The Coalition Government has bowed to pressure from the building industry and announced that the legal requirement to set aside 20 per cent of all new development sites for social and affordable housing is to be amended.
A new Planning and Development Bill introduced by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, will allow builders the options of constructing the required number of houses elsewhere; of engaging in land swaps with local authorities; or of providing financial compensation to councils for failing to meet their obligations.
In the present economic climate, which has seen Government funding for local authority and social housing programmes cut by 5 per cent, while building inflation is running at about 10 per cent, cash-starved councils are likely to opt for compensation. The effect will be a further reduction in the number of homes being made available to low-income families.
In making the announcement, last week, Mr Cullen said he was committed to social integration in Ireland and to the supply of a greater number of lower-cost houses. His protestations carry no weight. The abandonment of a legal requirement on builders to construct social and affordable housing on all new estates, allied to a sharp reduction in funding for local authority housing, says it all. Builders are being allowed to buy their way out of their obligations. A need by the Coalition Government to raise money also underpins a decision to modify a withering rule, under which planning permissions for 74,000 homes would have lapsed within the next two years. This measure was designed to prevent the stockpiling of planning permissions by speculators and to speed up house construction. Developers will now, however, be allowed to pay local authorities a levy in order to keep planning permissions alive.
Three years ago, the Coalition Government decided to deal with the growing housing crisis by way of taxation measures and regulatory machinery. It became a wild, roller-coaster response, lacking any coherence. A 60 per cent tax on hoarded land was introduced and then scrapped. Rental income tax breaks were scrapped and then reintroduced. The percentage of homes built by the State drastically declined. Waiting lists ballooned. Prices soared. But the 20 per cent law on social and affordable housing offered some people some hope. Now that too is about to change. And penalties for hoarding development land are being modified. The Government's housing policy is a shambles.