Dr. Ronan Lyons:

I would love to stay longer but I know there are other witnesses coming before the committee. With regard to the minimum deposit, if I were to start from scratch, I am not sure I would have designed the process going up from 10% to 20% on a sliding scale. Having said that - and I believe the Governor is of the same view - once the rules are in place, they should only be changed for important reasons. I would probably leave them as they are. People speak about a 20% deposit for a first-time buyer but that would only happen if that buyer was buying a property worth €10 million. It is lower for any feasible amount used by people to buy a property; it is closer to 12%. One could argue it could go down to 8%. Again, I am not going to fight to the death over that. The 10% point is there and I would be reluctant to change it, as then it becomes an issue that can always be tinkered with. People know it is there and those in their early 20s act as if it will be there in ten years.

The O'Devaney Gardens site brings up wider issues. We need to build reasonably high density in that site and we can consider what other cities would do with that site, which is close to light rail and parklands. We can put in schools and other public services. I described myself once as a "please in my back yard" as I can look out on everything. I have a wonderful view of the city but I should not have. There should be something that people live in and get value out of in that space. It is not that the building should have 20 storeys but it should have pretty high density when compared with the rest of Dublin.

I mentioned the Dublin Industrial Estate.

That got me into hot water in the past. I will give another example of land use that I believe encapsulates what you are talking about. Dublin Bus has seven depots. Six of them are in city centre areas. Three of those are not near any terminus of the core Dublin Bus routes and the other three are near a couple of them. However, most of the Dublin Bus core routes start at the outside of the city, so close to Harristown or one out near Lucan would make sense. The six central ones have one feature in common - they were all previously Dublin United Tramways Company depots. In Ireland we have a land use policy that is just last use. Whatever was done ten or 20 years ago is the benchmark now. We must be a great deal more aggressive.

I am not arguing for market-led development, but my worry is that we have gone too far to the other extreme whereby the planner knows best. I am happy with a planner-led system, but a planner-led system where the market, as in people, can put in their suggestions. If a developer offered to buy a site and put in 400 apartments, of which 100 will be social, they should have a way of doing that. In the UK there is what is called a "right to contest"-----