Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The reason I ask is a concern prompted partly by the experience of Cherrywood and partly by recent comments by Mel Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds fears that the developers on many big private sites are in no hurry to build or may not have any interest in building. Therefore, we should take the Part V component as land upfront and build on it ourselves, which I would have thought would bring in the organisations represented here. Mr. Reynolds argument was that this would be cheaper and the State would also control the timeline. That seems to be a very good suggestion in light of the number of sites on which we are hoping to secure Part V builds but the matter is completely in the hands of a private developer. In the case of Cherrywood, the developer has already flipped some of the land. We do not know what is going to happen there. If the State took its 10% upfront - I would like that percentage to increase to 20% or more - and started to build on it, that would move things forward. I do not know if the witnesses have any comment on that, but it seems to be a very sensible suggestion.