Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sure many people in the political space would agree that HAP is a total waste of taxpayers' money over a long period. Our failure to wean ourselves off HAP over the past ten or more years has been a failure of policy.

Mr. Doyle spoke about the supply of housing. I ask about the land aggregation and Mr. O'Connor might like to answer some of these questions. Let us cast our minds back to the financial crisis because that was the context of it. Somebody described this scheme to me as NAMA for local authorities. One would imagine some drop in value as a result of that context. A total of 73 sites were identified, with 72 of them purchased for a total of €125 million. In 2018 they were valued at €55 million which represents a halving of value. There are bigger questions on land values and so on at the time.

The bigger issue for me is that it was a scheme that was intended to deliver just under 3,500 units and we have only delivered 98.

That is a major issue. It appears that more than half the sites transferred from local authorities to the land aggregation scheme were not suitable for housing. One would have to ask why they were purchased in the first place if they are not suitable.