Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As I said, this is the first in a series of amendments that seek to shift the focus of the Bill onto active land management. I will move on to my second amendment in this grouping, amendment No. 13. The Minister will be able to see very clearly what we are trying to do here in respect of active land management. The function of the agency should be to assemble land and, as amendment No. 13 makes clear, to make that land available to local authorities, approved housing bodies, community housing trusts and other not-for-profit bodies. Key is that this is not simply a symbolic issue of the name of the agency; it is what we want this agency to do. I do not believe a commercial entity operating through designated activity companies is the best way to use public land. I do not believe allowing any of that land to be used for the development of unaffordable, open market-priced homes that could cost anything between €350,000 and €500,000, depending on the location, is good. It does not matter if it is 10%, 20% or 60%. Therefore, this is a fundamental issue of what we want this agency to do. It is not just about the title; it is about the functions and the output of that. The LDA does not have the capacity, staff or planning expertise for residential delivery. We have great local authorities, AHBs and other entities that already have all that. What they do not have is a willingness on the part of central government to fund them to deliver large-scale developments of mixed-income and mixed-tenure housing for social and affordable rent and affordable purchase. That is why this series of amendments - and we will come back to this at later stages - is about essentially trying to redirect this Bill into what its function should be, that is, active land management to assist public housing bodies to deliver public housing rather than essentially a publicly owned private company that will use private development methods and finance, which will push up development costs and even make the affordable homes less affordable.