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

I have a question about the Land Development Agency. I do not know if R. McQuinn looked very closely at the legislation. He may have, but I will not assume it. Many people hoped the Land Development Agency would be something that would intervene to reduce the costs of building houses, particularly intervening in a market where prices have gone out of control, as Dr. McQuinn said, and are some of the highest in Europe. Does it concern him that the legislation specifically prescribes that the housing that will be built will be benchmarked against local market conditions? As Deputy Canney said, local market conditions in Tuam may be prices that are manageable, but benchmarking the housing we desperately need to build against local market conditions in the areas where the housing crisis is most acute is a recipe for disaster because we are starting at prices that are astronomical and off the wall. There is very little mention of social housing in the legislation. The only reference to it is to the 10% figure, so it seems the Land Development Agency is only envisaging a very small proportion of social housing on public land and benchmarking against a distorted private market. Does that worry Dr. McQuinn?