Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think anybody could accuse me of not trying to get local authorities to use their initiative in terms of new ways of building communities. We are encouraging them to do that in terms of how they use publicly-owned land banks. We are encouraging them to create partnerships between private builders and designers, to integrate local authority needs with private housing demand. We are talking about affordable rental models that are quite different from anything we have seen in the past. I want families living in city centres. I have been banging that drum since the day I took office.

We should not be encouraging families working in Dublin to live in 3-bed semi-detached houses in Maynooth, Clane, Navan, Dunshaughlin, Portlaoise or wherever because they cannot afford to buy one in Dublin. That is not a sustainable way forward for this city. That is why I have been adamant that every city development plan needs to be looking at development from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. We are seeing these huge doughnut-shaped areas around the commuter belts of cities. Towns that 20 years ago had up to 5,000 people now have 20,000 people, with largely the same town centres and so on. We are trying to change that. At the same time, we have huge vacancy rates in our city centres and, in some cases, depopulation in city centres. My own city is a good example of that.

I am all for different apartment sizes and shapes, linking in townhouses with apartment complexes, creating very diverse communities and so on. The only thing we are talking about here is whether the Minister can set a minimum standard that has to be facilitated through the planning system, or whether we allow a local authority to move that minimum size, for example, up to a level that actually rules out a certain type of apartment.