Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is like what Dermot Morgan said, they will be sleeping in the account. We cannot have that.

The point is that the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, changed the building regulations, which were brought in at the bottom of the recession when things were worst and they made it worse. The price of a site is a factor in Dublin. It is especially a factor in the cost of apartments, but it is the unit cost of the site which is the issue and the Dublin local authorities should allow another five or six storeys to be built because if one puts another 20 apartments on the same site, by going up, one reduces the unit cost of the site. It is very simple and yet there is an absolute refusal to do it. Consequently, there is very little apartment building, if any at all, in the area within the canals in Dublin. Elevation is one issue and over regulation was an issue but the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, changed that dramatically.

All along the quays the regulation said one had to have two parking spaces for cars. It is the one place in the country where one has every form of public transport from taxis to buses, access to Luas, and the DART is not so far away, yet two parking spaces were required for people whom one would be trying to encourage not to have cars if one was planning properly. There was a load of crazy stuff done but it has to be dismantled. It is not all a function of national government, quite a lot of it is on the planning side and quite a lot of it is local authority-driven.