Plans for a housing Tsar is a farce says Laois TD

THE housing shortage in Laois will not be fixed by a Housing Tsar says local Independent Republican TD Brian Stanley.

He said: “Government plans to push a Tsar in place to speed up housing delivery is a farce. The last thing we need is yet another office and agency which will be no more than a talking shop. We already have three housing ministers and a Secretary General, a whole team of assistant secretary general’s and a multitude of agencies that are supposed to be speeding up the delivery of badly needed homes.” 

The Portlaoise based TD said: “The revision of the National Development Plan is supposedly to accelerate the delivery of housing in particular. There are a couple of things needed to accelerate that. The first is the need to replicate existing plans, so the same plan for social and affordable housing and other houses can be used in Waterford, Laois, or Donegal. The private sector is doing this. If we look at what it is building, it is replicating the plans all over the country. However, what is happening with local government and government sponsored housing is that it is back to a blank canvas every time. It is costing between 10% and 15% more to build houses and it is slowing it down.” 

He said: “The second thing is that we need builders, in particular small builders. The Minister of State knows that in rural towns and villages, small builders need the low-cost finance that is available to the larger builders. We need also to accelerate the apprenticeship programmes.

“Infrastructural deficits need to be addressed, particularly the infrastructural deficits in water supply. Phil Hogan, created Irish Water. I was an opposition spokesperson on that at the time. I argued with him about it over several days. Money needs to be given directly to the local authorities to put in the infrastructure into small towns, such as Mountmellick, Mountrath, Rathdowney Graiguecullen, Ballylinan, Portarlington and Abbeyleix. Many of them are connected by rail so they are very easy to get around. We need infrastructure to go into these towns.” 

Deputy Stanley said: “We need to get the foot off local authorities and stop micromanagement of them. We need to use the same plans throughout the 26 counties in trying to rapidly build up and speed up delivery. If you want to quickly produce something that is good quality, you mass produce and that is what we need to do.”