Mr. John McCarthy:

On the question of from where the land bank initially came, ten or 11 years ago a major report was compiled by the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, in respect of housing. One of the recommendations in that report centred around the need for local authorities to engage in active land management strategies. In effect, NESC was encouraging local authorities to try to get ahead of the market in acquiring land for what, at that point, was a very fast-expanding social housing programme. On foot of that and with the Department's encouragement, local authorities sought to identify sites that would be needed to support that programme. The issue which arose and which we sought to address in 2010 with the introduction of the scheme was that the normal part of the chain relating to the expected period within which sites would be brought into development became fractured. This was because the scale of Exchequer funding available for social housing purposes, particularly in the context of the building programme, was reduced significantly. The scheme was a response to dealing with that situation. Ultimately, it dealt with it partly but it could not deal with it fully.

The future use of the sites which local authorities still own and in respect of which they are still servicing the associated costs will be fundamentally tied in to the delivery of the social housing strategy. As the Deputy is aware, the strategy was published in November. The Department is engaging with all local authorities with a view to finalising - in the next few weeks - targets for the delivery of social housing in 2015. That process will roll on all the way to 2020. There will have to be an ongoing engagement between the Department and individual local authorities in respect of their building programmes and the identification and use of particular sites, be they sites which are in the land aggregation scheme - we would see these as a priority - or other sites which authorities own and which may match specific local housing needs.