Mr. Michael Cleary:

Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to Shanganagh. I have no knowledge of that site that, however I am involved with some of the locations. On the smaller scale sites where there is not a significant number of housing units or apartments to be delivered, local authorities use the Part 8 process to allow them to deliver planning permission and in some cases then enter into direct contracts.

I am a planning and development surveyor, on the planning side. We spoke earlier about not just the immediate issues, but the long-term issue is that it is preferable to have a mix of tenures insofar as one can, on as much land as one can. Ideally, there would be a mixture of tenures, not just social or affordable but private as well. In those scenarios one needs the private sector potentially to take some market risk, not construction risk, and hopefully that would offset the cost of delivery of the social and affordable housing. I accept there are examples of where that has not worked but it does work and we must try to strike a balance.