The people set to benefit from the Government’s Land Development Agency Bill will not be those looking to buy a house, instead the Bill will provide another boomtime for developers and banks.
This is the view of Sinn Féin Galway West TD, Mairéad Farrell, and People Before Profit Galway’s Adrian Curran, who were speaking following the recent Dáil debate on the controversial LDA Bill.
The Bill provides that the LDA will periodically report to the Government on public lands which could be suitable for housing or urban development and the Government may direct such lands be transferred to the LDA.
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It will also allow the Minister for Housing to specify an affordability requirement for the delivery of affordable homes for sale or rent on public lands. This affordability requirement can be varied on sites in different areas depending on local housing needs.
However, Dep Farrell has raised concerns as to whether this will actually deliver affordable housing, when the Bill is vague on why affordability actually means.
“If we look at what the LDA defines as ‘affordable’ it’s housing ‘below the prevailing market price’,” she said. “The current average price of €317,000 is unaffordable for most people, and will technically be below market value next year, if the current inflationary trend continues. And not only is it set to continue, it’s projected to increase faster because of the Government’s shared equity scheme.”
Affordable?
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Mr Curran agreed: “The promise of affordable housing is a joke. The Bill defines affordable as 'below market price' but gives no guarantee as to how much below these unaffordable prices this will be, and states clearly that market prices and rents will be the starting point, rather than income and ability to pay, as is the case with traditional public housing.”
Average home prices have shown an 8.6 per cent year-on-year increase, making Galway the second most expensive county in the State. Dep Farrell said this will impact on the 4.5-acre Dyke Road site which the LDA is developing into a mixed-use development with a strong residential element.
“Housing is needed in Galway and housing is welcome in Galway, but we’ve been told that this housing would be “largely’ affordable in nature,” she said, “but there is a good way and a bad way of doing this. Sinn Féin have outlined a clear policy on how to deliver these homes without lumping massive amounts of public money into another state agency that is unaccountable.”
'Wholesale pillaging of public land'
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Mr Curran argues that the Bill will achieve nothing more than "herald the wholesale pillaging” of the public land banks by developers and investors.
“The Bill will allow for the new agency to take over public land from local authorities and all other public bodies in the State - land that should be used wholly for social and genuinely affordable housing, and instead develop 50 per cent or more of each site for private housing, with no minimum percentage requirement for affordable housing or social housing.
“The only hope of social housing offered in the Bill on LDA on sites will be through Part V, the 10 per cent obligation, which currently applies to private developments, but even this obligation can be avoided by the developer paying a sum to the council in lieu. This is another NAMA just waiting to happen.”
Removing oversight by councillors
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A highly controversial aspect of the Bill is that it will allow local authorities to transfer state lands to the LDA without a vote from councillors. This overriding of the oversight and local knowledge councillors can provide has raised concerns, and is being seen as a further erosion of local democracy.
"This Bill is the state effectively abandoning traditional council housing,” said Mr Curran. “It allows the LDA to dispose of lands without any democratic input and to take over the currently democratic local authority function of drafting planning schemes. The Bill barely mentions social housing, there is no minimum social housing requirement, and social housing provision is not mentioned at all in the 'Functions of the Agency' section of the Bill.”
