Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the contributors for coming in to speak with us. I wish to associate myself with those paying tribute to the huge amount of work councillors do for their local communities on a continuous basis. They do not get half the pay or recognition they deserve.

I am interested in Councillor Colgan's experiences of dealing with the LDA's delivery through both her own local electoral area, LEA, in Dundrum and the Shanganagh cost rental scheme. Was the LDA open to dealing with her as a local authority member? What issues arose in the course of the planning for those sites? Was the LDA consultative? How did it deal with residents? I am concerned about how the LDA is currently constituted. It is there for the delivery of houses. Some of our largest regeneration projects are within my own area and half of that involves building communities or trying to knit them back together again. We have found ourselves in a number of situations where, in order to build community facilities, community centres and anything that is long term, the local authority felt it had to sell off land to fund them because the funding was not available from the Department. Did anything like that happen when it came to either the Shanganagh or Dundrum sites? I understand that they are different situations but my concern is that if we remove section 183 of the Local Government Act, public land would be disposed of on those terms. At least with section 183 in place, local authority members are able to intervene and negotiate other terms and conditions.

In Councillor Colgan's experience, and based on chatting to other members, how many local authorities are in legacy debt? The Land Development Agency Bill provides that land will be paid for at market rate but an awful lot of local authorities took on developing and pulling together land banks at the time of the boom and consequently have legacy debt. Have there been indications that the Department will address that when it comes to the Land Development Agency Bill?

The issue of affordability is interesting, as this committee will be discussing both the affordable housing Bill and the Land Development Agency Bill. We need to make sure we are not just giving a discount at market rate. In other countries where that has been done, a discount at market rate ended up being completely unaffordable for people and they were priced out. We need to link affordability, whether for cost rental or affordable purchase, to people's income and wages.