People Before Profit's Cllr Dave O'Keeffe has moved a motion at Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to build the Council's own Cherrywood town-centre site entirely for social and affordable homes — accusing management of "hiding behind excuses" to hand public land to the private market while offering just 20% on a site the state's own law says should be up to 100%.
People Before Profit Councillor Dave O'Keeffe tonight brought a motion to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council calling for the Council's own land at Cherrywood Town Centre, the "TC3" site to be developed as 100% social and affordable housing, rather than sold off piece meal or handed in its entirety to private developers.
Moving the motion, Cllr O'Keeffe said:
"Let me be very clear about what is going on here, because it is frankly scandalous. We are in the middle of the worst housing emergency in the history of this state. We have an entire generation locked out, young people who cannot buy or rent in the communities they grew up in. We have nurses, teachers and carers, the very people who hold this county together, being driven out because they cannot afford to live here. And what is the council proposing to do with a site that the public already owns? Sell it, or hand the bulk of it to the private market and call that 'good planning.'
"I brought this motion tonight for one simple reason: the council owns this land, and councillors tonight can vote on whether to use this land to house our community on it.
"This is public land. It was public land under NAMA. The public paid to service it, the roads, the water, the Luas, with tens of millions of euro of public money. And now, having carried all the cost and all the risk, we are expected to stand back and watch it flipped all over again. It is the same old story: socialise the costs, and privatise the profits.
"And the excuse being offered absolutely beggars belief. Management tells us 20% social & affordable is enough. Twenty per cent on land that the council already owns! The government's own legislation, the Land Development Agency Act, sets a benchmark of up to 80% social and affordable on public land in our cities. So we are not falling a little short. We are offering a quarter of what the state's own law holds up as the standard for public land, and we are being told to be grateful for it.
"Then we are told this Council is powerless, that our hands are tied because the land sits in a company. But the Chief Executive's own written answers to me tonight admit that he, and he alone, is the shareholder, therefore he can ultimately decide if this land is sold or not. Under company law he can take that decision, in writing, tomorrow morning, without waiting for any AGM. So let us drop the pretence. The power is there. What is missing is the political will and I am asking this Council to supply it.
"And I will not let anyone in that chamber hide behind the 'mixed tenure' smokescreen. One hundred per cent social and affordable housing is mixed tenure, it is social housing, it is cost rental, it is affordable homes to buy. It houses the family on the housing list, the couple who will never get a mortgage, and the nurse priced out of renting. The only people it leaves out are those wealthy enough to buy on the open market and they do not need the public's land to put a roof over their heads.
"I am calling on the Chief Executive to rule out any sale of this site, and on the Minister for Housing to intervene to ensure that this publicly-owned land at Cherrywood is used for the only thing it should ever have been used for genuinely affordable and public homes for the people of this county. We own this land. Let us build the homes."