Dublin's local authorities are to adopt a common "action programme" over the next four years aimed at relieving the housing crisis in the region by providing sites for an additional 66,000 homes.
A strategic review of housing in Dublin, agreed by the capital's chief administrative officers, concedes that affordable housing "is simply not available" to many citizens and it says this requires a co-ordinated strategic response.
Though the number of households has risen by 50,000 over the past 10 years, it acknowledges that waiting lists for public housing are "unacceptable" and the settlement programme for Travellers is "painfully slow and resisted at every turn".
Among the initiatives proposed by the report is a joint examination with the Eastern Health Board of the impact of its private rental subsidy scheme, which is now costing £40 million a year "or over £750,000 per week", and may be a factor in inflating rents.
The report was compiled by senior officials of the four local authorities - Dublin Corporation and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin county councils - and has recently been submitted to the Department of the Environment.
It proposes the establishment of a multi-disciplinary and inter-authority Strategic Response Team to monitor the implementation of a massive water, sewerage and transport programme as well as almost 40 other initiatives. Where necessary, this team would intervene to "fast-track" housing schemes and remove blockages to their realisation. All planning applications for residential development, for example, would be processed within the two-month statutory period.
The four authorities will also set up a joint unit to acquire more land for affordable housing by compulsory purchase under a rolling programme of investment. They would act as developers, where necessary, through the establishment of a revolving fund, the report says.
It also pledges a "rigorous examination" of the existing stock of public and social sector housing to quantify and remedy deficiencies. It also puts forward a number of "innovative and creative" initiatives to encourage the development of more diverse housing.
These are to be explored in partnership with the private sector and mainstream European housing associations to create communities in different housing types, sizes and densities in a mix of public rented, shared ownership and private ownership tenures.
The four authorities intend to use their existing and future land banks to increase substantially the provision of shared ownership housing - built by a local authority or housing association and part-bought, part-rented by firsttime house purchasers on lower incomes.
The current requirement that people must be on a local authority waiting list to qualify for homes built by housing associations should be changed, the report says, to permit up to 50 per cent to be let or part-sold to others who are priced out of the private market.
Noting that many three- and four-bedroom houses are occupied by only one or two people, it proposes the use of financial incentives to encourage "downsizing" to mixed schemes of social and private sheltered housing for the elderly.
The report advocates "closer and thereby more effective consultation" with local residents to expedite infill housing schemes on left-over lands owned by the authorities as well as an inventory of all publicly-owned land which might be developed for affordable housing.
With a legal challenge thought to be imminent, the report says the Government should amend the planning laws to remove "any possible legal doubt about the requirement to include a proportion of social housing in all new private housing developments".
It says consideration should be given to reintroducing a certificate of reasonable value (CRV) for newly-built houses, with a "penalty" stamp duty imposed on those which do not qualify. This would be intended to eliminate profiteering in the private housing sector.
The report also suggests that the 1974 Kenny Report on the price of building land, which recommended that local authorities should be able to acquire land at its existing use value, should be reexamined in the context of negotiations to replace Partnership 2000. It recommends a levy system to induce the release of serviced land for development as well as provisions to "claw back" excessive profits from the sale of former local authority houses acquired at subsidised prices. The four local authorities say that, properly resourced, they are "the only agencies with the capacity, collective expertise and the human resources to plan, co-ordinate, drive and deliver the essential elements" of the strategy put forward in their joint report.
"This structured four-year programme of action will be delivered and will be supported by initiatives which will ensure that with the support of all relevant agencies the present accommodation situation should not be repeated," the authorities declare.