Mr. John O'Connor:

In terms of the introduction of an affordable purchase arrangement or a cost rental, it is time to put funding in place to make sure that the affordable housing being delivered is affordable. It is important to get that right. Some funding is being put in place through the local infrastructure housing activation fund. LIHAF. It is a question of how such provision is funded and what land is available from local authorities, the public sector, to provide that if affordable housing is delivered it is affordable. As I said, I expect that will be in place within a few weeks.

Deputy Casey made a point about home ownership and the rental sector. Both elements need to be considered whereby it would not be a focus on one over the other. On the employment aspect, in terms of companies getting more involved in the delivery of housing, that would be useful. Many companies would be interested in that if there were ways that they could partake in terms of the funding of housing. The Government may have to find a way to structure that to make funding available from them.

If one builds an office block, and we could point to any office block that has been built near these Houses, each person working in an office block would take up 10 sq. m, and that is the way they are designed. When it comes to housing, 40 sq. m per person is required. For every office block, one would need four apartment blocks to house the number of people working in an office block. That is the scale involved. With respect to providing employment, we can appreciate the scale of housing we need to provide.

On Deputy Ó Broin's point, we need to build up a significant amount of housing. In terms of a combination of social housing and cost rental, I agree that in the long term those two should be combined together. There is a recognition of the need for more affordable rental accommodation. There is an understanding of that and a commitment from the political system to do that.

Regarding the national planning framework, it is a long-term plan with overall targets. Its big focus from the point of view of housing is on compact growth and that is critical. We need to focus on whether we are getting adequate concentration of housing, adequate densities of population, to make things work. With the realisation of the need to provide more rental accommodation, in terms of the percentage of what is being delivered, we need to deliver more of that lower cost rental accommodation and within State control. When the State has control of lands, the focus must be on how that is used. If somebody else is building private housing, we should let that developer do that, but we should let the State use a bigger percentage of its lands to meet that other need.