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

I apologise for having to leave the meeting for a time to attend to business in the Dáil.

We campaigned long and hard in our locality to secure the welcome commitment given to the provision of public and affordable housing only on the Shanganagh site. That is how it should be because it is public land. However, I do not see what the Land Development Agency adds to this equation. I cannot help but wonder whether the involvement of the agency is just another way of slowing down a protracted process. That is not the fault of the LDA, but it is difficult not to see it that way for the people in the locality who are pulling their hair out waiting for things to progress. The site has been earmarked for public housing since it was transferred from the Department of Justice and Equality to the local authority seven or eight years ago. We could be forgiven for thinking that bringing the LDA in adds another layer of complexity and difficulty which would be avoided if the local authority just got on with building public and affordable housing.

I have made the point before to the delegates that, in principle, the idea of a land development agency is not a bad one. On one level, it could be seen as the coming together of the ideas and recommendations set out in the Kenny report, but I wonder whether that is what the LDA actually will be. In particular, I do not see what specific role it will have in respect of land that is already in public hands. It clearly has a role to play in getting hold of land that is private and zoning it to ensure we will have sufficient land to meet our public and affordable housing needs.

In general, I do not see what role the LDA can have in respect of land already in public ownership that is not a stepping stone towards privatisation in some shape or form. The Dún Laoghaire site is one of the early ones, although it is approximately eight years late. It seems to be exceptional, insofar as we are talking exclusively about public and affordable housing. In the case of most of the other sites the LDA will develop, is it not the case that it will be privatising substantial amounts of public land? That will be the longer term evolution of the LDA which will depend on private finance for the most part and we know what private finance does. This activity is being taken out of the hands of the State. The LDA has been set up by the State to achieve a certain role. It is all about getting it off balance sheet. As the LDA becomes a prisoner of private finance, private finance will end up dictating the reality of what happens on these sites and the balance will shift from all public and affordable towards a lot of private housing. In such circumstances, we are told that it is not possible to say how much the affordable houses will cost because it will depend on the finance that can be obtained and how long for which it can be strung out. That is what I mean when I say the LDA will become a prisoner of the lenders, private finance or the European Central Bank, with all of the conditionality that goes with it. It seems that this is not what we need if we are to deliver a great deal of genuinely affordable public and affordable housing on scale and on public land. I ask the delegates to respond to those questions.