing might include reserving specific sites in county development plans, acquiring land or houses on the open market and relying more on public-private partnerships or the voluntary sector.
Mr Ryan agreed that such approaches were more realistic for delivering social housing. The best prospect was through joint venture projects involving local authorities and private developers - "a win-win situation for everyone".
He cited the Castlecurragh scheme in Mulhuddart, west Dublin, where 750 new homes were being built, involving a mix of private, affordable and social housing in 16 different unit types.
Similar schemes are also under way in Cherry Orchard and west Tallaght, using land banks built up by local authorities. "If private developers alone were involved, they wouldn't have been able to build as quickly. It would have been more dragged out."
The Dublin city architect, Mr Jim Barrett, said Part V would "probably need tweaking". One of the difficulties was the cyclical nature of the private sector. "You can't bank on it all the time for social housing because you could end up with 20 per cent of nothing". However, he believed Part V was increasingly accepted as "the law of the land, upheld by the Supreme Court, and that it will help to break down social segregation as well as providing much needed housing for people on our lists. We just have to get on with it".