Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think we ended up roaming into the area of discussing affordability as opposed to the specifics of the LDA. I will return to the issue of affordability later on but with regard to the transparency of the Agency, as outlined in the general scheme of the Bill, I think criteria such as freedom of information are listed in the second part of head 9. In the context of our engagement last year with the Department, we will only have access to parliamentary questions on policy. It raises certain issues for me because at the moment, we can get access to a significant amount of information about social and affordable housing, local authorities and AHBs such as how things are progressing. With the establishment of this agency and this agency then being open to working with local authorities, that information will no longer be available to us. I question the Minister's statement when we tried to get the cap for local authorities raised to €6 million. He questioned the ability of local authorities to do that yet he is handing €1.25 billion to a land development agency with relatively no oversight. What are the witnesses' comments on the oversight of the LDA? One sees that the agency will be allowed to set up joint ventures and partnerships - all these separate bodies. What access or oversight will we have?

Regarding head 9, we mentioned commercial return, which is emphasised significantly. Even under this head, one will see a reference to pursuing joint ventures and profit-sharing arrangements to create investment vehicles. Much of this seems to be geared towards profit and trying to get a commercial return as opposed to delivering social and affordable housing, which is our main objective.

Professor McQuinn mentioned freely available land as a critical point in delivering housing in general and affordability. Land, including zoned land, is available. We probably have zoned land of up to nine years. I do not think it is a problem with land. I think the problem is the lack of infrastructure on that land. If our zoned land had the infrastructure, we might be able to look at vacant site levies being the critical thing to get that delivered. At the moment, we are looking at a lot of zoned land that has no infrastructure to deliver housing. What impact is the lack of infrastructure having on delivering affordability in the long term?

If this vehicle ends up being on balance sheet, it will have failed. It will not be able to deliver what it set out to deliver. It is a fundamental question with which we must grapple. I do not know whether enough is being done at European level to emphasise the importance of social housing and that it should be looked at in an off-balance sheet situation and should not form part of that fiscal space because it is the single biggest social issue we face. Europe needs to look at how it handles capital investment in social and affordable housing.