Land Development Agency Bill under scrutiny

Darragh O'Brien has defended the scheme which, he said, has strengthened provisions included in a previous version of the legislation

Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien has defended the Land Development Agency Bill. File Picture.

The Minister for Housing has been accused of trying to "flog a Fine Gael car with a lick of paint but the same dodgy engine" with his Land Development Agency Bill.

Darragh O'Brien, however, called the bill "a State stepping up to the mark". 

The bill, which is an updated version of a similar Fine Gael bill from 2019, was debated in the Dáil on Wednesday, with Sinn Féin's housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin saying that the bill was not sufficiently different to the version which Mr O'Brien called a "Del Boy van" while in opposition. Mr O'Broin said that the minister was acting like the lead character in the 1970s TV show Minder.

The minister is increasingly looking like Arthur Daley, trying to sell a clapped-out, second-hand Fine Gael car with a lick of paint but with the same dodgy engine.

"We have mechanisms to deliver public housing on public land. They have existed for a century and when they were funded, supported, and staffed by Government, they did a good job. They are called councils and we should return to that model."

Mr Ó Broin said that the Government's definition of 'affordable' in the act was too weak. The act allows the housing minister to define anything below the median house sale price in the given area as affordable.

"This means in the minister’s own constituency last year a price of €460,000 with the average rent in the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, index of €1,800. 

"If we pass this bill anything below that which is decided by the minister will be legally defined as affordable. That is an absolute travesty."

Labour's Aodhán Ó Ríordáin called the bill a "double-edged sword", saying that the country needs a Land Development Agency with a strong remit, but the bill contains a number of red flags, particularly a lack of scrutiny.

"The success of the bill will depend on whether the houses built are not just technically 'affordable houses' or technically 'cost rental' houses but are houses people can actually afford to buy or rent, and that we do it without pouring public cash without scrutiny into the bank balances of private entities."

Social Democrat TD Cian O'Callaghan said that the minister could not "have it both ways" on the bill, which did not undergo pre-legislative scrutiny this time around.

"The minister said that this is a different bill to the bill drafted by Fine Gael in 2019. If it is a different bill, why did we not get pre-legislative scrutiny on it?"