Mr. John McCarthy:

There are a number of things to do with the site. We have received a proposal from the city council to use it for a combination and to use a portion of the site to provide a social housing project and a Traveller accommodation project. We have gone back to the city council on that with regard to the proposal not satisfying value for money criteria. This is largely because it seems the entirety of the land cost was being assigned to the use of only a particular part of the site and that was not appropriate. I believe there is a proposal now from the city council to use the site temporarily for Traveller accommodation purposes and obviously we will engage with the council on that.

Deputies MacSharry and Cassells raised an important point around the land approval process. Over the past three or four years or more, there have been no drawdowns of new land loans, which is no surprise given the landbank that was built up. Our priority over recent years has been to try bringing land into active use through the land aggregation scheme and through other local authority lands once we had the capital resources available to allow us to do that. In 12 months or more, some local authorities, to be able to work ahead and build up their pipeline of future projects, may well need to get into the space in certain types of places of looking at land acquisitions. In the second half of this year the Department will be looking at section 106 and at a broad land borrowing framework for local authorities in order that there is absolute clarity around the responsibilities of the local authority and what criteria need to be specified in legislation. There is a framework that needs to be put in place for the future.