Mr. John Coleman:

I assure the Senator that the board of the LDA, especially the chairperson, is exceptionally strong on the need to achieve regional balance.

On our engagements, perhaps some of the perception that the focus has been on Dublin has to do with the fact that the initial sites to which we were able to gain access were predominantly in Dublin. Roughly 80% of the homes that could be delivered happened to be in Dublin. We certainly have a focus on the key urban areas. We have had considerable engagement with the local authorities in the relevant regions, especially in Cork, Limerick and Galway, and want to target others, including Waterford. Part of our mandate is to provide a greater focus not simply on the building of homes but also on making regional areas more attractive to employers and other bodies in which to increase their significance in comparison with Dublin.

Obviously there are a lot of pressures in Dublin manifesting in very high housing costs and so on that we do not want to prevail.

The point has been well made and taken. I can assure the Senator that it is a priority to achieve greater regional balance for the LDA board. I am quite confident that she will see additional activity through 2020 in the regional cities, particularly by the LDA. I am happy to come back to the Senator regularly to provide updates on what we are doing in this area.

A point was made that all of the land should be utilised, that it should not be caught up in red tape, and about the need to have transparency in terms of what the LDA is looking for and looking at. I will give a combined answer. The LDA was set up to enable and open up land and provide ways to develop land. One of the ways to do so is to draw attention to what lands are in State ownership and other lands to see if we can bring them forward for development. A key part of that will be the State lands database that we are compiling at present. We anticipate that the database will be made available. We want people to see what lands are available, in particular State lands. We want to bring more attention to those and ask whether such lands can be used for alternative purposes. It is part of our role to engender that. We also want to consider site assembly opportunities. Where pieces of land have been locked up to date, and they might be adjacent to State lands, we want to see if we can bring them into play as well, and not just look individually or in silos at pieces of land. We want to bring in other lands that to date, for whatever reason, have been locked up, and provoke and see whether we can get additional action. That points to the query made about making sure that land is utilised. Any time we consider a piece of State land, we consider everything around it or close to it to see what else can be done to bring it into play.

Quite a bit has happened since we have been set up. We now have a board. We also have a panel of architects, designers, project managers and so on that we can access quickly. As we properly procured them through public procurement, they can be quickly appointed to the sites we have access to. We have a very skilled staff base, especially on the property side, who are experienced in project management and delivering large-scale residential projects.

In terms of the sites, it is probably not generally understood that a huge amount of front work must go into understanding what is on a site, its feasibility, capacity, traffic etc. The LDA office has been a hive of activity with people trying to make sure such work is done. If the front work were not done on sites, then we would not be in a position to appoint design teams to design what goes on the sites. That work is below the radar but it stores up a lot more physical and tangible activity for the LDA through 2020. Throughout 2020, one will see more planning applications lodged, more sites accessed and, ultimately, the construction of new homes on those sites. I am confident that people will see that coming through.