Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 are related and will be discussed together.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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There are two parts to the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024. The first relates to the amendments to the Housing (Regulation of Approved Housing Bodies) Act 2019 and the second relates to the amendments to the Affordable Housing Act 2021. A Seanad Committee Stage amendment was brought by the Government and passed in the Seanad on 16 October 2024. The Bill has now been recommitted to the Dáil for approval of this amendment. The amendment being brought before the Dáil today will amend section 42B(3A) of the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014. The purpose of the amendment is to increase from €1.25 billion to €2.5 billion the amount that the Minister for Finance may direct the National Treasury Management Agency to pay the Land Development Agency for the process of the disposal of direct investment. The Land Development Agency Act originally provided for up to €2.5 billion in capital for the LDA. On foot of the significant increase in ambition for the agency envisaged in Housing for All, the LDA's business plan from 2024 to 2028 plans to deliver 12,900 homes over the lifetime of the plan. This increased ambition was identified as requiring an increase in funding for the agency.

In March 2024, the Act was amended to provide an additional €2.5 billion of capital. To implement the budget 2025 decision to provide for a further €1.25 billion from the proceeds of the disposal of direct investments held by the NTMA, the Government has introduced this amendment to the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014. The additional equity funding provided for in budget 2025 will ensure the LDA has access to a total of €6.25 billion in capital. I thank Deputies for their consideration of this Bill over the past number of weeks and look forward to progressing this amendment this evening.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Sinn Féin is not opposing the amendment. However, I must say that a number of the justifications used by the Minister of State in describing the amendment are not factually correct. I would like to give him the opportunity to clarify some of the aspects behind this very specific amendment given that it is a very significant amount of money. The LDA does not have access to over €6 billion. It was given an initial capitalisation of €1.25 billion and a further capitalisation of €1.25 billion and now this third capitalisation. In theory, it can borrow up to €1.25 billion and, in theory, it can access other sources of funding through joint ventures and whatnot, but neither of those sources of funding are either secured or guaranteed. The LDA has been telling all of us on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage that it is not minded to borrow because of high interest rates and the impact that would have on cost rents.

In addition, the €1.25 billion of other sources, as it was helpfully described to us by officials at the committee some weeks ago, is as yet unsourced. Right now, the LDA has €3.75 billion either spent, committed or, if this amendment goes through, available to it. It is almost half what the Minister of State said.

The second issue is the LDA does not have any increased ambition. This is one of the very frustrating things about these discussions. The LDA has a business plan for 2024 to 2028. The number of homes to be delivered under that business plan has not changed. There is no increase in the volume. In fact, the problem here, and it would be much better if the Minister of State were honest, not just with us but with the public because of the sums of money involved, is that the LDA needs more than €7 billion of funding to deliver those homes. Last October - not October of this year but October of last year - Darragh O'Brien sat in a press conference on budget day and said the LDA was going to get an additional €6 billion of capitalisation. The Minister had not discussed that with either the Minister for Finance or the Minister for public expenditure and reform. We know that because neither of them mentioned that enormous sum in their budget speeches. There was then a protracted negotiation from October to December when, rather than a €6 billion capitalisation to bring it to the €7 billion it needed, the LDA got €1.25 billion from ISIF under legislation that was passed earlier this year and a promise of a further €1.25 billion, which the Minister of State is bringing to us.

Given the scale and size of the financial commitments involved and the genuine concern the public has about public and affordable housing delivery, the least we would expect is a bit of honesty. What this is actually about is the Government scrambling around trying to work out how to capitalise the LDA. The great tragedy in this is the original conception of the LDA was that it would not require 100% State funding but would in fact require 50% State funding and 50% private funding, when clearly the LDA has decided it wants the maximum level of capitalisation.

I invite the Minister of State to do the following. First, will he confirm that the LDA does not have €6 billion to hand? It only has the three tranches of capitalisation. It may borrow in the future and it may secure other sources, but that is not money that it currently has and, therefore, the money to hand is €3.75 billion. Second, will he confirm for the record of the Dáil that there is no change to the number of units to be delivered in the LDA's business plan, which was written more than a year ago? Third, for the sake of clarity, because this has been a very confusing tale over the past year, will he set out in as clear terms as he can each of the three changes in the legislation - the original capitalisation of borrowing commitments, the subsequent capitalisation and other sources entitlements, and this capitalisation - so everybody knows where the money is coming from, what is to hand and what is hoped for?

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am happy enough to support this extra capital going towards the LDA, but I would rather that the LDA were something other than what it is. We have argued for some time it should be a fully fledged State construction company. That is the only way we will reach the level of output of social and affordable housing necessary to address the absolutely dire housing crisis we are facing. The LDA will probably need a lot more than the Government is currently proposing to put into it. I am interested in hearing the answers to Deputy Ó Broin's questions on what actual firepower it has to do what it claims it will do.

The LDA's record is not great so far, as far I am concerned. It was set up in 2018 and legislated for in 2021. It has delivered approximately, and the Minister of State will confirm this, 1,000 units in that time. It is not great, when we consider there are in reality, when we take all the HAP transfer lists and so on, well in excess of 100,000 households still on the social housing list. There are many tens of thousands of people who cannot afford private market prices, be they rent or purchase prices, but who are not eligible for social housing because they are over the threshold and, therefore, need cost rental or genuinely affordable purchase. A thousand units since 2018 is not great. Again, the Minister of State can confirm precisely what he thinks the LDA will do but as I understand it, its target is to get 14,000 homes built between 2024 and 2028.

That is against the background of the scale of what we actually need. We still have not get the revised targets following the Housing Commission report, which finally confirmed what many of us have been saying for a long time; that the Housing for All targets were woefully inadequate and roughly half of what we actually need. We will have to double the targets. Some 60,000 to 70,000 houses a year will be necessary to meet the targets and, as the Housing Commission also stated, we need to dramatically increase the proportion of housing that is social and affordable. That should be fairly obvious in that current market prices are too expensive for probably 60% to 70% of ordinary working people. You would want to be in the top 20% or 30% of earners to afford what is out there in the market.

In some shape or form, we will need to subsidise more than half, probably around 60%, of the housing that will be constructed. That is my estimate. It will either have to be social or affordable. That means more than doubling the Housing for All social and affordable housing targets. How will that be done? Cairn Homes and Glenveagh will not do it. They are just not big enough. The few big firms, and they are not that big but are pretty small really, do not have the construction capacity to build what we need to build. Most of our builders are small builders. It seems obvious to me that unless we establish a construction company, and the only one who will do that is the State because who else will do it, that really has scale and can get economies of scale to build on the level of the 30,000 to 35,000 social and affordable houses we need, we will not solve this housing crisis. That is what should be going on.

To my mind, that means a hell of a lot more investment and it means expanding the LDA to have its own workforce of direct labour units, and to be directly involved in the training of apprentices and scaling up the training. People say it takes time to get people trained in the trades. That is true, but apprentices go on site in year one. Once you start to recruit large numbers of apprentices, you have people on site. Apprentices should be paid a bit better than they are now. They are on sub-minimum wage in years one and two, but we should pay them decently and make it attractive to work for a State construction company. We should to start to think about a State construction company that looks a little like the ESB, where there were jobs people wanted. If these were good, well-paid jobs, where they were going to get a pension, that would be an attractive option to bring young people into a construction company that could build the social and affordable housing we need at scale. A State construction company would cut out the profit margins, which add to the cost private companies inevitably impose in any project.

When I look at the prices of the stuff the Government has delivered, I am not optimistic as to the extent to which it will help many of the cohorts it is meant to help. Shanganagh, in my area, is the biggest delivery the LDA has completed or almost completed. It comprises 600 houses. We fought long and hard to get that site developed for social and affordable housing. We had to fight against the original plans for some of it to be private. We eventually won the argument that it should be all social and affordable housing. The first units have been delivered there now, which I am delighted to see. The social units are being allocated, which is fantastic. The people moving into them are absolutely delighted. However, only a third of the 600 are social units. There are no houses; they are all apartments. I am not saying there is anything wrong with apartments, but it is interesting that none of the houses being built are social units. Already, there is that kind of segregation being built into the development, which is just wrong. It is plain wrong. The prices are not terribly affordable, starting at €330,000. I understand that for a relatively small sum we could have knocked another 10% off those prices. Maybe the Minister of State knows a bit about that. The figure I heard floating around was that for an extra €1 million or so, we could have brought those prices down to approximately €300,000. Instead, they are €330,000. What that means is single-income working families would have to be earning a lot of money - more than €80,000 a year. That is also true of the cost-rental homes, which are €1,200 a month for a one-bedroom unit and €1,500 a month for a two-bedroom unit. That is not cheap. It is cheaper than the absolutely insane market in our area, where it is €2,500 a month, but it is not cheap for a single earner. An outdoor council worker, for example, is not going to be able to afford €1,200 a month on his or her own. There is no way that person is going to be able to afford that, but he or she may well be over the threshold for social housing. That person is banjaxed. The rents for the cost-rental units are too high and that is because the LDA is still, to a very significant degree, benchmarking against the private market. Even where it is a discount on the private market, its benchmarking or starting point is a relationship with the private market, rather than what is actually affordable for people.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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This Bill and the amendments from the Seanad give us an opportunity to address that bigger issue of the Land Development Agency. We in the Labour Party certainly supported the Land Development Agency in principle. We think it is a vital vehicle to deliver homes at scale, affordable homes that we badly need. However, as Deputies Ó Broin and Boyd Barrett have pointed out, there are real concerns about the delays in output from the Land Development Agency. Six years on from its inception, the Shanganagh scheme we have been speaking about is the first housing scheme to be delivered by the Land Development Agency on State-owned land. The slowness of pace of delivery and the concerns about resourcing the Land Development Agency, which I have consistently raised in this House with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, are the concerns we have about its capacity to deliver homes at the scale that is needed. The Government has been promising revised upwards housing targets for well over a year now. We know the housing target that has been set is far too low. The Government is falling short of even meeting those targets in the Housing for All programme, yet we are still not seeing those revised upwards targets. We all know that target of 33,000 homes per year is simply far too low to meet the real level of need out there, which is about double that target, at least. That is becoming clear from every expert group report and from our own experience.

Just this week, I was in my own constituency meeting people on doorsteps. I heard the typical story of two teachers in a two-income household, both of whom have good public jobs, renting a home because they cannot afford to buy anywhere near where their children are in school. That story is replicated across the country. We are all hearing such stories all the time and that is before we even start to think about the terrible stories of the 4,500 children in emergency accommodation in homelessness because the State cannot provide adequate numbers of houses for them.

The Land Development Agency can and should be transformed into a State construction company. We should see the sort of State investment in the delivery of homes that would enable delivery at the scale and capacity that is so badly needed to fix and address this housing crisis. We are all conscious there will be an election in a few weeks' time. This Bill is clearly not the Bill that is going to provide the necessary means to address this, but we need to think in a far more ambitious and radical way about how to address the housing crisis. I know it will form a crucial part of the debates during the election, but it is also important that we address it in this House, even in the last few weeks of the Dáil term, and that at every opportunity when we are debating housing legislation, we in the Opposition can put forward our concerns about the Government's failure of ambition and failure of urgency in addressing the housing crisis.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The Social Democrats certainly will not be opposing these amendments. On the Land Development Agency, there is a massive gap between the initial promise put forward by Fine Gael's then Minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, for what the Land Development Agency would deliver in terms of housing and what has transpired in the six years since then. I invite the Minister of State to speak about that gap and what the Government is doing to close it. Is the Government concerned about that gap in terms of lack of delivery? Is the Government doing anything else in conjunction with these amendments to address that slowness and lack of scale in terms of delivery?

From the outset, the Social Democrats was the party that put forward the idea that we needed a land development agency in this country. We made the case very strongly that this land development agency should have strong compulsory purchase order, CPO, powers to compulsorily purchase land, assemble sites and get land available for housing on the kind of scale we need. There is no chance that the 60,000 homes we need each year are going to be delivered without active land management. It simply will not be done by private actors alone.

Of the approximately 30,000 homes that are being delivered per year at the moment, 5,000 are individual self-build homes, approximately 10,000 are social housing and the remainder, comprising approximately 15,000 properties, are being produced by the private sector. There is no way that is going to scale up to the amount we need if there is no active land management. There is no way that will happen if most of that gap is not filled by affordable housing, which means a very active role for the Land Development Agency and the not-for-profit sector. The Minister of State might address that point regarding the gap between what was initially promised by then Minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, and what has transpired since. Is the Government concerned about that? What is the Government doing about it?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for their contributions. I am glad there is no dissent or opposition to the amendments being brought forward.

The additional funds will secure the delivery of the LDA's 2024-28 business plan, under which there is projected delivery of up to 12,900 homes by 2028. A large pipeline of further direct delivery homes is being developed for completion in the period from now until 2028-29, with major projects at various stages from design to planning and pre-construction. This pipeline currently includes more than 10,000 homes and will involve a heightened level of construction on State lands.

Project Tosaigh aims to complete the development of housing projects on private land which has planning permission but where delivery has stalled due to viability or affordability levels. Through this initiative, subject to funding, the LDA expects to deliver up to 8,000 homes by 2028, in addition to those planned for delivery on its existing portfolio of State-owned land and other acquired land. This additional funding will allow the LDA to enter into required commitments to secure the delivery of these direct delivery and Project Tosaigh homes over the lifetime of the business plan. The Land Development Agency Act originally provided up to €2.5 billion in capital for the LDA, which comprised funding of €1.25 billion from the Ireland Strategic Infrastructure Fund and an additional €1.25 billion of borrowings.

To support the significant increase in the ambition of the LDA, which is envisaged under Housing for All, to deliver 12,900 homes under the lifetime of the plan, we need to ensure we can provide additional capital in that regard. In March, an additional €2.5 billion was allocated, comprising €1.25 billion from the proceeds of disposable and direct investment held by the National Treasury Management Agency and an additional €1.25 billion that was raised by the LDA through the performance of certain functions to the provisions of cost-rental affordable accommodation. Also, to implement the budget 2025 decision to provide a further €1.25 billion from the LDA, the Government has introduced another amendment to the NTMA Act to provide for this. The further €1.25 billion will be from the proceeds of the disposal of direct investment held by the NTMA. The additional capital in budget 2025 will ensure the LDA has access to a total of €6.25 billion in capital and, most importantly, it is well positioned to provide affordable and cost-rental housing in communities throughout Ireland and to support the delivery of the national planning framework well into the lifetime of the 2028 to 2029 business plan.

To date, the LDA has drawn down €1.25 billion from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, where €100 million was established in March 2021, with €250 million in February 2023, €275 million in April 2023, €300 in November 2023 and €325 million in May 2025. The LDA is yet to avail of its borrowing powers.

Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about what has been delivered, achieved and committed to. In 2023, the LDA delivered 650 cost-rental and 200 affordable homes in Cork, Dublin, Waterford, Wicklow and Meath. To date, in 2024, the LDA has delivered 690 homes through Project Tosaigh and is also in partnership with local authorities on lands such as Shanganagh where the first 246 affordable homes, of which 195 are cost rental and 51 affordable purchase, were launched in September. A further 35 social housing units are to be completed by the end of the year.

The Government is making legislative provision for the LDA to access the €6.25 billion in capital, which will be split between equity capital, debt and other sources relating to the performance of certain legislative functions relating to the provision of both cost-rental and affordable accommodation, the development of public lands, provision of socially integrated housing, and engagement with local authorities. The business plan is currently in line with prevailing market conditions and the wider economic context but also further funding needs of the LDA. That will be kept under continuous review by officials on the future funding working group and the Housing for All investment subcommittee. We will do everything possible to ensure that the LDA is adequately resourced and continues its essential work.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate the Minister of State is reading the briefing notes in front of him but I want to repeat the point. The Land Development Agency does not have €6.25 billion.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I clarified that. It has access.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It does not have €6.25 billion. It currently has €3.75 billion between funds that have been spent, allocated and what is proposed today. To say it has access to the remainder of the funds is the most liberal use of the word “access” I have heard in some time. It is important we understand why. In theory, the LDA can go and borrow on the markets, but the LDA is telling us interest rates are so prohibitively high, it does not want to do that. In fact, I understand there is a very sharp disagreement between the LDA and Departments over the scale of its borrowing within the plan. In theory, it can borrow but it is telling us it is not going to, and unless it interest rates change and change dramatically, it will not borrow.

The Minister of State says it has access to another €1.25 billion of other sources but we do not know where that money is coming from. Sure, if it does St. Teresa's Gardens it will get the turnkey finance from Dublin City Council to buy the social accommodation, for example. That is not actually money that is locked down or clear in its sources. We have not even mentioned the sustainable tenancies and affordable rents investment initiative. While the Government has said €750 million will, in theory, be made available, in fact only a fraction of that has. We are discussing an amendment where the Government tells us it wants to give extra money to the LDA to increase its ambition and where in fact the LDA has a very large black hole in the funding programme for its current capital programme out to 2028 of €2.5 to €3 billion and there is no increased ambition in it. I will not press those points.

It seems, however, that the future-funding group the Minister of State mentioned has been set up to try and square the circle of how to get the LDA the €7 billion it needs to deliver the homes. Will he give us any additional information on that? We are being asked to approve an amendment for a very significant sum of what is essentially public money to go to the LDA without any certainty that the LDA has sufficient capital to fund its programme, or indeed to share concerns of others that, when homes are delivered, they would be affordable to the vast majority of people. Will the Minister of State tell us, for example, who is on that future funding group, how often it meets, what options it is looking at and when it is likely to report to Government? Will the Minister of State be coming back to us, depending on the outcome of the general election, with another request for a further €1.25 billion capitalisation because the borrowing he says is there has not materialised because interest rates have not come down sufficiently? The least the Minister of State can give us, given we are not opposing his amendment, is maximum transparency and clarity on the future funding and how the Government will fill that black hole that current sits at the heart of the agency's business plan.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for his response. I do not have the information to hand but I will provide it to him after this session. The purpose of today’s discussion on the amendment is to increase, from €1.25 to €2.25 billion, the amount the Minister for Finance may direct the National Treasury Management Agency to pay to the Land Development Agency for the proceeds of the disposal of direct investment. Again, we want to ensure the LDA is sufficiently capitalised to deliver its ambitious programme on delivering affordable, cost-rental and social housing delivery, not only on State land but also on the private market. It is really important the agency has these funds at its disposal to continue to deliver on the ambition contained in its business plan in the coming years. That is why this amendment has been brought before the House today.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We are putting all these extra billions into the LDA and it is just to deliver the existing plan. Is that what the Minister of State is telling us? It is for the existing plan. This is not linked to what everybody knows has to happen and which the Government itself knows has to happen, which is a dramatic upscaling of the targets necessary, which inevitably means a dramatic upscaling of the social and affordable housing targets. It is worth mentioning, however, that I think - the Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong - and much to my annoyance, the legislation around the LDA can potentially allow it to build private housing as well, although we have had some commitments, after much argument, that it will all be social and affordable, but I wonder. Particularly when there are references to things such as future financing commitments or requirements, you being to wonder where this leads if we do not have a clear mandate for the LDA to be about building social and affordable housing on public land and creating, as Deputy O’Callaghan said, a public landbank on which we can build it and, thereby, build at a reasonable price.

Surely this extra money should be linked to plans to increase LDA delivery. Can the Minister of State say anything about that? I understand he is reading from his notes and maybe these are questions for the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. I do not know who knows the answers to this. If all this extra money is going into the LDA, you would have thought that in the current climate, after the Housing Commission report, the ESRI and everybody - Uncle Tom Cobley and all - acknowledging we have to dramatically increase output, the LDA would surely not just be sticking to the plan, or is it? Is this it? It is woefully inadequate. Will the Minister of State elaborate on whether this is it for the LDA between now and 2028?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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If we were doing nothing, we would be criticised for not investing in the LDA, which is a crucial vehicle for direct delivery of homes. It is important we continue to invest in its pipeline of projects. I mentioned some of its achievements to date. We are finalising the national planning framework and there will be revised structural housing targets. We are looking at new revision under Housing for All and they will all be associated with how we best deliver affordable, cost-rental and social homes.

The expectation is that we will raise and elevate the ambition of the LDA also. Through initiatives like Project Tosaigh, we expect to deliver up to 8,000 homes by 2028, in addition to those planned for delivery from the existing portfolio of State-owned or other occupied land. The LDA is working across the country and looking to engage with local authorities. There will be no shortage of effort in trying to maximise our output. We have seen in recent months, as commencements have increased, a sharp incline in supply. We need to continue to see that and the LDA is a crucial vehicle in meeting our revised housing targets and accelerating our delivery programme. The LDA is working through a framework with all the key developers and access to these developers through an accelerated programme is important. That is where we want to continue to direct our efforts.