Minister ‘will not apologise’ for housing strategy

Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has said he "will make no apologies to anybody" for putting pressure on local authority managers to "fast-track" planning permissions for social housing.

Mr Coveney made the comments during a housing policy conference in Trinity College Dublin, where a number of speakers expressed concerns that new social housing would be developed by the construction industry without planning or regard for community development.

A number of speakers from the floor accused Mr Coveney of “crisis management” and repeating “failed policies of the past”.

Mr Coveney told the conference, which was entitled Homelessness and Social Housing - The Search for Solutions: “You say you don’t want us to crank up the construction industry, you don’t want us to fast-track the planning process and at the same time you want social housing of good quality.”

He said the Government was “trying to respond to the emergency that is there today, particularly in Dublin” and that new housing would be delivered “in the right place, in the right quality”.

He said that while “some of that” housing would be delivered through fast-build and modular units for the short-term, most of it would be delivered through conventional-build projects that would create sustainable communities.

Homeless families

He said there were more then 1,000 families living in hotel rooms every night in the State, “and I need to respond to that and I make no apologies to anybody for pushing chief executives [of local authorities] hard to respond to that, even if it does mean fast-tracking planning permission.

"There is an emergency in Ireland that needs an emergency response and that means we need to do things differently, and we will do things differently.

“That will mean making choices that aren’t perfect in terms of the planning system but they are a hell of a lot better than maintaining the [situations] that some families are in at the moment.”

He said fast-track measures would be delivered in tandem with “the normal process of planning” that would “deliver in the normal way”.

“I want better outcomes for people who have disastrous outcomes at the moment.”

Initiatives

Earlier Mr Coveney had revealed a number of initiatives were under consideration to help deliver social housing.

These include targeting unused land banks in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Athlone for development, as well as providing infrastructure funding to local authorities on a “use it or lose it” basis.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Coveney said the “overall package” would come before Cabinet very shortly.