Official seeks meeting with Minister on social housing

The assistant city manager of Dublin City Council with responsibility for housing has written to Minister for the Environment John Gormley seeking an urgent meeting on the delivery of social housing.

Ciarán McNamara was mandated on Thursday by the council's joint strategic planning committee (SPC) on economic development and housing to seek the meeting with Mr Gormley.

A council spokeswoman confirmed the committee had unanimously called for a meeting with the Minister to discuss in particular housing delivery under Part V of the Planning Act 2000.

Since 2002, an amendment to the Planning Act has allowed developers to negotiate their way out of providing 20 per cent social and affordable housing in any development through such means as a land swap, payment to the council or building equivalent social and affordable housing elsewhere.

Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan, who chairs the committee, said the council was now "solely dependent on Part V for the delivery of social housing".

There were "huge, huge waiting lists for social housing in the city", he said, with up to 15,000 households on the waiting list for housing or transfers due to overcrowding or other reasons.

"Ninety per cent of my work now as a councillor is to do with housing, and I cannot offer a solution to any of the people coming in to me.

"All we can do is massage situations because the social housing simply is not there, and the developers are being allowed to buy their way out of providing any."

Labour Party councillor Aodhán Ó Riordáin, who also sits on the committee, said he could "not understand how the council can stand over this housing crisis. It is an absolute scandal. We have to push the Minister to move on bringing Part V back to the 2000 situation where developers simply had to provide the housing on-site."

The committee also wants to discuss with the Minister the lack of regulation of management fees in private apartment developments.