Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Coleman. We have ten minutes left for me, Senator Fitzpatrick and Deputy McAuliffe. We will try to fit everything in with three minutes each.

One of the purposes of the LDA Bill is the creation and development of new and regenerated communities. Mr. Coleman has touched on strategic land assessment and pulling together at scale for provision of services. Proximity to good public transport is extremely important when talking about affordability and social housing. Lack of access to public transport has often excluded many communities in the past. Public transport needs to be frequent and reliable and we need to look at the principles of transport orientated development.

Will the LDA focus on sites that are well served by public transport? Will the scale that we envision the LDA working at, and the ability to pull all the service providers together, allow it to influence the provision of public transport to make those communities better served by it? If Government focuses on provision and increase in frequency of public transport, will that open up other sites that the LDA had not considered previously?